For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US
popsci.com
popsci.com
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/04/14/the-weekend-read-chin...
Claims that these tariffs have some human rights motivations are nonsensical, would the US block imports of Saudi oil over human rights abuses there? Of course not - but silicon solar panels, oh my!
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/exclusive-us-blocks-more...
It's no surprise that the pushback by politicians owned by investors in fossil fuels and utilities has been so intense - energy is one of the most lucrative investments, and it's rather difficult to control and meter the flow of sunlight to homes, in comparison to natural gas or crude oil.
Notably, the USA has no R & D programs or subsidy programs like the CHIPS act (for semiconductors for computation, not for power production) aimed at rapidly expanding monocrystalline silicon production.
Something like Star Trek no involvement rule.
I'm really really sorry that our Navy is used to protect trade. Terrible of the U.S.
I'm sorry that the U.S. likes to have allies with democracies and a thriving, consuming, middle-class.
Are things better than they were under American hegemony? Sure. Could they be even better if we weren't stuck in this local maximum, Absolutely.
Anxiously lashing out at people because they express a desire for improvements in their society, and improvements in American society isn't productive.
"Are things better than they were under American hegemony? Sure. Could they be even better if we weren't stuck in this local maximum, Absolutely."
Yeah! Criticize America so it can be better but taking a stance that world would magically be better off without America, or even that the world doesn't want America while obsessively consuming American products seems rather childish in my opinion.
You think the grandparent comment is what you describe here?
Ironically, GGP's comment was a well thought out comment supporting American 'hegemony'.
I think you have your "lash out" backwards in this case.
Latin America: https://www.statista.com/statistics/961585/latin-america-cru...
US: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...
Every government has to think about energy independence, of which oil production is part of that story. Our oil economics are also intertwined with US policy, which renewables are helping undo in the US. That's to say, US society is trying to put a cap on how energy independence involves in conflict either directly or indirectly.
Latin Americas story is different: https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/ross/papers/work...
> Abstract: In Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, oil-producing countries have civil wars at a significantly higher rate than countries without oil. Is there also a link between oil and armed rebellion in Latin America?
> I argue the answer is “yes,” but with an important qualification. In the rest of the world, oil heightens the danger of both “governmental” conflicts (over control of the existing state) and secessionist conflicts (to form new states); but in Latin America, oil is only linked to governmental conflicts. This is not because Latin American petroleum has unusual properties, but because the region is uniquely “secession-proof”: there have been no separatist conflicts in Latin America for over a century. I explore two possible explanations for this anomaly: the region’s long history of sovereign statehood, which may have caused national borders to become more widely-accepted; and obstacles to the mobilization of indigenous groups along ethnic lines.
Tldr; instead of getting involved in foreign wars to save your oil supply, it's cheaper to centralize the oppression back home.
Realistically, the next country on the US hitlist is probably Iran, not your latam home country. But first the American public needs to get back it's war appetite, and the shooting in Ukraine needs to simmer down (probably within a year, along new borders that are pretty close to what the current battle lines are), and China needs to not distract us by starting with Taiwan.
If your nation is run by a dictatorship, it's a failed state.
If your nation is a theocracy, it's a failed state.
You'll notice the distinct lack of the US invading well-functioning, democratic nations (we share a remarkably unguarded, massive border with Canada).
You generally can't challenge US hegemony, it's far too large, and still expanding. China is the only entity since the 1950s Soviet Union that could even attempt it. For example while the EU's strongest economies have been largely going sideways for ~15 years economically (since the great recession), the US has added nearly $10 trillion to its economy (a further ~65-70% expansion in 15 years). Who is going to keep up with that, at that size (other than China)?
The issue is State subsidies and Environmental and Labor regulation that is flimsy. Any American company operating on US soil will be uncompetitive from Day 1 trying to follow, Federal, State and EPA regulation.
As much as Solar Panels are touted in Environmental community, they are a product of intense chemical process that produces poisonous waste.
EDIT: thanks for all the answers, IIUC it boils down to "nobody cares if a luxury item from a western company is built on slavery, the only thing that matters is that poor people who built it cannot afford it"
Ironically, me.
I changed the battery last year, it costed me 13$ (~12 euros), it is as good as new.
Now it might be that my Android phone is Chinese as well, so it actually costed me less than 10¢ a day. Even if I had to replace my Android smartphone, I could have changed it 3 times in the past 7 years and still spend less than buying an iPhone that lasted me 7 years.
I could still easily sell it for 30-40 euros, making it even cheaper.
Side-note: if anyone believes the idea that companies pass savings to the consumer... Well I have a nice bridge in Brooklyn they might be interested in
There must be some limit to how low it can be sold for.
What you’ve described is specific to humanity, not the US — “the thing is worth as much as people are willing to pay for it” is a near universal truth.
Let me guess — you’ve sat at a desk for your entire career?
Still relying on boundless global trade in 2023 is just.. a funny position.
It is utterly inefficient to produce stuff far, far from where it will be used.
Spreading things out like this is balls.
Lets start building again. If we're to get off this dust-ball, we have to learn to do things ourselves, again.
That's why I'm saying: just, stop!
It has to become consumer-preferred to have something cool be built locally.
This won't happen until someone builds something cool this way.
As far as I can tell, Chinese solar manufacturers do not engage in this sort of straightforward and easy to define dumping. They sell their products at comparable low prices both domestically and abroad. The United States claims that advantages given to Chinese solar manufacturers (like low cost land and industrial partnerships with local governments) are unfair and counters them with measures termed "anti dumping" tariffs. Given how many perks American states and municipalities roll out to attract manufacturing jobs, including solar jobs [2], I don't see how the Chinese incentives for solar manufacturing go too far. I rather think it's something like the situation with Canadian softwood exports to the US [3]: the US government's position is dubious, but it's too powerful in practice to be held to account.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dumping.asp
[2] https://bgindependentmedia.org/first-solar-site-promising-50...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_s...
China doesn't have a big natural gas / crude oil sector trying to block development of alternatives to their products, that's the difference.
The tariffs boosted domestic production of solar panels.
The tariffs also increased the cost of solar panels, so they slowed adoption of solar.
You can have Made in America, or you can have cheap, but you cannot have both.
Just finished a motorbike trip in Laos. Fun fact, their largest export is electricity.
Would've never guessed that, right?
90% of the electricity they generate is exported to neighboring countries - mostly Thailand.
80% is renewable - Go Laos!
But wait, it may be renewable... but turns out the government is corrupt and constantly sells rights to the highest bidder wanting to build a dam for hydroelectric wherever they want, and usually without any sort of environmental survey - oops. It's the driest country I've been to in a while, many villages had their water access completely destroyed due to upstream dams.
Just a cautionary tale as "renewable" doesn't necessarily mean better - green-washing is absolutely still a thing out there and we should be sure to thoroughly vet information before assuming it's more viable solution for us.
People can live without electricity, but it's difficult to live without water.
People can live without electricity, but it's difficult to live without water.
s:East/South/Southeast Asia:the United States:
It doesn't have to be this way, the engineering controls needed are well known. It requires the country in question to be financially committed to doing things right. For nuclear power this is already considered an essential prerequisite, yet coal power plants already release vastly more radioactivity and increase the cancer risk of everone around them. As far as reducing total cancer, nuclear is the way to go.
That doesn't imply we can't compare alternatives and say "This one will result in less harm than that one."
Tell me you're in a privileged western country without telling me.
Also, for other readers, Laos is a repressive "communist" dictatorship. It is no surprise that the gov't welcomed Belt & Road programme by China (with high interest loans!) to build a giant dam that enriched few at the expense of many. This is green washing at its very best.
The future of green energy is mostly about solar and wind. Yes, there are some places with easy-to-dam rivers remaining (sub-Saharan Africa), but they are few and far between.
It is still crazy to me that North Africa is not covered in solar panels that export to Europe. Same for Australia, South Africa, and many Gulf countries. Sunshine and wind is the "new oil" of the 21st Century. They can export to neighboring countries or produce green hydrogen.
The same exact story can be said about Iceland, which is very far from being a communist dictatorship (and it bears mentioning that Laos government is not repressive compared to many capitalist democratic governments; I don’t know where you would get that from except preconceived biases).
Iceland sells majority of its renewable energy to foreign aluminum companies. Along with fish it is the biggest export. The government is corrupt and constantly sells rights to build factories to bidders while neglecting environmental impacts. Whole towns are often run by a single Canadian aluminum company. And the green origin certificates is then sold to EU countries (just like indulgence was sold by the Catholic church), so “green” energy consumers are buying in Germany, are actually just coal power, where the energy company bought the origin certificates from Iceland.
See, you don’t need to be communist, nor a dictatorship, to do industrial scale greenwashing
Did you read the book <<Draumalandið — Sjálfshjálparbók handa hræddri þjóð>> or watch the documentary <<Draumalandið>>? Me: Neither, but I am interested. I only learned about this project recently.
The most shocking fact about the whole project (from Wiki):
The total affected area according to the environmental impact assessment, outlines that a total of 3,000 km2 or 741,316 acres were affected by the project's construction. That is approximately 3% of Iceland's total land mass.Completely destroyed, or just no longer enough to support wasteful methods of irrigation? It's been over a decade since I was in SE Asia, but my impression was that they relied heavily on flooding fields for irrigation.
I live full time in Indonesia, and their irrigation system is much more complex. I saw nothing of the sort in Laos, so perhaps that could be a factor too.
Solar gives lots of electricity in the summer. But you have light and warmth then. In the winter when you need the electricity, you get maybe 1/10 of whatever the solar array is capable of.
Wind is not generally viable, except in very windy locations.
Biogas (eg anaerobic digestors) seems much more possible - but even these need warmth to run well - so aren't as good in the winter.
And when you think that yes - you can pay several thousands for a battery to store your electricity (for a day or so), but that the battery will only last a few years - how people think the economics make sense is a mystery to me.
I'm fast coming to the conclusion that all renewable tech is about allowing the government to have deep control over your energy, and to put you in a situation where you are forced to buy very expensive gear from mega-corps.
PS - the battery thing also applies to cars. Old electric cars are basically not worth keeping after 10 years. Who would replace the old battery that costs as much as the car? Esp when the battery slots are incompatible with the latest advances - ie you can't upgrade to a better battery, but only install yesterday's tech.
Yes, but often too much of it, so lots of people use AC, which uses a LOT of power. Electricity is needed all the year.
"Wind is not generally viable, except in very windy locations."
And there is wind everywhere, but only if you build high enough. So yes, there are places where it makes no sense to build them, but there are a lot more other places, where it does.
"I'm fast coming to the conclusion that all renewable tech is about allowing the government to have deep control over your energy"
So a solar + battery powered off grid home is deep controlled by the government? May you explain how that works?
"And when you think that yes - you can pay several thousands for a battery to store your electricity (for a day or so),"
Have you looked up any actual numbers? Maybe do so. Also maybe that part, that tracks how the battery prices are changing. They are constantly getting cheaper.
Also maybe you are aware, that the whole industry that was and is fossil based needs to change. Your criticism comes from an angle, that assumes that should be for free?
Burning fossil fuels is cheap. But only if you ignore the external costs of climate change and air pollution.
The third phase of the energy transition will see massive overcapacity in the summer being turned into chemical energy, to be stored until winter. Hydrogen and synthetic methan will be burned, and the dissipating heat used for district heating. Efficiency is north of 70% for this. I don't see a fundamental problem.
We're not there yet. Currently, this setup is non-sensical since a lot of other measures should be implemented first, but even currently existing tech is pretty efficient, all things considered. And it only gets better from here.
That sounds like unfounded paranoia. It has literally never been easier to be an energy-independent anarchist living in a hut somewhere than today.
It's quite expensive to do now if you don't want a reasonably large shift in lifestyle in doing so.
But with multi-kw solar+battery kits selling everywhere for just a few $k, and 1000-lumen LED lights pulling only single-digit watts, it's getting affordable to have both
Edit: Tesla cars at 200k miles typically retain 80% of their total capacity. The 10 years you quote is the full warranty period. Additionally it costs about $10k to replace the batteries. House hold battery’s last about 20+ years, with 30+ possible without daily draw (quoted based on Tesla power wall specs).
I don’t know where you’re getting your battery facts from, but they’re essentially wrong. I suspect it’s not renewables that’s been captured but your biases.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g...
Sure 100% solar powered homes might be harder to do in the colder hemispheres but in many parts of the world it is already possible. During spring, summer and autumn you can cover most of your electricity with a 3kW solar panel set up. Shift your dishwasher, washing machine and dryer to mid day, charge devices when the sun shines etc. Families in poorer countries are likely on a much smaller carbon footprint and it is therefore easier to replace their energy needs with solar or solar thermal. Small, medium as well as large scale island grids are already possible and in operation. https://reneweconomy.com.au/wa-off-grid-school-runs-100-on-s...
For colder climates the solar alone will not cut it, insulated homes, heat pumps and solar can however.
As opposed to government-sanctioned utility companies and petrol companies? Its pretty easy to make your own solar panel (not an efficient one, but something). It is very capital intensive to mine for natural gas and crude these days. Surely the solar panel + battery offers more independence (as evidenced by the fact that nearly every large RV owner is thinking about getting solar now).
https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-po...
They generate something like 25% of greenhouse gases. When should be expect these to be replaced, and get the 25% drop in emissions?
Replacing over a billion ICE cars seems with EV’s is going to be so much more work, for example.
An immediate 25% drop in emissions might even buy us a few more years before we need to get to net zero emissions.
Instead we could replace ICE cars with no cars and get much more bang for our buck. A few changes to how we build so that you can walk/bike within 15 minutes for many daily needs would reduce energy consumption, save families money, still allow for a car, and everyone would be much happier and healthier.
Cars for all transit is a bad solution regardless of ICE or EV.
If we can’t replace a few thousand coal plants, we are unlikely to…
People wouldn’t even notice the difference if we replaced coal power plants.
For better or worse they’ll be forced out of their habits against their wishes because the economic physics just doesn’t work. Unless of course they are ready and willing to go to war and to exterminate populations for resources.
Ideally we avoid a lot of that by just building sidewalks and planning now, but to your point - can’t convince people. Who moved my cheese? Boomer central, etc.
It’s not a bad idea but let’s be realistic about the amount of work it would take
https://www.seia.org/solar-industry-research-data This article seems to suggest that the amount of installed solar has doubled in the last four years and that the pace is accelerating. Also it states that the solar market expanded by 40% last year.
Not disagreeing with your statement, just pointing out that there's many headwinds to a greener energy future.
And I can't imagine this being very popular with homeowners or the politicians that represent them, regardless of their political color. So, there might be some backlash against this as well at some point.
Tangentially, at scale, this is referred to as a utility death spiral.
https://eepower.com/news/71-of-u-s-utilities-see-the-utility...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-politics-electricit...
That said, batteries help.
Since in most areas, utilities are monopolies that are not subject to competition, they should not be allowed to deny cost-saving tech advances just because it lowers overall system cost and their overall percentage of revenue and profit goes down.
Balancing a grid that relies on a few production plants is already a non-trivial endeavour. Changing the network is usually a slow process. Adding a new power line to fix some topologic issues can take years to plan and millions to build. Having a robust grid means grid operators have to know details of the network, and be able to know how to reroute power when a line becomes too close to its limits or (worse) when a circuit-breaker opens. Studying the current network takes time.
That's why adapting to frequent changes isn't realistic, purely from the carrier's perspective, without even looking into power production aspects.
Edit
So typical here: Your comment is being downvoted. It still stands an important point to consider.
with the right pricing incentives, rooftop solar ought to decrease the amount of transmission capacity required rather than increasing it, by generating the required power closer to the point of use
The point is that unless a residence can independently provide for their own electricity every hour of the day, then the generation and distribution will be sized for full load.
a residence that can provide some of its own power during peak hours does not need distribution, transmission, or (utility-scale) generation sized for full load; a neighborhood that can provide some of its own power during peak hours does not need transmission or (utility-scale) generation sized for full load, just distribution. this is a much less onerous requirement than the one you erroneously believe to be necessary
it's true that there's probably a load right at the rated load which will gradually cook the transformer over the course of 10 years or so, but that's a pretty narrow window
that's the kind of capacity that needs to be expanded
This may change in the future, but until some politician cares enough and passes the cost on to the taxpayer, there's going to be friction for these changes.
This sounds like a pretty good reason for utilities to be a public affair.
Going with Longi bifacial panels - does the US restrict or add huge duties on Chinese panels?
There was a recent experiment[0] where a company is going to start putting panels directly on the ground without any mounting hardware.
solarserver's photovoltaik preisindex makes it seem like that's about 10 percent pv modules and the rest is either retail markup (or tariffs) or balance of system; is that true?
Time of use billing. The battery is generating ROI if it can arbitrage energy over the day.
Net metering + solar. If net metering is not available, or sufficiently discounted, and your energy usage is not high enough during the day to use all your solar power, then batteries generate ROI.
Grid stability. A battery effectively is insurance against outages of a few hours. With sufficient solar and rationing, that may extend to week long outages (think natural disasters).
Do you have a source for that? It sounds kinda silly. The maintenance + OH&S aspects of solar panels are nontrivial and it doesn't make sense to mandate them on residential homes.
I've always assumed that once the economics make sense it'll be easier to build a massive solar farm and let people use the grid as usual. Much less risk of people falling off roofs,heavy objects falling off roofs, wiring being misconnected, weird maintenance problems, managing the ebb and flow of energy, etc. I don't want to have to look after my own panels.
Technically, there's also distribution losses (just because we can do HVDC, 5% losses per 1000km, doesn't mean we want to spend the money for it); but I think it's mainly to avoid politicians decrying prime farmland being used for a thing they don't think looks as pretty as sheep grazing on grassy rolling hills.
But it depends on the country. Some countries have a whole lot of "low use" fields, like natural or industrial deserts. Others don't.
Also, the interconnection queues for attaching your project to the grid are getting astronomically long now, and this is one of the biggest impediments to new renewable generation. One of the most valuable assets of a coal generation sites is its connection to the grid; all the rest of facility might have negative value, but the value of the connection can offset all that.
Utility scale solar is great, until you consider how to connect it up to load.
Are you working in an area with a low consumer density?
> Also, the interconnection queues for attaching your project to the grid are getting astronomically long now, and this is one of the biggest impediments to new renewable generation.
Yeah, that's unsurprising. Power Grids are not something that adapts fast to topological change.
With behind-the-meter solar, this peak is capped, and if the local solar is allowed to power the rest of the distribution nod with net metering, then that means less transmission too.
T&D must be sized for the peak, so lots of residential solar means a lower peak and lower T&D costs.
Of course, this goes agains the utility narrative, because they can't admit that or else their regulators might have to allow such residential net metering. Instead, utilities try to frame the argument that solar customers are taking away from their neighbors or somehow not paying their fair share.
But when evaluated as a whole system, using massive distributed solar along with utility scale is far cheaper than building it all utility scale due to the T&D savings.
I see many advantages, among them:
- You don't have to find new land; roofs are ideal for solar.
- No need for a huge project, financing, bureaucracy. Done in weeks.
- Costs are low and spread over tons of landowners instead of requiring fundraising and negotiations
- You can have literally thousands of workers busy creating solar power at the same time.
- You get geographic spread and will be less affected by clouds over your central solar plant.
- No single point of failure
- Less need for large and expensive long-distance powerlines
Rooftop solar puts the power to solve a problem in the hands of the people experiencing the problem and eliminates the need for a megaproject. This has turned out to be really powerful, rooftop solar has grown extremely quickly.
If the panels are in a field somewhere, an energy company gets the money.
If the panels are on my roof, I get the money.
By all means, it should be much cheaper to make large solar farm on some suitable place and buy the electricity from there. The fact that it isn't can't be explained by technical factors.
this is especially important in backwards countries like the usa with their so-called license raj preventing modernization
since most household energy is used for low-grade heating and cooling (refrigerator, air conditioner, oven, clothes dryer) i think thermal energy storage is likely to be a crucial enabling factor; mit's solar house used phase-change materials, but i suspect thermochemical energy storage is a better option
(why thermal energy storage instead of batteries? in the limit it's about three orders of magnitude higher capacity for a given price)
Too late to worry about electricity in that case!
I can understand why you might think that. But there is one place on the planet that's done the renewable transition now. And it proves you wrong.
Let me introduce the state of South Australia. It's an advanced OECD economy, situated at the base end of Australia so far from anywhere it has only 1 transmission line connecting to a neighbouring state, and it's renowned for going down. Unusually for Australia, South Australia also has no coal or gas, and is famous for wild storms taking down kilometres of it's 100kv power lines.
It's currently running at 80% renewables:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-hits-stunning-ne...
No, the power does no go off at night.
The transition was expensive. SA already had the most expensive electricity in Australia, and during the transition prices did go up for years. But at 80% the transition is almost over (although they need to build more storage), and the price of electricity in SA has been dropping. In fact it's dropped below the pre-transition price, so it's often below the rest of Australia's coal fired generation:
https://www.aemc.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-11/sa_fact_...
With that example to follow, the rest of the Australian states are gritting their teeth and following South Australia's lead. Teeth gritting is required because we are predicting a 50% jump in electricity prices, during the transition. It's already starting to bite: https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/power-bills-to-rise-by-... . But that price hike only lasted 5 years in SA, and the light at the end of the tunnel is lower prices than we have now.
Outside of bitcoin mining, is there any energy sink a residential user could engage to suck up the spare capacity? At the industrial scale - what processes can intermittently engage in production which is still cost effective if the equipment lays idle for a majority of the day?
Fuel synthesis? Desalination? SETI-like computations?
However, renewables like solar and wind come with unique challenges due to their intermittent nature. They are more variable, harder to forecast, have location constraints, and can benefit from battery storage. These factors lead to a more dynamic grid than before.
For instance, several regions in the country provide five-minute updates on their energy generation mix, enabling near real-time observations of renewable energy effects throughout the day
For example, numerous regions across the country provide updates on their energy generation mix at five-minute intervals, allowing for close to real time observations of these effect of renewables throughout the day.
To help those involved in the energy transition, I created an open-source project called Grid Status (https://github.com/kmax12/gridstatus) that provides fuel mix, wholesale pricing, load, load forecasts, and more.
Additionally, I've developed real-time visualizations to make this data more accessible and easier to comprehend: https://www.gridstatus.io
I hope making this data more accessible and understandable will accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.
We need power. Not energy.
Let me explain. There is no such thing as a useful measure of energy reliability. Energy is the accumulation of power over time. Here's a super simplistic example to illustrate the point:
You spend all day walking through the desert. Your water bottle is empty. You drank it all. You really need water, yet there's none to be found. You nearly die a few times, yet manage to make it out to a settlement by nightfall.
Someone there fills your bottle with water.
A reporter says your bottle, over that 24 hour period, was full.
That's the way you compute energy. You can have zero power for 12 hours and then have some for another 12. Energy just adds-up all the bits of power you had over 24 hours and reports it as one number.
Energy comparisons are useless.
Here's reality:
Solar is, nominally, about 50% reliable (if this term isn't comfortable, think "available").
No?
It turns off at night.
Roughly 50% of the time...it does not work.
Wind, on the other hand, does not suffer from this issue. It is much more reliable.
With the addition of a nominal amount of storage wind can easily get up to 95% reliability. Solar, with the same amount of storage, runs about 70% reliability.
This is about power delivery. Consistent. Water bottle in the desert, to use when you need water.
Ignoring all other factors (environmental, wildlife, NIMBY, noise, etc.), wind is a far better technology than solar.
Yet, again, to pull this back into the realm of what we should discussing: We need to talk about power, not energy. When you go to charge your electric car at the same time a million other people want to do the same thing, you need power.
Wind is stronger in the winter and solar is strong in the summer. The best consistency is achieved when both are used, not one or the other.
> The best consistency is achieved when both are used, not one or the other.
No. Wind with approximately three hours of storage is about 95% reliable.
Once again, it's about power, not energy.
That isn't enough, unless you are happy with 18 days of no power per year. Of course you could maintain traditional power plans to provide power for those 18 days, but then you've doubled or tripled your power costs because you have purchased two systems for providing power. An intermittent system and a second system with the same capacity that is unused 95% of the time but must be available at a moments notice. And of course you have to maintain a viable supply chain for fuel, repairs, maintenance, labor, etc.
> you have purchased two systems for providing power.
Precisely! Correct!
Therein lies the problem of renewables few people seem to understand, talk about and want to talk about. Solar and wind require 100% backup for the period of time during which they are not locally available.
BTW, a good deal of what I have been saying is supported with data from this paper [0]. It analyzes 39 years of data from 42 different countries. It does a good job of displaying the difficult relationships between various mixes and solar, wind and storage. Figure 2 is excellent. It takes a bit of study to internalize. After studying these charts almost everyone should have serious questions about solar. This is where the 95% figure for wind comes from.
And, BTW, figure 2 also shows that without overbuilding capacity both technologies are challenging.
There are ways to look at using distant solar and wind to provide for power holes. For example, have wind power brought in from 500 to 1000 miles away. The idea is you know there's a seriously good probability for the weather being different enough that you cover the power holes at location A using power from location B.
That's great. The question then becomes: How do residents of location B deal with their issues when you are sucking-up their power from location A.
No simple answers to this other than to say that both solar and wind have to be overbuilt and require 100% backup --of some form, I don't care what type-- for when they cannot deliver.
And so your question is perfectly valid and one that really needs to be on the table, front and center. I have asked it before. It is usually met with attacks and insults. It can take many forms, the most basic being:
If you need full 100% reliable backup available at a moments' notice, 24/7/365, are these truly the best technologies for the job?
I have argued that nuclear is a solid solution with 100% availability and the power density to deliver our needs. That is met with even more violent attacks and insults. Apparently I am somewhere between a really stupid person and a criminal for suggesting any of this.
Having devoted a significant effort towards understanding the many intricacies surrounding these issues, my thinking has morphed over time. I used to think we had to consider deploying a massive amount of nuclear power (somewhere beyond 1000 new power plants) for a full transition to electric vehicles and homes. That, of course, is as close to impossible as one can get.
I think a sensible path might be to focus on the 95% reliability of wind (which is far better than anything solar can achieve) and provide that 5% backup with regionally shared nuclear power and other power sources. We would still need hundreds of nuclear power plants built over the next, say, 30 to 50 years. Difficult, yes.
Here's the shocking reality of a transition to full electrification (homes and transportation):
We have to, at a minimum, TRIPLE our power generation and transport capacity.
Why triple?
Well, if we are going to go clean, you have to replace all of our existing power generation with 100% reliable clean alternatives.
That means we need to build 1200 GW of new clean power generation.
As we do this, we shut down what we don't want (if we can).
Next, we need another 1200 GW --at a minimum-- to power a full fleet of electric ground vehicles.
If we start talking cargo ships and aircraft, we are likely at another 1000 GW or far more.
The task, then, is to build somewhere around 3000 to 4000 GW of new clean power generation sources. They have to be 100% reliable, or you need to grossly overbuild to compensate for that.
The, question, then: Can we do this? In 25 years? No way. How about 50 years? Maybe? Tough to say. It sure a hell isn't happening in ten or fifteen, which makes the dramatic claims being made by politicians and their supporters nothing less than ridiculous.
EVs just charge whenever. Very few people use them like ICEs with regard to fuelling. The only thing needed to make them fit easily in the existing max output envelope is L1 chargers where they spend the day and TOU aware charging (and tarriffs). Most of the energy for charging them will never even hit the grid. And what little does will be mostly during the times of minimum usage. Fast chargers will have battery buffers anyway because no sane operator will want to pay the peak capacity rates for drawing 30MW during peak demand when their competitor next door can outcompete them by 50c/kWh by using a buffer.
You have the right order of magnitude of 3TW nameplate (you're quoting nameplate for the existing capacity which is absolutely not the same thing as CF weighted power, but you know this and you're trying to intentionally conflate the two) for solar + wind and about 3TW peak including storage and energy-limited dispatch lime hydro and w2e, but you really went off the rails with the rest. You also know that a mix of wind and solar has a higher uptime than either alone.
Maybe you should consider for half a second that the real engineers who actually think about this might have come to a different conclusion to your half-assed fermi estimate for good reasons?
You continue to chase me around HN to insult me any time I participate in a discussion about energy.
In the past I have asked @dang to let you carry on with these insults so you could show the world exactly who you are. My reasoning included such things as letting you "get it out of your system".
You have done enough of that.
This is now abusive.
Please.
Stop.
Including hydro in the renewables column made the math work. Makes it seem like we've made more progress than perhaps we have. Hydro and wind are the biggest chunks in their pie chart. And much of hydro is decades, if not centuries old infrastructure.
But still! Lots of progress.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48896
The fraction of energy that comes from low carbon sources is what matters.
in some sense that's 'low carbon'
√(kilowatt hour / 480 g) = 2700 m/s
√(kilowatt hour / 800 g) = 2100 m/s
480 g is 60% of 800 g so i guess my vaguely remembered percentage was about right
wrt co₂ reduction i think carbon capture is probably going to be necessary
Again, 480 is not all-inclusive. If you look at the whole system, gas is no better than coal, due to wellhead and pipeline leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/img/lifecycle-carbon-emissions-nol...
a kilowatt hour per 800 g works out to 4.5 megajoules per kilogram, which makes it easy to see that we're in the right ballpark (the energy density of coal itself is less than an order of magnitude higher) and that we're talking about delivered work rather than just thermal power
this nonsense about topical units is the reason that medieval merchants would measure certain kinds of cloth in flemish ells of 27 inches and other kinds of cloth in english ells of 45 inches; silver was weighed in troy ounces of 480 grains, drugs were weighed in apothecaries' drams of 60 grains (or apothecaries' ounces, which were the same as troy ounces), and foods were weighed in drams of about 27.3 drams, or avoirdupois ounces of 437½ grains
kilowatt hours and grams per kilowatt hour are the modern equivalent of apothecaries' drams
It doesn't in a sense that meaningfully addresses the challenges we're facing, though.
40% for electricity means a much lower reduction overall, especially if it informs the efforts we're willing to make.
however, methane does work as a transport fuel as well, at least for land transport
not sure what you mean by 'leaves no room for sectors where there are fewer opportunities'
Just discovering this? Yeah, this has not been well planned.
and for how it compares to coal, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal-fired_power_stati...
you have like 60-65% coal fired in the States.
40% of the corn produced in US is used for ethanol which is a energy intensive process which uses fossil fuels.
Now, make it a 24/7 steady supply of renewable energy.
We’ll wait.
You can stop waiting now. https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-hits-stunning-ne...
OECD ecomony, averaging 80% renewables (wind, solar primarily). The other 20% is gas. They have enough generation now. To rid of that 20% (I'm not sure the economics makes sense) they need to build pumped storage.
Oh, and now they've made the transition, electricity prices are cheaper than non-renewable generation of 5 years ago.
I think we've been in this artificially low fossil fuel price environment since the beginning though: the externalities aren't priced in.
The thing is, abundant cheap energy will make it less and less worth doing.
One way or another, it will definitely be stopped. At some point, civilization collapse would end the burning of fossil fuels at scale. The question is at what point it will stop and whether any tipping points are passed which accelerate the process out of control.
It's far from obvious that all efforts to limit carbon emissions will fail and to say otherwise is deeply cynical. Measures are being taken already. They are not enough to reach the claimed goals and the claimed goals will probably not be reached, but that's very different from saying warming will not be stopped at all, let alone "of course". More measures will follow once the adverse effects get worse in industrialized countries (e.g. deaths and economic damage due to changing climate and weather events).
I won't happen by magic. Even with their ever increasing scarcity, as long as no alternative exists, they will be economical.
If all the fossil fuel is burned, we will probably never reach that point ; society breakdown will happen sooner.
If it's about having the understanding and technical means to define new targets for our economy in order to reach that goal, even if it means reducing our consumption, then yes, it was a reasonable goal back when we started considering the issue seriously.
See, that's the difference between an organized society planning this change and just letting it happen.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-21/germany-b...
"Utility Steag GmbH will add four hard-coal plants with a capacity of 2.5 gigawatts to the market within the next few weeks, while Uniper SE will prolong operations at its 345-megawatt Scholven-C hard-coal-fired power plant, the companies said on Friday. "
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/27/1124448463/germany-coal-energ...
https://www.ft.com/content/9d3c8af8-ae00-4dc5-9e85-579681450...
"Germany turns to coal for a third of its electricity"
Because my german colleagues were ranting about this whenever there was a break/issue in "Teams meetings". (which happens often)
Why do I care ? Because people are apparently not looking at reality when they make grandiose claims about renewables and electricity generation in Europe. Replace by renewables by all means - but at-least be honest about the data.
How does that make sense to you?
How does that make sense to you ?
Well, I hadn't heard that. That's interesting.
It makes sense to me because they were all clearly dependent on Russian gas, which is what caused the price spike in electricity across Europe. It still doesn't make sense to me that you think it's something to do with renewables.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-...
Turns out, nuclear is not the end all, be all solution. Who knew?
I don’t know why HN has such a rage boner for Germany’s energy transition, it doesn’t seem that triggered by any other country.
Not that the Germany is better than France. My point is that it s true that people who have a rage boner about Germany are not fair: if they really care about f* up, why they don't care about France?
I don't buy this idea that the German transition was an ideology driven f* up. The project was designed and supported by a lot of experts. They published their results, with their computations and all, and no real flaw was discovered. Sure, there were some pro-nuclear partisans who, like the anti-nuclear ones, would never accept that such studies were scientifically sound just because it did not say what they ideologically wanted to hear.
At the time, the project was scientifically sound. It did not work out because 1) the government did half of the things the project said it should do, 2) as every long-term project, it had some uncertainties, and it turned out some elements did not "aligned". An alternative project of keeping with nuclear generation was also scientifically sound, but it is not scientifically correct to pretend that this one was "better", or "more rational", or even "less ideological". People who come here and say "it was an ideological f* up" are just people who see it did not worked out and are not smart enough to not think "obviously, if it would have be me, I would have done it way better, the only reason it failed is because they suck and are irrational while I'm wayyyy smarter than everyone and soooo rational".
If I look at https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE and see patterns like 50 GW at 3 am and 60 GW at 1 pm I wonder: how can you ensure providing the base output 24/7 entirely with renewables? I have seen facilities within industrial complexes that literally required more electricity than a whole city 24/7. The demand of electricity that needs to be provided 24/7 is enormous.
There is in addition a huge challenge to manage loads in a grid (that was never designed for it) for regional variance and unpredictability in energy production (e.g., sunshine in the north and wind in the north but no need there) and the consumption (e.g., industry in the south).
In classical “German ideology” fashion laws are passed, one-way door decisions are made, “experts testify” that everything works and 10 years later the thing blows up.
And it’s not just me who “brilliantly came up with this assessment” - but I borrowed it from publicly shared opinions of industry leaders: https://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/industrie/nikolas...
So, why does it work out and I have it all wrong? What were the evil forces that sabotaged this very well thought through idea? Because I went all PV and geothermal heat pump and energy efficient housing. What have you done?
- the electricity grid _before the move to go out of the nuclear_ was not sustainable: reducing emission implied electrifying, which implies local flexibility that the grid at the time was simply not able to provide. The "old" nuclear plants had to disappear in the mid-/long-term, and because of that, there were several possibilities. Idiots are assuming that if Germany would not have got out of nuclear, the situation would be perfect today, which is just plain stupid (the situation would be closer to the French one: everything looking fine on the surface, but heading right for the wall).
- the "no wind night" challenge is technically as "easy" as the technical challenge of developing a grid with nuclear plant. It's difficult to understand for the laymen, but the "old" nuclear plants were technically not to the level for a grid without gas and coal, and need to be replaced by new ones which will need to solve a lot of problems that are similar to the "no wind night" challenge. In simulation, it turns out that large distance grid connectivity (which is better for the resilience anyway) and some storage (which was at the time (and still today) way more room to progress than some nuclear technology) are fixing the "no wind night" challenge quite effectively. It may seem surprising, but in science, the conclusions of computations are way more reliable than the gut-feeling of laymen.
I understand it is frustrating to see that your naive understanding is contradicted by conclusions from proper studies, and it is very easy to just conclude "I'm smarter, I know it will not work, the only explanation is that it was ideology".
(not sure I get your point when you bring Nikolas Stihl: isn't this guy as much as an expert on grid simulation than you? Being an industry leader does not magically give them a pass on doing exactly the same mistake as you, which is: drawing naive conclusions from naive understandings and concluding that if experts have a different ones, the only explanation is that they are "ideological")
> What were the evil forces that sabotaged this very well thought through idea?
There are tons of ways to fail. Seeing something not working perfectly and concluding that the project itself was therefore stupid is just incorrect. And we should also keep in mind that the risk of failures was, at the time, according to science, as big if they would have gone in the "nuclear direction". Sometimes you may take the most rational decisions and it still does not work out.
> What have you done?
I really hope this is not one of those stupid argumentation panic "oh yeah? oh yeah? well, you seem to know better than me and have pointed out the stupid things I say, but how many push-ups are you able to do?" (but don't worry, I've done _a lot_).
“ In simulation, it turns out that large distance grid connectivity (which is better for the resilience anyway) and some storage (which was at the time (and still today) way more room to progress than some nuclear technology) are fixing the "no wind night" challenge quite effectively.”
Not in reality it seems though. I take a look at April 3, 7 am: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE Solar was zero. Wind dropped to 20% coal was increased to 30%. April 2nd at 3 pm, wind stood at 37% and coal stood at 13%. So, where after two decades of “going renewable” is this even remotely speaking yo your ideological dream world? Let me reiterate: wind dropped by 50% and they had to increase coal by 100%. At night.
I want renewables to work. I put my money where my mouth is. But after two decades or so of “trying” we are only showing data demonstrating they can’t work for Germany the way people like you want us to believe.”
I'm not sure I understand your question. You are saying "the problem is that it did not work because it was ideological". I'm saying "it is incorrect, the plan was not an irrational crazy thing out of ideology, it was a scientific study and the choice was as rational as other possibilities". Then you are now telling me "well, the plan does not work, so it can only be ideological, unless you provide a plan that will work for sure". That does not make any sense. Nobody can come with a plan that works for sure. Saying "you don't have a plan that works for sure, so I can say whatever I want and I'm right" is certainly not a rational way of thinking.
> Not in reality it seems though.
What? You are saying that in a grid that the German government has botched, there is no capacity for compensate for "no wind night". How does that prove that the "no wind night" is an impossible obstacle?
Again, it is MATH! Math proves it is possible. The fact that the German government did not put their money where their mouth was is obviously not proving that not possible.
And don't get me wrong, it works both way: France messed up their nuclear park. It DOES NOT MEAN NUCLEAR CANNOT WORK. Based on our conversation so far, I doubt that if someone bring France summer problems to demonstrate that nuclear does not work, you will not, legitimately, say that it's a stupid argument. That's the same here.
And as long as there are idiots that are unable to discuss the situation by accepting the complexity and by accepting that, maybe, just maybe, decisions that don't fit their naive conclusions are not the result of "bad ideological guys", then, we will never progress.
> ... your ideological dream world ... people like you ...
I see. And you are criticizing the German government for being ideological. For your information, I was part of a team that helped creating new nuclear project. But you are yet one of those m*rons who are incapable of not seeing the world in black or white. You criticize the German government, and yet, you fall 1000 times faster into the "oh my, this guy is bringing reality that I don't like, so I should convince myself that my church is the great rationality on earth and that he is an heretic". Pathetic.
Well, today it doesn’t and tomorrow it won’t either.
I’ve seen my fair share of “objective projects/engagements where the wanted outcome was communicated very clearly” by German government bodies.
I love the idea of decentralised and local energy generation; energy efficient housing/living. I spent $$$ on it.
But Germany has an industry that is so hungry for a constant supply of electricity that I see no realistic viable path in renewables for that. People like you have claimed for two decades there is - yet, here we are: running coal full steam at night.
Idealists like you destroy our planet.
It is not the case. The model say: if you do A, B and C, it will work, but if you do A but not B and C, it will fail. The German government has done A but not B and C. What happened with Germany is CONFIRMING that the model works. Other elements of the models are applied in other countries, such as France or England (not the full deployment, but the elements deployed behave exactly as the model predict).
> People like you have claimed for two decades there is - yet, here we are: running coal full steam at night.
Yep, running coal full steam in France when the nuclear power plants fail. So, according to you, nuclear is not working, renewable is not working, ... What's your plan? Whatever you give me, I can easily find places where it failed, which, according to you, is enough to claim that the whole strategy was "ideological".
The thing you are unable to understand is that failure is part of the reality: there is no obviously winning strategy, and rejecting a whole path based on failures that you are not even understanding is ridiculously obtuse.
> Idealists like you destroy our planet.
You are right: idealists LIKE YOU destroy our planet. I'm a pragmatic, I don't care if the solution is nuclear or renewable (but apparently you are totally unable to realize that, which just reinforce the conclusion that your analysis is disconnected from reality). But you are an ideologist: you have decided what is the "correct" solution without knowing the real situation, and you invented excuses to confirm what you have in your head is "the good thing".
But whatever, it does not change the facts: you may think the move was "ideological", but the facts are still there: it was not. You may insist and cry about it, it is very clear that you have no idea of what was the situation (you've even mentioned it yourself). Honestly, if you really want to help the planet, just stop saying useless things and accusing wrongly people of being "ideological" just because it does not fit with the naive model you have created from your superficial understanding of the situation.
France generated less than 1% of electricity with coal in 2022: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1263322/electrical-produ...
While in Germany it was over 30%: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
There is a qualitative difference between an occassional need for some coal in particularly adverse situations, and relying on it for almost a third of your electricity needs.
Driven by an ideological agenda of Ms Merkel and the green party, they shut down nuclear power plants (needed to cover our base load in chemical/manufacturing/whatnot) and replaced it with gas from Russia (don’t ask me why). Now that Russian gas isn’t exactly on the table anymore and we not only depend on Russian gas for heating but also a great deal for electricity (nuclear was shut down, remember) we have no choice but ramp up to coal thanks to the Green party.
The fact that Germany’s “greenest” (carbon emissions-wise) day was still worst than France’s most polluting day speaks volumes.
Wind power and solar DO NOT suffice to cover Germany’s electricity need unless you go full-scale deindustrialisation (which the Green party certainly would favor). I’m all in for PV on everyone’s roofs, I have geothermal heating for my house, I built everything low energy - but please lets stop the ideological destruction of our economy and our environment by the Green party’s “vision”.
You have been misinformed. They shut down nuclear to replace it with renewables. They already used Russian gas at the time.
2. this is the hard part, but there is good news.
solar and wind over large areas are fairly consistent and with HVDC you can transfer power 1-2 thousand miles with low losses. there's also a small but rapidly growing amount of storage on the grid. right now, we treat hydro as primarily generation with a side benefit of storage, but it's shifting to primary storage with a side benefit of generation. doing so gives most grids a decent ability to scale up and down renewable generation at will. lastly, you can use fossil fuels when everything else isn't giving you enough. a fossil fuel plant that runs a couple times a year for a few hours is a lot better than 40% of the grid being fossil fuel year round.
there's also a decent amount you can do in terms of demand shaping as the grid gets smarter. electric hot water tanks can be used as batteries where you set them up to turn on when there's excess power. you can also do things like make agreements with energy hungry sectors (like ore refining) to throttle output when necessary (compensating them for the lost revenue).
3. this is easy. refill batteries, smelt aluminum, turn off generation.
If I eyeball the electricity consumption correctly, the lowest consumption was like 50 GW at 3 am in the morning and the highest was 60GW (+20%) at 1pm.
Our freakin grid is NOT capable of managing an additional load for EVs as of today or any time soon. We cannot produce enough electricity to move gasoline driven cars to EV because we right now barely manage to keep or industry alive and geothermal heatpumps and whatnot will strain it further. So regarding 1) its BULLSH*T its a massive problem.
2) Where do you live that you believe Germany can store electricity in hydro? Why do you believe there is demand shaping when we literally need a constantly high load (see 1)???
3) Yes, I understand. Easy peasy. If i get a battery for my solar panels, the investment costs are effectively above 30cents/kWh which is bogus. Yes, you can just turn off that aluminium smelter or chemical plant running a continuous process.
You clearly have never been close to an industry complex, worked in anything remotely related to “Germany’s industrial backbone”. It’s ideological wishful thinking.
If this choice was actually made to please the greens, as the theory goes, that would have been a first for Germany, a country built on its close ties between industry and government. Not to mention that the greens aren't usually fond of burning fossil fuel.
Occam's razor should suffice to understand the political process that went down here.
putin took advantage of this, europe put their neck in the guillotine for him
"Germany is deploying about 3 gigawatts of coal-fired generation to ensure there are enough electricity supplies to make it through the winter amid curtailed natural gas supplies from Russia."
This was done out of necessity to ensure Germany did not run out of natural gas during the winter months as the gas imports from Russia have more or less dried up. I am not German nor am I up to date on their measures to transitioning their grid to renewable energy, but if anything this war is accelerating the transition for many countries in Europe. Even if this means they have to temporarily re-open fossile fuel power plants.
This could possibly have been avoided had the German government not shut its nuclear power plants down in the previous years, but that's another discussion.
(But keep it hush-hush and lets not talk about this dirty fact on HN - it looks bad you know ?)
All of this while they already have a viable green solution: Nuclear, which they planned on completely shutting down by 2022.
Northstream 2 was planned under Merkel.
> Merkel decided in a completely irrational overnight move to just phase out nuclear.
No, it was an almost unanimous vote where even the opposition agreed with the government[0]. Nothing irrational about it, they decided to go for renewable instead of nuclear.
- 0: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/30/germany-end-nu...
The opposition agreeing - you mean like the Green party who wanted to end nuclear like forever? Merkel had essentially absolute power in Germany and was leading some major changes that are hard to believe now… 1) shut down nuclear, 2) abolish compulsory military service, 3) open the borders for an uncontrolled influx of male refugees, 4) completely ignore Corona at first and then bulldoze over our Basic Law.
No, I mean pretty much everyone: 513 yes to 79 no.
> abolish compulsory military service
hard to believe? I guess we agree to disagree.
A military coup is one of the largest risks to any society. The “best” people to serve the military are the young people that stand to lose their country and have a million things that they get excited about - except going to war and fighting.
A society itself needs to protect itself.
Also you don't need weapons and war to resist. It's much more effective to perform civil disobedience on a mass scale. Paralize the country and refuse to obey. Gandhi docet.
It's also what Ukraine should do instead of sacrificing entire generations of their men and women to protect some hundred square miles of land, destroying any value those lands might have in the process.
They're not protecting their land, they're protecting themselves. If a significant portion gets shot either way it's better to at least be able to shoot back, no?
Wars tend to allow for this kind of tragedy to happen. Much harder to slaughter people during a civilian disobedience act that is globally covered by media. Brutal repression of demonstrations also causes much more outrage, basically backfiring if your intent is to stop them. Any dictator worth a shot knows this very well.
> If a significant portion gets shot either way it's better to at least be able to shoot back, no?
False dychotomy. People who protest the war in Russia are being arrested, not shot in the streets. So why do you think that would happen in this case? Because "Russians are Orcs"?
People who protest the war in Russia get arrested not shot because that's all it takes to suppress them. This is an argument against your point, not for it. Nor does it mean that Russia wouldn't apply harder measures elsewhere, if they thought it necessary.
Russians aren't referred to as orcs, only their soldiers.
> People who protest the war in Russia get arrested not shot because that's all it takes to suppress them
But if as you believe Ukrainians care so much then they would definitely not give up after a few being jailed.
> Nor does it mean that Russia wouldn't apply harder measures elsewhere, if they thought it necessary.
Harder than bombing cities and destroying the infrastructure? Strongly doubt so. Doesnt seem like your way worked well for the Ukrainians so far. Unless all you care about is making Russia weaker, no matter how many Ukrainians it take.
Russian gas to Germany is being replaced by gas from USA. And liquefying gas for boat shipping is not a cheap/green process.
https://apnews.com/article/germany-government-olaf-scholz-bu...
I still shudder at the perspective of a looming croissant shortage.
Thank God the reliable renewables delivered.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr... [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/frances-nuclear-watc... [3] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-tops-france-e...
1) the shortages stem from the failure of France's nuclear power to deliver
2) the high prices were partly because of shortages, and the wholesale prices were the highest in France all year
I am too lazy to post prices for lst year, but they can be easily verified - besides you are not really interested in facts you don't like. Another thing that can be verified is that those coal plants that were put on emergency stand by had a very very low capacity factor and all the coal that was stockpiled early in the year was basically left unused. Because for all the talk of base load and reliability, when push came to shove, renewables kept the lights on.
The high prices are not so bad overall, there is and was a big incentive to build more capacity fast. Next years will be transformative, and it will all be led by renewables.
renewables do not have this kind of obvious benefit, fossil fuels and fission are the best options until we can get fusion
either way it ends up getting offset by coal
Until we find a reasonable way to store energy at grid scale, a continued shift to intermittent energy generation will result in dramatically higher prices and dramatically lower reliability.
Renewables generates 5 times less than coal annually and still peak for a short period of time, so this is not a big progress. Wind turbines can have big energy peaks when it's very windy, but there is no cheap way to store that energy for a long period of time, WHICH IS WHY NUCLEAR IS THE GREENEST BASELOAD ELECTRICITY.
And solar also requires a lot of copper and steel, which makes it carbon cycle much worse than nuclear.
the article is speaking about average power, not peak power. how do you and the article present such different figures?
My friend, let me introduce you to the wonderful world of "not reading the article".
It's getting close to the point that wind+storage can compete with nuclear, and even gas, on price. With the way cost has been developing on renewables and energy storage sulitons it's more or less inevitable. You're also starting to see off-shore wind, even floating off-shore, come rapidly down in cost, and those have more stable generation and require less energy storage.
The problem of storage is also exaggerated by people who haven't looked at the big picture. We need to replace oil/gas in lots of areas where you need to store and transform energy anyway. Like cars. Think about it.. if you buy an EV you'll generally have enough storage there to power your house for 1-3 days. In a world where all cars are BEVs we'll be well within an order of magnititude of having the manufacturing capacity to have energy storage for all homes. You can even feed electricity from BEVs back into the grid, and I already have my BEV set to only charge in the hours where electricity is cheapest right now. We're also starting to see people use smart controllers to exploit the storage capacity in hot water tanks.
Green metal production will also be a huge source of flexible load. Somewhat related to that, there's even molten metal batteries that can provide extremely cheap grid storage.
> WHICH IS WHY NUCLEAR IS THE GREENEST BASELOAD ELECTRICITY.
If you need to shout I'm just led to expect you don't have much meat behind your opinion. Anyway, the problem is just this: what we really need isn't baseload.
You can't solve the worlds energy crisis without lots and lots of renewables. Going all nuclear would be too expensive, too slow, and would probably generate enough heat to slow recovery after climate change. Thermal power plants in general have a whole range of issue that makes it a bad idea to go all-in on it.
Nuclear can certainly supplement with a bit of baseload capacity. But what we need is load following and peaker plants. We need a replacement to gas power plants. Because those are what works well when combining with renewables. And without lots of renewables we have zero hope of combatting climate change.
> And solar also requires a lot of copper and steel, which makes it carbon cycle much worse than nuclear.
At least copper and steel is easily recycled, with low carbon impact. Nuclear power plants use a lot of concrete and the sustainability of that is far more uncertain.
SSAB and LKAB has experimented with green steel since ~2017. [0]
[0] https://www.ssab.com/sv-se/ssab-koncern/hallbarhet/fossilfri...
Who knows maybe once renewable market penetration is nearly maxed out and if storage tech somehow hasn't caught up enough despite the great strides being made, the economics won't be so terrible for the GREENEST BASELOAD.
Who
Solar and wind power sources requires an absurd amount of metal (sometimes rare metals) to build the generators (solar panels, wind turbines, etc). This metal is extracted today with an enourmous consumption of fossil fuels, and it will be difficult to have a greener alternative for this extraction (anything running on batteries will require even MORE metal).
The prices per Mwh of renewable energy sources are heavily linked to the prices of fossil fuels, which are quite "low" compared to what will probably happen in the next decades. Moreover, most metals are getting harder and harder to extract (it's likely that we met the peak of copper extraction already), which means that we'll have to dig deeper and deeper to get metal.
I'm not saying we should not invest in renewables, but it will be probably be 10x to 50x more expensive to maintain a renewable parc of solar panels or wind turbines without relying on fossil fuels at all, which will cause the prices per mwh to explode.
Countries that try to go 100% renewable without a healthy dose of nuclear energy will probably end up either burning fossil fuels or buying raw materials from countries that does, at a very heavy price.
please look at this, I'm tired of having to remind people that nuclear is the best on ALL fronts except cost
it's very difficult to predict future technological developments, especially as to pricing, but getting nuclear power down to the price of pv would require dramatic reductions in the cost of heat engines; the nuclear island is only a part of the cost of a nuclear power plant, and the rest of the plant is by itself enough to make the plant economically uncompetitive
solar panels, as i understand it, contain minuscule quantities of metal; they're mostly silicon and glass, with much smaller amounts of boron, phosphorus, aluminum, copper, silver, and eva. but they are commonly mounted in aluminium frames, on the order of a gram of aluminum per peak watt or ten grams per average watt
refining aluminum or iron from ore does cost a significant amount of energy, but there's no real obstacle to doing it with renewable energy and no fossil fuels; aluminum smelting pots won't even notice, and in the case of steelmaking, the technical problems of reduction with hydrogen are interesting but don't pose a risk to the success of the enterprise. the energy payback time on current solar panels is a few months, which is to say they generate all the energy needed to reproduce themselves (metals and all) in that time
aluminum, silicon, and iron are among the most abundant elements in the earth's crust (#3, #2, and #4, respectively), so there's no real risk of having to dig for them. even copper averages 100 ppm. with silver there's a bit of a pinch, as about 10% of world silver production is going to solar panels; copper works as a substitute but significantly impairs efficiency
windmills use the same kind of electrical generator you'd use in a coal or nuclear plant, just at a lower duty cycle, so at worst they have a small disadvantage relative to fossil fuels in terms of metal use. the counterbalancing advantage is that they don't need steam plumbing or a parsons turbine; windmill blades are fiberglass, not metal
(sometimes generators do use rare elements, but that's just a matter of what's cheaper at the moment)
that's why renewable energy from pv and wind is already much cheaper than fossil energy and continuing to get cheaper
if your conclusion were correct, then despite your posited subsidy from cheap fossil fuels, pv and wind energy would already be more expensive than fossil-fuel energy, as it was until about 02014, because their energy payback time would have to be decades. you're two orders of magnitude outdated
It's trivial to fund renewables with a chinese, coal-powered industry, so it will look cheap, but it's putting coal under the rug.
It is interesting to see the responses to Nuclear of 'too much up front/takes too long' while simultaneously patiently waiting out solar/wind 'it's getting there.'
Interesting they also included biomass here as it is certainly not a carbon friendly process nor renewable.
Too much 'we've picked our winners and won't hear a negative word' in this space now, and it's getting worse.
That's not including the ongoing gearbox maintenance requirements.
In high school, my Chem II class had an assignment where pairs of kids had to present on why nuclear was good or bad. Of 16 or so kids, only my friend and I presented on why nuclear energy was good. Even the chemistry teacher was against nuclear energy.
Edit: This was in rural USA.
Coal and nuclear plants have poor abilities to ramp power production up and down in response to fluctuating demand, so they were called 'baseload'. Various versions of natural gas power plants could respond more rapidly, so they were typically placed in the other other two categories.
This is all irrelevant if you have distributed wind/solar production coupled to efficient storage systems that manage the distribution using technology that doesn't have those limitations. Practically that means short term storage of power in batteries (daily), long-term storage in synthetic fuels (seasonal).
Since you're obviously some time traveler, would you mind sharing winning lottery numbers with us?