3 ms·
There is a very good chance i've screwed up my math, but my silly back of the envelope calculation says, 9.54 * 10^17 Joules/ (3.6 *10^9 Joules/mwh) = 26500000
by jfoutz 10y ago
There is a very good chance i've screwed up my math, but my silly back of the envelope calculation says,
9.54 * 10^17 Joules/ (3.6 *10^9 Joules/mwh) = 265000000 mwh. Levelized cost, [1] (operating + construction + financing) works out to around $72 per mwh, over 30 years. (going with the cheapest average option) So if we were to throw away everything today, and be required start fresh, I get about $570 billion.
That's clearly a stupid thing to do.
However, my big point is, if solar falls another order of magnitude (which is a pretty big if), we can afford to spend a lot on storage. I think solar is now competitive with coal, but it's not dispatchable.
I'd argue solar would probably need 4x the amount of production of a similar coal plant, it's only going to work really well part of the day, and there are losses in storage (ares claims 20% loss, which is comparable to batteries)
there's not much weight difference between gravel and packed dirt. I figured they'd just use whatever mass is handy when they're building the track.
I don't know if $120k is a fair price. the cars have to have regenerative breaks, which are likely expensive. Just building something strong enough to support 100 metric tons can't be cheap. I don't know if there are any special features of regular freight cars that can be abandoned to cut down costs. On the other hand, if you're building a million of them, the costs would likely come down a bit.
Perhaps solar has reached the end, and any improvements will be slow. I don't believe that, and i do believe some sort of efficient storage will be the big focus in energy going forward.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
- joshkpeterson 10y agoFactor in the cost of society collapsing due to carbon driven climate change, and see where that gets you :)
- patall 10y agoIF solar falls another order of magnitude, it will be far cheaper (which only has the conversion efficiency problem) to go for power-to-gas technology that has the additional advantage of being able to use gas (not gasoline) powered cars with normal range.
- reitanqild 10y agoIIRC one of the big ideas behind ARES is to make money by supplying peak power for consumption and possibly even by taking peak power production off the grid. Basically a grid scale AC capacitor equivalent. I only have education in electronics and no other experience with High Voltage or big grids so I might be very wrong.
- 08-15 10y agoIf power-to-gas means methane, it's bullshit. You'd need a source of carbon dioxide, and despite all the hype, it's only a trace gas in the atmosphere. (Personally, I think power-to-gas is a propaganda piece invented to link renewables and natural gas in the minds of gullible people.)
- nulltype 10y agoHow does that compare to other energy storage though?
- jfoutz 10y agoFavorably. 84% is 16% loss. batteries are 20-30% loss. hydro can compete, but the southwest has lots of sun and hills. not so much with huge supplies of cheap or free water. the southwest is nice, because 300+ days of sun. cloud cover may reduce efficiency, but might actually improve it. clouds reflect more light from the ground. There are many options for storage. Trains are very very good. You need to beat 80% to beat a train. Some things can do that, but they're not cheap, like land in the SW.
- kaybe 10y agoThe further you build your renewable energy grid over peak consumption, the less storage you need, because if, let's say, an input of 50% electricity of installed capacity is 100% of peak consumption, the days where you actually need to draw from the storage will be less and the days where you can fill the storage will be more, in simple terms. There are studies on this.