5 ms·

Under 2.5 cents per a kWh is very cheap, but I'm guessing there are other costs like storage on top? Anyways will be interesting to see for the future if solar

by tekni5 10y ago

Under 2.5 cents per a kWh is very cheap, but I'm guessing there are other costs like storage on top? Anyways will be interesting to see for the future if solar actually becomes a more dominant source of energy worldwide.

deleted 10y ago
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dx034 10y ago
I guess most energy in UAE is used for cooling which should be highly correlated to solar output. They could probably meet most of their energy demand with solar power without significant amount of storage. Furthermore, desalination will probably also play a major role in electricity consumption and I can imagine that plants can be adjusted to solar power production instead of running them at the same level 24/7 (pure speculation, no idea how the technology behind this works). Edit: All water in UAE comes from desalination[0], so using clean water storage with larger plants instead of energy storage could be cheaper. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Abu_Dhabi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  > They could probably meet most of their energy demand with solar power without significant amount of storage. Not really, I was living in Dubai last year, and during the summer it was around 48C/120F in the day but it's still 35C/95F+ at night. As you can imagine literally everywhere inside is air conditioned, even some bus stops are! Due to the lower latitude the days are also quite short (at least compared to Europe), so solar less effective without some sort of backup or storage. The desalination plants are usually combined with power plants. The main source of fuel for power generation is natural gas, which is a by-product of oil drilling and often just burned off as it's harder to transport or store. Clean water is needed to run the turbines, so sea water is desalinated and then afterwards used for the water supply. It leads to an overall efficiency of ~86%, but if you assume the gas would have just be burnt off it's effectively free energy.
  - rbanffy 10y ago
    Some cooling systems make ice when energy prices are lower to use as a heat sink when energy prices are higher. The same principle can be applied here - during day the energy is used to cool and to make enough ice for cooling to last through the night.
  - dx034 10y ago
    Ok, agree with the AC, but you could use an ice storage solution as proposed in the other comment (at least for commercial buildings). For desalination, you could still use solar power for desalination plants and sell the natural gas instead of burning it? At 2.5c/mwh I can imagine that it's more lucrative to switch power and sell the gas to a country like US or UK where NatGas is needed for power plants as solar power is much more expensive.
    - pm90 10y ago
      It is a thoughtful suggestion but Im guessing that if it was possible to ship off that gas and make a profit, it probably would have already been done. Perhaps its not that cost effective right now. In any case, I think now is a good time for them to invest in developing these alternatives, perhaps on a smaller scale, so that when they run out of all the plentiful fossil fuels, they would then have another system that meets their needs.
    - deleted 10y ago
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jessriedel 10y ago
Yea, by way of Tyler Cowen, there is good reason to think that storage costs are dominant: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/further-research-on-the-limits-of-solar-energy.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/fur... http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/07/what-are-the-costs-of-solar-power-intermittency.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/07/wha... Still unclear whether future developments (like mass desalinization mentioned by dx034) will change this. Or storage just could become unexpectedly cheaper, like solar itself did.
diafygi 10y ago
You can get to approximately 50% penetration safely without storage[1], then you have to start adding factors that can deal with intermittent sources like wind and solar[2]. It doesn't have to be storage, either. You can used demand response signals to outsource your "storage" by paying people to turn off their electric vehicle charging or ice manufacturing for a period of time. In energy, reducing demand has the same result as increasing supply. Additionally, in hotter places like the UAE, solar irradiation tends to correlate much more with grid load, since cooling is the primary energy use. So, you could safely push well beyond the 50% penetration point for solar/wind. [1]: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~vsmith/docs/renewables_sgc_2013.pdf https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~vsmith/docs/renewables_sgc... [2]: https://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pdfs/2010ulw_ellis.pdf https://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pdfs/2010ulw_ellis.pdf
- Loic 10y ago
  > solar irradiation tends to correlate much more with grid load. This is a very interesting remark. Last week, we had relatively high temperatures in Germany and France (above 30°C). In Germany, because the weather was perfect for solar, this reduced the middle of the day spot price where in France, this increased the spot price[0]. [0]: https://www.eex.com/en/ https://www.eex.com/en/ "European Energy Exchange"
  - brownbat 10y ago
    In the US, the peaks are in the afternoon, when you have a mix of business and residential use along with lingering high temperatures in summer.[0] In the UK, meanwhile, peak load is driven by tea kettles and Eastenders.[1] [0a] 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-... [0b] http://businesstech.co.za/news/hardware/86252/new-battery-tech-will-change-how-we-use-power/ http://businesstech.co.za/news/hardware/86252/new-battery-te... [0c] https://www.cnet.com/news/a-technology-race-to-curb-peak-energy-demand/ https://www.cnet.com/news/a-technology-race-to-curb-peak-ene... [0d] There's a great NPR viz on power sources around the US, though somewhat dated now: http://www.npr.org/2009/04/24/110997398/visualizing-the-u-s-electric-grid http://www.npr.org/2009/04/24/110997398/visualizing-the-u-s-... [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/britainfromabove/stories/people/teatimebritain.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/britainfromabove/stories/people/teatime...

by tekni5 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dx034 10y ago

I guess most energy in UAE is used for cooling which should be highly correlated to solar output. They could probably meet most of their energy demand with solar power without significant amount of storage. Furthermore, desalination will probably also play a major role in electricity consumption and I can imagine that plants can be adjusted to solar power production instead of running them at the same level 24/7 (pure speculation, no idea how the technology behind this works). Edit: All water in UAE comes from desalination[0], so using clean water storage with larger plants instead of energy storage could be cheaper. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Abu_Dhabi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...

lucaspiller 10y ago
> They could probably meet most of their energy demand with solar power without significant amount of storage. Not really, I was living in Dubai last year, and during the summer it was around 48C/120F in the day but it's still 35C/95F+ at night. As you can imagine literally everywhere inside is air conditioned, even some bus stops are! Due to the lower latitude the days are also quite short (at least compared to Europe), so solar less effective without some sort of backup or storage. The desalination plants are usually combined with power plants. The main source of fuel for power generation is natural gas, which is a by-product of oil drilling and often just burned off as it's harder to transport or store. Clean water is needed to run the turbines, so sea water is desalinated and then afterwards used for the water supply. It leads to an overall efficiency of ~86%, but if you assume the gas would have just be burnt off it's effectively free energy.
- rbanffy 10y ago
  Some cooling systems make ice when energy prices are lower to use as a heat sink when energy prices are higher. The same principle can be applied here - during day the energy is used to cool and to make enough ice for cooling to last through the night.
- dx034 10y ago
  Ok, agree with the AC, but you could use an ice storage solution as proposed in the other comment (at least for commercial buildings). For desalination, you could still use solar power for desalination plants and sell the natural gas instead of burning it? At 2.5c/mwh I can imagine that it's more lucrative to switch power and sell the gas to a country like US or UK where NatGas is needed for power plants as solar power is much more expensive.
  - pm90 10y ago
    It is a thoughtful suggestion but Im guessing that if it was possible to ship off that gas and make a profit, it probably would have already been done. Perhaps its not that cost effective right now. In any case, I think now is a good time for them to invest in developing these alternatives, perhaps on a smaller scale, so that when they run out of all the plentiful fossil fuels, they would then have another system that meets their needs.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

jessriedel 10y ago

Yea, by way of Tyler Cowen, there is good reason to think that storage costs are dominant: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/further-research-on-the-limits-of-solar-energy.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/fur... http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/07/what-are-the-costs-of-solar-power-intermittency.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/07/wha... Still unclear whether future developments (like mass desalinization mentioned by dx034) will change this. Or storage just could become unexpectedly cheaper, like solar itself did.

diafygi 10y ago

You can get to approximately 50% penetration safely without storage[1], then you have to start adding factors that can deal with intermittent sources like wind and solar[2]. It doesn't have to be storage, either. You can used demand response signals to outsource your "storage" by paying people to turn off their electric vehicle charging or ice manufacturing for a period of time. In energy, reducing demand has the same result as increasing supply. Additionally, in hotter places like the UAE, solar irradiation tends to correlate much more with grid load, since cooling is the primary energy use. So, you could safely push well beyond the 50% penetration point for solar/wind. [1]: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~vsmith/docs/renewables_sgc_2013.pdf https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~vsmith/docs/renewables_sgc... [2]: https://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pdfs/2010ulw_ellis.pdf https://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pdfs/2010ulw_ellis.pdf

Loic 10y ago
> solar irradiation tends to correlate much more with grid load. This is a very interesting remark. Last week, we had relatively high temperatures in Germany and France (above 30°C). In Germany, because the weather was perfect for solar, this reduced the middle of the day spot price where in France, this increased the spot price[0]. [0]: https://www.eex.com/en/ https://www.eex.com/en/ "European Energy Exchange"
- brownbat 10y ago
  In the US, the peaks are in the afternoon, when you have a mix of business and residential use along with lingering high temperatures in summer.[0] In the UK, meanwhile, peak load is driven by tea kettles and Eastenders.[1] [0a] 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-... [0b] http://businesstech.co.za/news/hardware/86252/new-battery-tech-will-change-how-we-use-power/ http://businesstech.co.za/news/hardware/86252/new-battery-te... [0c] https://www.cnet.com/news/a-technology-race-to-curb-peak-energy-demand/ https://www.cnet.com/news/a-technology-race-to-curb-peak-ene... [0d] There's a great NPR viz on power sources around the US, though somewhat dated now: http://www.npr.org/2009/04/24/110997398/visualizing-the-u-s-electric-grid http://www.npr.org/2009/04/24/110997398/visualizing-the-u-s-... [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/britainfromabove/stories/people/teatimebritain.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/britainfromabove/stories/people/teatime...