6 ms·

No. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11524691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11524691 Why does solar always need batteries? These are not "advanc

No. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11524691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11524691 Why does solar always need batteries? These are not "advances". India is adding 20k MW of solar and 10k MW of wind p.a. China is at 20+20. US at 20+20. Europe at 20+20. 30% of all new power capacity additions globally will be from renewables for the foreseeable future. Probably more. This is without "batteries". Without subsidies. The need for "baseload", "storage", or "the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow" are red herrings. They are not relevant. Whether we like it or not, driven by massive cost and technology improvements, solar and wind are here in a massive way.

downandout 11y ago
But it is not cheaper than coal, which is what the headline says and was the impetus of my comment. I'm happy to see the costs going down, and maybe one day it will be competitively priced. But that day is not today.
barney54 11y ago
The need for reliable energy or energy when the sun is not shining is critical important--according to the people of India. For example, according to this article in ClimateWire (a trade pub) http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060026477/ http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060026477/ Dharnai, a community of about 3,200 people in eastern India's Bihar state, had been without electricity for three decades. So when activists with Greenpeace set up a solar-powered microgrid in July of 2014, the excitement was palpable. But, residents said, the problems started almost immediately. When the former chief minister of Bihar state visited to inaugurate the grid, villagers lined up to protest, chanting, "We want real electricity, not fake electricity!" By "real," they meant power from the central grid, generated mostly using coal. By "fake," they meant solar.
- pjc50 11y ago
  Your link is paywalled unfortunately? India is quite capable of having unreliable power without solar. I agree that people should not be fobbed off with unreliable solutions, but that doesn't mean solar can't be a big part of the grid mix. It sounds like the activist microgrid was inadequate. http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/standpoint-what-is-the-real-cost-of-unreliable-power-supply-2138990 http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/standpoint-what-is-the-real... "It is believed that, out of the 70 million tonne of diesel consumed in the country per year, about 20% or 14 million tonne is used in captive power generation."
- shripadk 11y ago
  Greenpeace is a big scam. It's been banned in India under the current dispensation. http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/greenpeace-india-claims-its-registration-cancelled-slams-intolerance-1240860 http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/greenpeace-india-claims-its-r...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- kamaal 11y ago
  >>http://dharnailive.org/ http://dharnailive.org/ Not bad. They only generated ~2500 kWh electricity last week. Giving anything for free is a thankless job. Almost anything given for free is almost certainly treated as worthless.
mistermann 11y ago
> The need for "baseload", "storage", or "the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow" are red herrings. They are not relevant. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, but how is my desire for electricity at night time "not relevant"?
- tankenmate 11y ago
  The issue is for _new_ plants, not so much for replacement plants. These older plants can be used for base load where necessary; and in places like developed OECD nations which are seeing reductions in electricity generation year on year (not so much population growth, heavy industries moving to cheaper developing nations), the need for base load is going down.
- ageofwant 11y ago
  Its not relevant to people who are prepared to sacrifice convenience for cost. Especially if night-time prices are directly linked to supply. Smarter devices will become available that use energy when its cheaply available. Long time storage will improve and spread the load, probably from smaller to larger scale. Base load is really an artefact of system and usage inefficiencies, not some inherent problem with renewables.
  - Cerium 11y ago
    Exactly! If daytime electricity was cheap enough I would double the size of my refrigerator and fill it with water to increase thermal mass. At night time it would stay cold enough to not use any power. Almost all energy except lighting is good to go. My laptop already has enough power to last the evening. I just need a few watts for the router.
    - dwiel 11y ago
      For sure. I lived in a house with solar + a few old car batteries and it wasn't bad at all.
    - criddell 11y ago
dogma1138 11y ago
>The need for "baseload", "storage", or "the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow" are red herrings. They are not relevant. They aren't red herrings they are poor excuses when used as a reason to not to expand renewable but they aren't without their merit. We need to improve energy storage considerably to be able to push renewables to be actually a major part of the electric grid. A a major part is a very important definition here because they need to be dependable, it's nice when you have a headlines that Denmark has reached 90% of it's energy production with wind for period X but we also need to put it into perspective that it was only a few hours in a single day on a specific year. Solar and wind are being constantly improved it's true but we also need massive improvements in energy storage as well as to renew our interests in better and safer nuclear reactors to actually drive out Fossil Fuel completely and have an abundance of energy that could be used to improve everything around it. Our energy goals shouldn't be aimed at something comparable to fossil fuel we should find ways to produce 10 times what we produce now in a cheap, reliable and environmentally sound fashion. If we have an abundance of electricity many other things can improve, we can stop sucking out out underground water and make desalination cheap for everyone, we can grow more crops faster reducing the amount of food, we can produce more at lower costs. Energy is a much larger bottleneck than people assume, especially to developing countries, better energy production, better grids mean that everyone in Africa can get a water purified, an AC and a fridge, it also means that we can start treating the sewage which is a problem now in many parts of Africa where NGO's gave them a water pump and forgot that they also need plumbing and septic treatment facilities. So while you might claim that solar and wind are here in a massive way, we haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg as far as energy production goes and where we should be. And sadly too many people in the environmental lobbies want to cut down on energy production rather than to increase it 10 fold.
- Osiris30 11y ago
  Misinformed. Please see my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11524691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11524691 and these links would be helpful http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re_futures/ http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re_futures/ http://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/02/base-load-power-is-a-myth-used-for-defending-the-fossil-fuel-industry/ http://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/02/base-load-power-is-a-myt... http://cleantechnica.com/2014/08/08/rmi-blows-lid-baseload-power-myth-video/ http://cleantechnica.com/2014/08/08/rmi-blows-lid-baseload-p... http://rameznaam.com/2016/01/31/how-far-can-renewables-go-pretty-darn-far/ http://rameznaam.com/2016/01/31/how-far-can-renewables-go-pr...
spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
the requiremnt for baseload is not a read herring.
- ageofwant 11y ago
  No, but its much less of an issue that its made out to be. It is an argument, but not a particularly strong one. A much better argument is that we want and need many orders of magnitude more energy to do the things than need to be done. And renewables are not energy dense enough for that.
sbov 11y ago
Your own link has a link showing California is already running into these problems you say are not problems: http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2016/04/04/what-will-california-do-with-too-much-solar/ http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2016/04/04/what-will-california-... Batteries are obviously not the only solution - a more connected grid would push the problem into the future, but to claim this is not a relevant problem is ignoring something that is already manifesting.

downandout 11y ago

But it is not cheaper than coal, which is what the headline says and was the impetus of my comment. I'm happy to see the costs going down, and maybe one day it will be competitively priced. But that day is not today.

barney54 11y ago

The need for reliable energy or energy when the sun is not shining is critical important--according to the people of India. For example, according to this article in ClimateWire (a trade pub) http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060026477/ http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060026477/ Dharnai, a community of about 3,200 people in eastern India's Bihar state, had been without electricity for three decades. So when activists with Greenpeace set up a solar-powered microgrid in July of 2014, the excitement was palpable. But, residents said, the problems started almost immediately. When the former chief minister of Bihar state visited to inaugurate the grid, villagers lined up to protest, chanting, "We want real electricity, not fake electricity!" By "real," they meant power from the central grid, generated mostly using coal. By "fake," they meant solar.

pjc50 11y ago
Your link is paywalled unfortunately? India is quite capable of having unreliable power without solar. I agree that people should not be fobbed off with unreliable solutions, but that doesn't mean solar can't be a big part of the grid mix. It sounds like the activist microgrid was inadequate. http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/standpoint-what-is-the-real-cost-of-unreliable-power-supply-2138990 http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/standpoint-what-is-the-real... "It is believed that, out of the 70 million tonne of diesel consumed in the country per year, about 20% or 14 million tonne is used in captive power generation."
shripadk 11y ago
Greenpeace is a big scam. It's been banned in India under the current dispensation. http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/greenpeace-india-claims-its-registration-cancelled-slams-intolerance-1240860 http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/greenpeace-india-claims-its-r...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kamaal 11y ago
>>http://dharnailive.org/ http://dharnailive.org/ Not bad. They only generated ~2500 kWh electricity last week. Giving anything for free is a thankless job. Almost anything given for free is almost certainly treated as worthless.

mistermann 11y ago

> The need for "baseload", "storage", or "the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow" are red herrings. They are not relevant. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, but how is my desire for electricity at night time "not relevant"?

tankenmate 11y ago
The issue is for _new_ plants, not so much for replacement plants. These older plants can be used for base load where necessary; and in places like developed OECD nations which are seeing reductions in electricity generation year on year (not so much population growth, heavy industries moving to cheaper developing nations), the need for base load is going down.
ageofwant 11y ago
Its not relevant to people who are prepared to sacrifice convenience for cost. Especially if night-time prices are directly linked to supply. Smarter devices will become available that use energy when its cheaply available. Long time storage will improve and spread the load, probably from smaller to larger scale. Base load is really an artefact of system and usage inefficiencies, not some inherent problem with renewables.
- Cerium 11y ago
  Exactly! If daytime electricity was cheap enough I would double the size of my refrigerator and fill it with water to increase thermal mass. At night time it would stay cold enough to not use any power. Almost all energy except lighting is good to go. My laptop already has enough power to last the evening. I just need a few watts for the router.
  - dwiel 11y ago
    For sure. I lived in a house with solar + a few old car batteries and it wasn't bad at all.
  - criddell 11y ago

dogma1138 11y ago

>The need for "baseload", "storage", or "the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow" are red herrings. They are not relevant. They aren't red herrings they are poor excuses when used as a reason to not to expand renewable but they aren't without their merit. We need to improve energy storage considerably to be able to push renewables to be actually a major part of the electric grid. A a major part is a very important definition here because they need to be dependable, it's nice when you have a headlines that Denmark has reached 90% of it's energy production with wind for period X but we also need to put it into perspective that it was only a few hours in a single day on a specific year. Solar and wind are being constantly improved it's true but we also need massive improvements in energy storage as well as to renew our interests in better and safer nuclear reactors to actually drive out Fossil Fuel completely and have an abundance of energy that could be used to improve everything around it. Our energy goals shouldn't be aimed at something comparable to fossil fuel we should find ways to produce 10 times what we produce now in a cheap, reliable and environmentally sound fashion. If we have an abundance of electricity many other things can improve, we can stop sucking out out underground water and make desalination cheap for everyone, we can grow more crops faster reducing the amount of food, we can produce more at lower costs. Energy is a much larger bottleneck than people assume, especially to developing countries, better energy production, better grids mean that everyone in Africa can get a water purified, an AC and a fridge, it also means that we can start treating the sewage which is a problem now in many parts of Africa where NGO's gave them a water pump and forgot that they also need plumbing and septic treatment facilities. So while you might claim that solar and wind are here in a massive way, we haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg as far as energy production goes and where we should be. And sadly too many people in the environmental lobbies want to cut down on energy production rather than to increase it 10 fold.

Osiris30 11y ago
Misinformed. Please see my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11524691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11524691 and these links would be helpful http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re_futures/ http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re_futures/ http://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/02/base-load-power-is-a-myth-used-for-defending-the-fossil-fuel-industry/ http://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/02/base-load-power-is-a-myt... http://cleantechnica.com/2014/08/08/rmi-blows-lid-baseload-power-myth-video/ http://cleantechnica.com/2014/08/08/rmi-blows-lid-baseload-p... http://rameznaam.com/2016/01/31/how-far-can-renewables-go-pretty-darn-far/ http://rameznaam.com/2016/01/31/how-far-can-renewables-go-pr...

spacecowboy_lon 11y ago

the requiremnt for baseload is not a read herring.

ageofwant 11y ago
No, but its much less of an issue that its made out to be. It is an argument, but not a particularly strong one. A much better argument is that we want and need many orders of magnitude more energy to do the things than need to be done. And renewables are not energy dense enough for that.

sbov 11y ago

Your own link has a link showing California is already running into these problems you say are not problems: http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2016/04/04/what-will-california-do-with-too-much-solar/ http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2016/04/04/what-will-california-... Batteries are obviously not the only solution - a more connected grid would push the problem into the future, but to claim this is not a relevant problem is ignoring something that is already manifesting.