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I'm an advocate for solar. I just want to see an honest analysis of the whole question, what does a clean global grid look like? Anyone seen such a thing? If we

I'm an advocate for solar. I just want to see an honest analysis of the whole question, what does a clean global grid look like? Anyone seen such a thing? If we really switched over to solar power, we'd need storage to handle : - daily load variations (example, CA ISO "duck graph"[1]) - seasonal load variations (example, Seattle has 16 hours of sunlight in summer, and 8 in winter. It's overcast for weeks at a time in winter). - unusual events, from extended weather patterns to volcanic eruptions. Five nines (99.999%) is 5 minutes/year of downtime. What does it cost to guarantee at least that, given the variations in sun (or wind) and the fact that the grid absolutely, positively, needs to supply current for any need that gets switched on, anytime, regardless of the weather? Tony Seba's big handwave is that the "god parity" happens in 2020 where photovoltaic is cheaper than transmission costs, so even if fossil fuel cost zero, it would cost more than rooftop PV. Ta-da! Ok, for what percent of the population does that give you how many nines? What's the complete story that handles conditions in Seattle, London, and really most of Europe? Tony also likes to refer to Molten Salt Solar as "baseload". Bullshit that's just short-term load following. Useful, yes! Complete solution, no. Or can it be extended? Where can I find an honest analysis? Yeah I've heard the other handwaves: flow batteries! existing pumped water storage! add wind to the portfolio! supeconducting transmission from deserts! LiIon manufacuturing learning curve! etc... But we need numbers, not enthusiasm. [1] http://cleantechnica.com/2014/07/21/utilities-cry-fowl-over-duck-chart-and-distributed-solar-powercrying-fowl-or-crying-wolf-open-season-on-the-utilitys-solar-duck-chart/ http://cleantechnica.com/2014/07/21/utilities-cry-fowl-over-...

chrisatumd 11y ago
I found an excellent book talking about realistic sustainable solutions. It is from 2008/2009 and so solar costs are already dramatically less, but is still a great read. http://www.withouthotair.com/ http://www.withouthotair.com/
CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
"the grid absolutely, positively, needs to supply current for any need that gets switched on" Why? A small addition to that could probably take us long way: Any need worth the cost. If the price matches the supply I'm sure people will get quite creative in reducing the demand enough to make the problem go away.
- bdamm 11y ago
  This is called "demand response" in utility circles, and to varying degrees, has been operational for decades. Lately it is becoming much more reliable and accessible thanks to smart grid networks.
  - CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
    Thanks for the pointer. The Wikipedia page on the subject was quite extensive: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_response https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_response
- LeifCarrotson 11y ago
  It needs to because otherwise supply voltage drops and you get brownouts. There is no provision in light switches, outlets, thermostats, industrial machinery, or anything else to first check "is there enough current in the grid right now to run this?". They just draw current when connected, and changing that policy would be a huge endeavor.
  - CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
    Depends on what you compare it to. Less huge than replacing oil and coal? Besides, you don't need to check for current, you check for prices. Which would be simpler.
cdnsteve 11y ago
Perhaps the notion of the grid is outdated. Self reliance is the future, solar combined with self storage like Tesla Powerwall. https://www.teslamotors.com/en_CA/POWERWALL https://www.teslamotors.com/en_CA/POWERWALL
- jazzyk 11y ago
  This. The nature of solar calls for a decentralized model, with each house having solar panels and a battery - just like most houses in the US have their own heating systems. Big, entrenched utility companies don't like it because this would take much of their profits away. That said, the grid would not completely go away - it could still serve as a means to sell/buy extra energy if need be.
  - Mvandenbergh 11y ago
    The problem with this is that the economics of our grid infrastructure and more importantly, the economics of existing generating capacity depends on it running most of the time. Imagine if you had to amortise all those fixed costs over the 5% of the time that you need them.
    - marssaxman 11y ago
      We do that all the time for transportation resources.
- zekevermillion 11y ago
  The use of solar PV to detach from the grid seems potentially quite disruptive if the cost is even close to centrally produced and distributed power. I'm more interested in, and optimistic about, this feature than I am in the macro cost or ecological benefits of PV.
- danmaz74 11y ago
  And what happens when there are 2 consecutive weeks of bad weather during winter?
Retric 11y ago
99% of all grid storage is Hydro Power because it's cheap, efficient, and relativity high density. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit... Running the numbers we could build several days worth of 100% electric storage for fairly minimal costs. (10TWh = 1 day's storage.) The problem is having a back to your backup costs money and someone needs to cover the costs for a facility that effectively never gets used. Another approach is to simply over build, renewables are rapidly becoming the cheapest option so simply over building say 10% can drastically reduce the need for grid storage.
- Mvandenbergh 11y ago
  I'd be interested to see those numbers. Most of the "easy" hydro locations in the world are already taken so we can't just extrapolate the as-built costs of existing capacity.
  - knodi123 11y ago
    "Easy" hydro locations refers to hydroelectric power generation. But the person you replied to was referring to pumped-hydro power storage, which is a totally different thing for a different purpose, and is much more flexible.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Note: Hydro power is different than pumped storage. Hydro needs a river and a huge lake etc. Pumped storage can simply create a new lake on top of a mountain and pump water up there. Colorado for example has a lot of high altitude lakes that are not used. Ideal locations need to be close to high grid producers or users otherwise you need to build a lot of transmission lines. Further, current usage is designed for peak power output not total storage, if the goal is 10's of TWh we would want a lot of huge reservoirs with minimal pumping capacity each. Where current designs are focused on peak output which is the expensive part. So, massively increasing storage capacity would likely reduce costs per GWh stored. Anyway, these numbers are going to have a lot of give based on goals. The point is the US government can make this problem go away for ~2 billion / year which means it's not a significant issue.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
I don't disagree but it is a bit more complex. But first, allow me to dispell the myth that solar cells don't generate power when it is overcast, they do. My panels typically run at 52 - 58% of rated power when the sky is wall to wall clouds. Granted that is a big drop in production it isn't 0 and can be planned around. The "discussion inside the discussion" here is money. As inverter and management technology has gotten better, it becomes possible for a single family home, in the lower 48 states, to locally generate perhaps 95% of its annual power requirements, and to supplement that last 5% with onsite generated power using propane or methane. In such a configuration, the consumer's on going payments are either lease payments or a maintenance contract on the gear to keep it running. Not some utility company. And that means that you cannot distribute the cost of "big" energy projects across a wide base of payers (as a utility, you can still do that with taxes). And that leads us too ... Commercial power. While you and I might be able to live off grid, your typical multi-story office building or apartment can not. They don't have the square footage available for panels, and they generally don't have the space for back up power equipment. So they still need generators and transmission lines and a "grid." And because the cost of that grid is distributed across fewer people, their costs are significantly (I've seen estimates of 10x) higher. That raises rents, and the cost of goods, and generally puts a real crimp in any economy. Not to mention the power utility is now just another botique supplier to these guys and so loses a lot of scale it had before. The shifting balance of power (pun intended) is going to cause a lot of disruptions and cost shifting. At the end of the day it could be the thing that puts a lot of brick and mortar stores out of business.
- paulsutter 11y ago
  Yes of course solar cells generate (less) power on overcast days. Here's the issue: If solar is already on track to replace fossil fuels by 2030, everyone can stop working on energy. Bill Gates can apologize and shutdown his new fund. Sam Altman can stop meeting with energy companies. But I'm skeptical. I expect there remain needed technologies. Storage? Transmission? Baseload? Such an analysis would tell us. I'm asking, where can I find an analysis of this? All these articles are lite advocacy pieces that border on marketing.
- ensignavenger 11y ago
hannob 11y ago
You're asking legitimate questions, but I'm not sure if it's reasonable to expect a good answer. You seem to want a perfect plan to go solar. If you look at predictions for renewables from a few years ago you will find out that they are all - no matter who you asked - largely wrong. I remember that not that long ago nobody would have expected that prices for onshore wind and solar would go down so rapidly. On the other hand offshore wind was often praised as the tech that would make renewables cheap. The opposite has happened. Onshore wind and solar got cheaper in a speed that even the most outspoken renewable advocates hadn't predicted, offshore wind is one of the most expensive ways to get renewable energy. Basically today there is not a single country that largely relies on "new" renewables (wind + solar). Denmark comes close, but they are small and interconnected with neighbors that have a lot of water power capacity and pumped storage. I think it is pretty much impossible to predict which techs will work out in a future grid that will need a lot more storage tech. Some things we think today are promising will spectacularly fail and maybe some things we don't have on the radar yet will provide solutions.
- paulsutter 11y ago
  I'm not asking for predictions, I'm looking for a statistical analysis that takes into account historical weather, seasonal, and load across geographies weighted by use. This is all measured and recorded. Has anyone analyzed it? Should I pay someone to do that myself? Is anyone interested to try? That's what I'm asking.
  - lawpoop 11y ago
    If you look at the book "Sustainable Energy without the hot air" you will find it chock full of data. Problem is, it's for the UK, not the US. But FWIW, I think the UK is more north than the continental US. http://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-Air/dp/0954452933 http://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-Air/dp/...
    - Retric 11y ago
      That has a lot of issues. So don't trust their numbers. EX: They use 10% for solar cell efficiency when some current systems are over 22%. http://www.sciencealert.com/panasonic-has-produced-the-world-s-most-efficient-rooftop-solar-panel-with-22-5-module-efficiency http://www.sciencealert.com/panasonic-has-produced-the-world... And lab results are even higher.
Gravityloss 11y ago
Going 100% solar makes little sense. Something like power generation capacity, of peak load, for 30% solar, 30% wind, 30% natural gas, 30% hydro, 30% nuclear and 30% compressed air storage. Note it goes over 100% so that parts of it can be offline and peak demand can be still supplied. The only fossil fuel, natural gas, would only be fired when electricity price was very high, like it is operated in many places already today. It is suitable for this use as the investment cost is low and the reaction time is short.
bavcyc 11y ago
How is the load going to change over time? The passive house movement shows how efficient houses can be built. Also the change from CRT to LED tv's, also change loads. Refrigerators are more efficient than 20 years ago, but can they be made more efficient? Lots of small changes can change the amount of load (for lots of customers (summed)). The other big issue is how fast can you repair 'own generation?' Utilities typically do a good job in restoring power and assist each other to restore power. Today everyone wants power all the time, 50 years ago power outages were not as much of an issue.
pbreit 11y ago
Wait, but why do we/you need a "clean global grid"? Doesn't need to be 100%. Just need/want to move in that direction and get as close as practicable. No reason to answer your question since it's not something we need.
pjc50 11y ago
I don't think anyone can give you that level of analysis. To do it 'properly' would require a set of interlinked models on the scale of the IPCC models. Certainly not in a free analysis; Gartner probably have some papers on this. But as usual the truth lies somewhere between the delusional hype and the denialists, in the form of a gradual rollout. Realistically the newly-commissioned gas power plants are not going anywhere for 30 years, especially when shale gas is so cheap in the US. The short term in Europe is dominated by the Combustion Plant Directive closing down coal plants that reach the end of their working lives. Southern US will see more and more solar. The grid is not going anywhere and will probably require ongoing point upgrades. And so on.
marze 11y ago
What a ton of nitpicks, missing the big picture. Embarrassing for HN community this comment is top voted.
kragen 11y ago
You have an overly rosy view of the current situation, and so you are dramatically overestimating how far photovoltaic has to go to improve it, perhaps in part because you have forgotten the existence of 85% of the world's population. I'm on the grid, and I had a three-week power outage two years ago. Getting to 99.999% would require no power outages for the next 5700 years. Even getting to 99% would require no power outages for the next 3 years, which isn't going to happen; I had an overnight power outage a few months ago. That's because I live in Argentina. Not out in the boondocks — in the capital, with flatscreen TVs, world-class medical care, and subways crammed full of people glued to their Samsung Galaxy Whatevers. A friend of mine in Pakistan isn't even getting one nine; he has a rolling blackout of an hour every few hours. He's at maybe 70% or 80% grid uptime. I don't understand this myopic focus on "Seattle, London, and really most of Europe". What percentage of the population lives in the US and Europe? 14%. 86% of the population lives elsewhere. How about Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Delhi, Mexico City, Beijing, Lagos, São Paulo, and Mumbai? Those are the world's ten biggest cities, and by themselves they total nearly the population of the US. As it happens, none of them are in the US or Europe. Also, as it happens, most of them are at much more equatorial latitudes than most of Europe and even much of the US. Speaking of rolling blackouts, I lived in California in 2000. At the time, political corruption in the energy markets led to rolling blackouts there, with a total of several hundred hours of blackout at each location (except hospitals, national security installations, and things like that). So California isn't going to reach 99.999% on-grid reliability within the next couple of millennia either, even without any further outages. Reliable electricity is very important to some industries, like semiconductor fabrication. Maxim has a fab there in San José, or at least they did last year. Maybe they'd would be better off depending on solar panels on the fab roof instead of the fickle governance of the California transmission grid. The upshot of all of this is that transmission-line parity for most of us is going to occur pretty soon actually. It doesn't need to hit 99.999% or 99.99% or 99.9% or even 99% reliability to be an improvement from where we are now. In fact, in Pakistan and in much of the world, even if it's 50% reliable, it's a big help, as long as the times when it's out aren't the same times the regular power grid is out. Molten-salt solar is certainly capable of some load following, although not as fast as a gas turbine, but it can also handle baseload, because it can run at whatever time of day or night you need. Can it be extended? Well, the materials you need are super common and well understood (we were recently treated to an explanation the other day of how Lavoisier made significant improvements to the handling and production of the salts in question in the 18th century), and the heat engine is typically a closed-cycle Parsons steam turbine, same as in a coal or combined-cycle plant. There's no reason I know of to expect it to be any harder to scale than other types of steam turbines. The only issue is that it will have a hard time producing energy as cheaply as photovoltaic unless we can bring the cost of the machinery way down and its lifetime up. You mention deserts, I suppose because enormous land area is cheap and the skies are not cloudy all day. But how much area do you really need to generate the electricity we use? Argentine electricity use, for example, is only about 3000 kWh/year/人, or 340 W/人. With a typical panel efficiency of 15% (not 22% like some advanced unijunction panels), a typical capacity factor of 18%, a solar constant of, say, 1000 W/m², and a latitude of 34°36’ (thus a cosine of 82%), this works out to 15m²/人, or 65 000 人/km². The actual population density here in Buenos Aires — the densest and most populous city in the entire country — is 14 000 人/km². Rooftop photovoltaic is plenty to replace the existing rickety power distribution infrastructure. Pumped water storage might be useful, wind is useful, deserts are certainly going to be immense resources, and cheaper batteries could eliminate the intermittency problem (if they work), but none of those are actually necessary.
ZeroGravitas 11y ago
I believe the duck graph would be entirely eliminated if people had well insulated homes and air-con that could take advantage of abundant solar to pre-cool their home before they got home. Not that it's easy to get from here to there, but it's hardly the jetsons either. The kind of person who frequents this site might like the Rocky Mountain Institute's take on this: http://www.rmi.org/our_goals http://www.rmi.org/our_goals Loads of boring wonkery about more efficient buildings, and better ways of regulating utilities to align incentives properly, or ideas for financing the deployment of new technologies for efficent shipping and so on.

chrisatumd 11y ago

I found an excellent book talking about realistic sustainable solutions. It is from 2008/2009 and so solar costs are already dramatically less, but is still a great read. http://www.withouthotair.com/ http://www.withouthotair.com/

CuriousSkeptic 11y ago

"the grid absolutely, positively, needs to supply current for any need that gets switched on" Why? A small addition to that could probably take us long way: Any need worth the cost. If the price matches the supply I'm sure people will get quite creative in reducing the demand enough to make the problem go away.

bdamm 11y ago
This is called "demand response" in utility circles, and to varying degrees, has been operational for decades. Lately it is becoming much more reliable and accessible thanks to smart grid networks.
- CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
  Thanks for the pointer. The Wikipedia page on the subject was quite extensive: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_response https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_response
LeifCarrotson 11y ago
It needs to because otherwise supply voltage drops and you get brownouts. There is no provision in light switches, outlets, thermostats, industrial machinery, or anything else to first check "is there enough current in the grid right now to run this?". They just draw current when connected, and changing that policy would be a huge endeavor.
- CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
  Depends on what you compare it to. Less huge than replacing oil and coal? Besides, you don't need to check for current, you check for prices. Which would be simpler.

cdnsteve 11y ago

Perhaps the notion of the grid is outdated. Self reliance is the future, solar combined with self storage like Tesla Powerwall. https://www.teslamotors.com/en_CA/POWERWALL https://www.teslamotors.com/en_CA/POWERWALL

jazzyk 11y ago
This. The nature of solar calls for a decentralized model, with each house having solar panels and a battery - just like most houses in the US have their own heating systems. Big, entrenched utility companies don't like it because this would take much of their profits away. That said, the grid would not completely go away - it could still serve as a means to sell/buy extra energy if need be.
- Mvandenbergh 11y ago
  The problem with this is that the economics of our grid infrastructure and more importantly, the economics of existing generating capacity depends on it running most of the time. Imagine if you had to amortise all those fixed costs over the 5% of the time that you need them.
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    We do that all the time for transportation resources.
zekevermillion 11y ago
The use of solar PV to detach from the grid seems potentially quite disruptive if the cost is even close to centrally produced and distributed power. I'm more interested in, and optimistic about, this feature than I am in the macro cost or ecological benefits of PV.
danmaz74 11y ago
And what happens when there are 2 consecutive weeks of bad weather during winter?

Retric 11y ago

99% of all grid storage is Hydro Power because it's cheap, efficient, and relativity high density. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit... Running the numbers we could build several days worth of 100% electric storage for fairly minimal costs. (10TWh = 1 day's storage.) The problem is having a back to your backup costs money and someone needs to cover the costs for a facility that effectively never gets used. Another approach is to simply over build, renewables are rapidly becoming the cheapest option so simply over building say 10% can drastically reduce the need for grid storage.

Mvandenbergh 11y ago
I'd be interested to see those numbers. Most of the "easy" hydro locations in the world are already taken so we can't just extrapolate the as-built costs of existing capacity.
- knodi123 11y ago
  "Easy" hydro locations refers to hydroelectric power generation. But the person you replied to was referring to pumped-hydro power storage, which is a totally different thing for a different purpose, and is much more flexible.
- Retric 11y ago
  Note: Hydro power is different than pumped storage. Hydro needs a river and a huge lake etc. Pumped storage can simply create a new lake on top of a mountain and pump water up there. Colorado for example has a lot of high altitude lakes that are not used. Ideal locations need to be close to high grid producers or users otherwise you need to build a lot of transmission lines. Further, current usage is designed for peak power output not total storage, if the goal is 10's of TWh we would want a lot of huge reservoirs with minimal pumping capacity each. Where current designs are focused on peak output which is the expensive part. So, massively increasing storage capacity would likely reduce costs per GWh stored. Anyway, these numbers are going to have a lot of give based on goals. The point is the US government can make this problem go away for ~2 billion / year which means it's not a significant issue.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

I don't disagree but it is a bit more complex. But first, allow me to dispell the myth that solar cells don't generate power when it is overcast, they do. My panels typically run at 52 - 58% of rated power when the sky is wall to wall clouds. Granted that is a big drop in production it isn't 0 and can be planned around. The "discussion inside the discussion" here is money. As inverter and management technology has gotten better, it becomes possible for a single family home, in the lower 48 states, to locally generate perhaps 95% of its annual power requirements, and to supplement that last 5% with onsite generated power using propane or methane. In such a configuration, the consumer's on going payments are either lease payments or a maintenance contract on the gear to keep it running. Not some utility company. And that means that you cannot distribute the cost of "big" energy projects across a wide base of payers (as a utility, you can still do that with taxes). And that leads us too ... Commercial power. While you and I might be able to live off grid, your typical multi-story office building or apartment can not. They don't have the square footage available for panels, and they generally don't have the space for back up power equipment. So they still need generators and transmission lines and a "grid." And because the cost of that grid is distributed across fewer people, their costs are significantly (I've seen estimates of 10x) higher. That raises rents, and the cost of goods, and generally puts a real crimp in any economy. Not to mention the power utility is now just another botique supplier to these guys and so loses a lot of scale it had before. The shifting balance of power (pun intended) is going to cause a lot of disruptions and cost shifting. At the end of the day it could be the thing that puts a lot of brick and mortar stores out of business.

paulsutter 11y ago
Yes of course solar cells generate (less) power on overcast days. Here's the issue: If solar is already on track to replace fossil fuels by 2030, everyone can stop working on energy. Bill Gates can apologize and shutdown his new fund. Sam Altman can stop meeting with energy companies. But I'm skeptical. I expect there remain needed technologies. Storage? Transmission? Baseload? Such an analysis would tell us. I'm asking, where can I find an analysis of this? All these articles are lite advocacy pieces that border on marketing.
ensignavenger 11y ago

hannob 11y ago

You're asking legitimate questions, but I'm not sure if it's reasonable to expect a good answer. You seem to want a perfect plan to go solar. If you look at predictions for renewables from a few years ago you will find out that they are all - no matter who you asked - largely wrong. I remember that not that long ago nobody would have expected that prices for onshore wind and solar would go down so rapidly. On the other hand offshore wind was often praised as the tech that would make renewables cheap. The opposite has happened. Onshore wind and solar got cheaper in a speed that even the most outspoken renewable advocates hadn't predicted, offshore wind is one of the most expensive ways to get renewable energy. Basically today there is not a single country that largely relies on "new" renewables (wind + solar). Denmark comes close, but they are small and interconnected with neighbors that have a lot of water power capacity and pumped storage. I think it is pretty much impossible to predict which techs will work out in a future grid that will need a lot more storage tech. Some things we think today are promising will spectacularly fail and maybe some things we don't have on the radar yet will provide solutions.

paulsutter 11y ago
I'm not asking for predictions, I'm looking for a statistical analysis that takes into account historical weather, seasonal, and load across geographies weighted by use. This is all measured and recorded. Has anyone analyzed it? Should I pay someone to do that myself? Is anyone interested to try? That's what I'm asking.
- lawpoop 11y ago
  If you look at the book "Sustainable Energy without the hot air" you will find it chock full of data. Problem is, it's for the UK, not the US. But FWIW, I think the UK is more north than the continental US. http://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-Air/dp/0954452933 http://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-Air/dp/...
  - Retric 11y ago
    That has a lot of issues. So don't trust their numbers. EX: They use 10% for solar cell efficiency when some current systems are over 22%. http://www.sciencealert.com/panasonic-has-produced-the-world-s-most-efficient-rooftop-solar-panel-with-22-5-module-efficiency http://www.sciencealert.com/panasonic-has-produced-the-world... And lab results are even higher.

Gravityloss 11y ago

Going 100% solar makes little sense. Something like power generation capacity, of peak load, for 30% solar, 30% wind, 30% natural gas, 30% hydro, 30% nuclear and 30% compressed air storage. Note it goes over 100% so that parts of it can be offline and peak demand can be still supplied. The only fossil fuel, natural gas, would only be fired when electricity price was very high, like it is operated in many places already today. It is suitable for this use as the investment cost is low and the reaction time is short.

bavcyc 11y ago

How is the load going to change over time? The passive house movement shows how efficient houses can be built. Also the change from CRT to LED tv's, also change loads. Refrigerators are more efficient than 20 years ago, but can they be made more efficient? Lots of small changes can change the amount of load (for lots of customers (summed)). The other big issue is how fast can you repair 'own generation?' Utilities typically do a good job in restoring power and assist each other to restore power. Today everyone wants power all the time, 50 years ago power outages were not as much of an issue.

pbreit 11y ago

Wait, but why do we/you need a "clean global grid"? Doesn't need to be 100%. Just need/want to move in that direction and get as close as practicable. No reason to answer your question since it's not something we need.

pjc50 11y ago

I don't think anyone can give you that level of analysis. To do it 'properly' would require a set of interlinked models on the scale of the IPCC models. Certainly not in a free analysis; Gartner probably have some papers on this. But as usual the truth lies somewhere between the delusional hype and the denialists, in the form of a gradual rollout. Realistically the newly-commissioned gas power plants are not going anywhere for 30 years, especially when shale gas is so cheap in the US. The short term in Europe is dominated by the Combustion Plant Directive closing down coal plants that reach the end of their working lives. Southern US will see more and more solar. The grid is not going anywhere and will probably require ongoing point upgrades. And so on.

marze 11y ago

What a ton of nitpicks, missing the big picture. Embarrassing for HN community this comment is top voted.

kragen 11y ago

You have an overly rosy view of the current situation, and so you are dramatically overestimating how far photovoltaic has to go to improve it, perhaps in part because you have forgotten the existence of 85% of the world's population. I'm on the grid, and I had a three-week power outage two years ago. Getting to 99.999% would require no power outages for the next 5700 years. Even getting to 99% would require no power outages for the next 3 years, which isn't going to happen; I had an overnight power outage a few months ago. That's because I live in Argentina. Not out in the boondocks — in the capital, with flatscreen TVs, world-class medical care, and subways crammed full of people glued to their Samsung Galaxy Whatevers. A friend of mine in Pakistan isn't even getting one nine; he has a rolling blackout of an hour every few hours. He's at maybe 70% or 80% grid uptime. I don't understand this myopic focus on "Seattle, London, and really most of Europe". What percentage of the population lives in the US and Europe? 14%. 86% of the population lives elsewhere. How about Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Delhi, Mexico City, Beijing, Lagos, São Paulo, and Mumbai? Those are the world's ten biggest cities, and by themselves they total nearly the population of the US. As it happens, none of them are in the US or Europe. Also, as it happens, most of them are at much more equatorial latitudes than most of Europe and even much of the US. Speaking of rolling blackouts, I lived in California in 2000. At the time, political corruption in the energy markets led to rolling blackouts there, with a total of several hundred hours of blackout at each location (except hospitals, national security installations, and things like that). So California isn't going to reach 99.999% on-grid reliability within the next couple of millennia either, even without any further outages. Reliable electricity is very important to some industries, like semiconductor fabrication. Maxim has a fab there in San José, or at least they did last year. Maybe they'd would be better off depending on solar panels on the fab roof instead of the fickle governance of the California transmission grid. The upshot of all of this is that transmission-line parity for most of us is going to occur pretty soon actually. It doesn't need to hit 99.999% or 99.99% or 99.9% or even 99% reliability to be an improvement from where we are now. In fact, in Pakistan and in much of the world, even if it's 50% reliable, it's a big help, as long as the times when it's out aren't the same times the regular power grid is out. Molten-salt solar is certainly capable of some load following, although not as fast as a gas turbine, but it can also handle baseload, because it can run at whatever time of day or night you need. Can it be extended? Well, the materials you need are super common and well understood (we were recently treated to an explanation the other day of how Lavoisier made significant improvements to the handling and production of the salts in question in the 18th century), and the heat engine is typically a closed-cycle Parsons steam turbine, same as in a coal or combined-cycle plant. There's no reason I know of to expect it to be any harder to scale than other types of steam turbines. The only issue is that it will have a hard time producing energy as cheaply as photovoltaic unless we can bring the cost of the machinery way down and its lifetime up. You mention deserts, I suppose because enormous land area is cheap and the skies are not cloudy all day. But how much area do you really need to generate the electricity we use? Argentine electricity use, for example, is only about 3000 kWh/year/人, or 340 W/人. With a typical panel efficiency of 15% (not 22% like some advanced unijunction panels), a typical capacity factor of 18%, a solar constant of, say, 1000 W/m², and a latitude of 34°36’ (thus a cosine of 82%), this works out to 15m²/人, or 65 000 人/km². The actual population density here in Buenos Aires — the densest and most populous city in the entire country — is 14 000 人/km². Rooftop photovoltaic is plenty to replace the existing rickety power distribution infrastructure. Pumped water storage might be useful, wind is useful, deserts are certainly going to be immense resources, and cheaper batteries could eliminate the intermittency problem (if they work), but none of those are actually necessary.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago

I believe the duck graph would be entirely eliminated if people had well insulated homes and air-con that could take advantage of abundant solar to pre-cool their home before they got home. Not that it's easy to get from here to there, but it's hardly the jetsons either. The kind of person who frequents this site might like the Rocky Mountain Institute's take on this: http://www.rmi.org/our_goals http://www.rmi.org/our_goals Loads of boring wonkery about more efficient buildings, and better ways of regulating utilities to align incentives properly, or ideas for financing the deployment of new technologies for efficent shipping and so on.