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Exploring strategies to decarbonize electricity
- gens 9y agoAs someone who actually went to school for electrics and stuff, this is completely useless. Was google always this hipster ?
- wawerOS 9y agoDo you mean the model is inaccurate, or that modeling this problem itself is unhelpful?
- gens 9y agoThat the model is useless for anyone actually wanting to do something about carbon emissions (or about anything really). If you told a senior engineer of a power company that you want to reduce carbon emissions by/to some value, they would take out a notebook and pull out real data from power plants and distribution things (power lines, transformers) and tell you how much money and time they need to do it. They would not do hypotheticals or some graphs based on some generalized models of a power grid, but real equations based on real data. Solar does not work the same in Saudi Arabia as it does in Norway as Norway gets less sun. It is similar for wind and all the water powered plants. Some solutions are much more viable for some places (my city is bad for wind and so-so bad for solar (there are maps for bout), but just some 50km away those become somewhat viable options (wind more then solar). There is also the power loss on distribution. For example the loss on power distribution in my country was 15% when i went to school, where it should be 5%. The engineers working at the power company knew exactly why and where the problems are. Funny enough hotter countries have inherently more losses there. Engineers know what must be done to accomplish something, and it is not done by making generalized "models" (water power plants are usually the best solution, after/next to nuklear). (I'l skip over the huge problems with wind and solar power that were probably not solved properly here, as i don't have time now) In the end the real proper solution is to better isolate houses use more efficient electronics. That has been going strong as most "developed" countries subsidize the construction of your house if you use better materials and practices, and there are stricter.. restrictions on what kind of electric devices you can sell (for example you can't sell a vacuum cleaner with power usage over 1.5kW, as many were making high power but inefficient vacuums). TLDR: It doesn't work that way, and engineers already know what to do but don't have the money to do it. It is not a technical problem, but a political one (as almost all bigger problems are). PS Ironically, these interactive web graphs are very power inefficient. EDIT: Just to be clear; if the difference between the amount of power you get from 1m^2 of solar panels in Uganda and the same in Sweden was 5%, and the difference in cost of building a dam on soft soil versus building it on hard soil was 5%, i wouldn't say anything. But the differences are massive, making one way of generating power much more cost effective then another in one specific region (and solar and wind have a big problem of storing power, that is also a bit region specific; IIRC Hawaii has that problem now).
- placeybordeaux 9y agoThat argument leaves a lot to be desired. Congrats on your "stuff" degree.
- gens 9y ago> Congrats on your "stuff" degree. "Technician for electro-machinery", but it doesn't matter since we all learn mostly the same "stuff" (i guess i get a bonus on generators, +5 to inductor calculating and winding). 14 hours and maybe a couple good arguments in the whole thread. I responded to the other person as to why this is just a nice graph for the masses to enjoy.
- csours 9y agoI'd love to see a tool like this for comparing Internal Combustion Engines to Battery Electric Vehicles. By some previous calculations of mine, it looked like BEVs had 10k miles worth of CO2 baked into the batteries, but I honestly have no idea if that is correct or not.
- theWatcher37 9y agoI always see comparisons for gas consumption vs construction of electric vehicles but they never include the CO2 emissions related to producing ICEs and transmissions.
- blacksmith_tb 9y agoThat isn't improbable - half the emissions associated with an IC-engine car stem from its manufacture[1]. Of course, the battery should be recycled, so you'd hope that in the long run those numbers will come down. 1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...
- aidenn0 9y agoLithium based rechargeables are unlikely to be recycled in the near-term. Doing so is hard, and there are a variety of chemistries used, so you don't have the economies of scale like with lead-acid, where recycling one lead-acid battery is much liker recycling another.
- ZeroGravitas 9y agoSeems about right: "Over the vehicle’s lifetime, however, the global warming emissions benefits of driving on electricity far outweigh the emissions costs of vehicle manufacturing; most EVs “pay back” their production emissions within one or two years of driving, a period that will shorten as electricity grids get cleaner. Read more about manufacturing emissions in our in-depth analysis of life cycle EV emissions, "Cleaner from Cradle to Grave" (2015)." http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/ev-emissions-tool-faq#bf-toc-9 http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/ev-em... (They also have an interactive tool, but it only does mileage based on your local grid and vehicle, not manufacturing)
- harwoodleon 9y agoThere is an important omission here: battery technology. I'm not talking about tesla power walls - although they would go some way to smoothing the troughs for solar. I'm talking about the 7.2 megawatt-hour sodium-sulfur battery systems that islands like Reunion adopt, or Japan's 34-MW, 245-MWh wind energy stabiliser. Installing local generation systems and removing the burden on the national grid systems which lose so much energy to transmission will also have an impact that I think is not calculated here in the visualisation graph.... it can make up to 6-9% of a difference! This figure can be up to 20% in undeveloped countries. ...but I have not read the paper - maybe those effects are mentioned there
- philipkglass 9y agoEnergy storage is part of the model by default. If you play with it here: https://google.github.io/energystrategies https://google.github.io/energystrategies Click "Explore Future Assumptions" and you can toggle storage on and off. As expected, you can't rely solely on solar and wind when the storage toggle is off.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago> Energy storage is part of the model by default. Not quite. You can end up with a model where there's excessive power during some parts of the day and not enough power during other parts; energy storage would allow using the peaks to fill in the troughs.
- jaggederest 9y agoIf you go to the advanced page, it includes storage as a part of the calculations when optimizing for cost. It usually doesn't play a very large part (I was only able to get it up to ~$2/mWh) but it certainly counts.
- kilroy123 9y agoI'm starting to think it's a waste of time even pursuing battery storage on a large scale. Sometimes going low-tech is the better and cheaper way. This tech looks _way_ more promising and it's already in use now: Molten salt storage https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-concentrating-solar-tower-is-worth-its-salt-with-24-7-power/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-concentrating... I have no idea the costs, but I'm sure if ramped up it could be cheaper.
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- notananthem 9y agoAdding more nuclear makes energy cheaper and cleaner. Add more nuclear.
- Reason077 9y agoCleaner, yes (arguably). But not cheaper - nuclear is very expensive! The Google model suggests $2200/kW is the build price point at which all carbon emissions will be displaced. To give an idea of the cost of nuclear, the UK is currently building it's first new nuclear station since the 1990s (Hinkley Point C), at an expected cost of £20.3b ($26.3b) for 3200 MWe capacity. That's $8230/kW - almost 4x more expensive than what's needed!
- sillysaurus3 9y agoI wouldn't be surprised if nuclear is expensive solely because it's ostracized. The moment it becomes unfashionable to bash it is the moment R&D can drive the cost down, as in every other area of technology.
- tertius 9y agoAnd the moment that insane regulations are lifted. http://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2017/08/10/the_nuclear_regulatory_commission_working_itself_out_of_a_job_110241.html http://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2017/08/10/the_nucle...
- legulere 9y agoA lot of nuclear power plant costs is manual construction labor. Construction costs are continuing to rise, because the fields efficiency improvements are far below the general economy.
- llukas 9y agoWhat counts is LCOE not just build cost. But you're right that somehow we lost ability to build nuclear power stations without going over budget several times.
- spodek 9y agoWe'll probably always need electricity, so we need some solutions, but nothing compares with reducing consumption -- principally each person using less and having fewer people to use it. As in business, you don't only increase revenues to increase profitability. Often lowering costs is more effective. Starting points include getting past the belief that happiness or society depends on electrical power as much as it does. We need some, but nowhere near what we're using. Also accounting for costs that are currently externalized.
- emodendroket 9y agoAny plan that depends on individual consumers making choices in the aggregate to solve the problem is simply doomed.
- spodek 9y agoHacker News seems to have interesting collective beliefs such as that it's easier to go to Mars than to turn off the lights when no one is in the room.
- eropple 9y agoSmelting aluminum requires between 12,500 kWh and 15,000 kWh of electricity per ton of yield. My lights use 8.5 Wh apiece. The notion that consumer savings will make a dent in our problem has a few problems with decimal places. This is, by-and-large, a capital-driven problem. It's probably true that a reduction of individual consumption of stuff would be more beneficial than our energy use, too...but then that creates a new problem for that capital, too. So not only is avoiding the collective-action problem probably easier, but it's more effective, too.
- spodek 9y ago1. Working on the different problems you described is not mutually exclusive. 2. How many aluminum smelting plants are there? How many light bulbs? The decimal places seem to go the other way. This Wikipedia page -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aluminium_smelters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aluminium_smelters -- lists a bunch of aluminum smelters. While it says it's incomplete, its existence implies it has most of them. I doubt there is a page listing all the light bulbs. Once habitualized, turning them off takes negligible extra time or effort. 3. I don't mean to be flippant, but are you arguing against conservation?
- DrNuke 9y agoThe study is interesting but actual deployment of any strategy is still out of Google's control, so I fear this tool will live as little more than an academic exercise, same as similar tools coming from academia, supernational organizations and biased lobbies. That said, Google is also actively investing in electricity generation and that kind of effort may come more useful, if pursued with determination, so we will see where they actually put their money, other than their mouth.
- jaggederest 9y agoThese tools are really compelling to me. I was dubious that a carbon tax would be sufficient to motivate substantial change, but it looks to me like a $40/ton carbon tax would drastically improve carbon emissions, and a $100/ton tax would virtually eliminate it. I think as a way of exploring regulatory goals they're fascinating - very few situations does someone set up a simulation of the impact of a law and give laypeople knobs and buttons to play with to see how it would work.
- EGreg 9y agoDoes nuclear power also add heat to the Earth? All forms of obtaining energy for use in machines have heat as a byproduct. How long can we sustain that?
- DennisP 9y agoYes, but it's an extremely low amount compared to the heat we trap by emitting greenhouse gases. Solar panels also add heat to the Earth, since they are black and absorb more solar radiation than a lighter-colored surface. This is also extremely minor compared to fossil emissions.
- marcosdumay 9y agoEarth's heat is in an equilibrium with the Sun and Space. If you add a heat generator, you will see that more heat is emitted out into space and the temperature does not increase much (and stays constant after a short increase). But if you change the equilibrium point (like by adding greenhouse gases), you'll see the temperature changing quite quickly.
- EGreg 9y agoHow do the greenhouse gases change the equilibrium point while other mechanisms of increasing heat don't?
- drewrv 9y agoGreenhouse gases don't simply increase heat. They change the composition of the atmosphere. It's similar to the way adding salt or alcohol to water will change the freezing temperature of the water.
- baq 9y agoGreenhouse gases don't add heat, they reduce the amount radiated to space, thus making the planet warmer.
- marcosdumay 9y agoTechnically both change the equilibrium point. But one acts by adding heat, and the other by directly influencing the equilibrium.
- ethanwillis 9y agoOne thing that people should look at is MOF or other solutions to do carbon capture at existing fossil fuel/coal plants. MOFs can be highly efficient at removing carbon output from these older plants. Then the flue gases we currently emit can be re-used as reagents in algae bioreactors to produce biodiesel.
- ZeroGravitas 9y agoSetting the carbon tax level to the EPA's social cost of carbon seems to work out.
- briantakita 9y agoThe carbon tax especially works out for the political class & bankers who would be entrusted to manage the funds & transfer the wealth. It also benefits the wealthy Tesla buying consumers at the expense of the poorer gasoline buying public. In the meantime, Al Gore has multiple houses & uses 34x more electricity than the average US household... http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/02/exclusive-al-gores-home-devours-34-times-more-electricity-than-average-u-s-household/ http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/02/exclusive-al-gores-home-de... Also, don't plants breathe carbon? Wouldn't this imply that there would be a biological feedback loop (more carbon means more plant growth)?
- carapace 9y ago(Oh Googleers and your vast screens. I can't get both the controls and the readout in the same screen. :-( )
- dietdrb 9y agoHow do we make renewables more competitive so that we can get our local utilities to invest in them? A carbon fee and dividend. Price carbon at its true cost and let the market decide! There is important work being done by Citizen's Climate Lobby. CCL is incredibly effective, but we need the help of the creative minds and energies of HN. Check out citizensclimatelobby.org to get involved in your local chapter.
- SamPhillips 9y ago+1 to CCL, they are a well-respected organization. (disclosure, I work at Google, but not in any way related to this project)
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- jdavis703 9y agoCan you buy clean energy from your utility? If you're in California PG&E has a program called Solar Choice where it attempts to offset your electrical consumption by building additional renewable capacity. So far it's only added about $2 or $3 to my bill. Many other utilities have similar programs.
- mseebach 9y agoAt the risk of stating the obvious, if it's only added $2-3 to your bill, then it's only given the energy company $2-3 to build renewable capacity. That's not nearly enough to make any kind of meaningful impact in your carbon footprint (assuming you have somewhat average consumption).
- jdavis703 9y agoI spend about $20-30/month on electricity, so it's about a 10% change. My electrical consumption is about as low as I think one can get it without going without things like refrigerators.
- PeanutCurry 9y ago
- db48x 9y agoElectricity doesn't usually have carbon in it. It's more convenient to push electrons back and forth in a wire than it is to push carbon atoms back and forth.
- nebabyte 9y agoNot to be confused with decarbonating electricity. edit aw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14986447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14986447
- hokkos 9y agoIt's something I thought about creating too, but it seems to miss a lot of variables, solar and wind is not constant during a year so it should be yearly not weekly, it seems USA specific it should be able to take solar or wind data per country there is massive variation of rate depending on the region, also consumption is geographic dependant. And it crashes on my iPad after few seconds.
- iUsedToCode 9y agoGoogle could invest a bit more money in R&D. They sit on awesome pile of money and yet aren't a significant player in energy. Why? Not smart enough? Don't think so. Oh, i forgot. Google is here to make money. They might write some blog posts about CO2, but will not use their leverage to change things. That would damage the bottom line. Why is it that all the big companies are 100% driven by short term profits? Maybe our understanding of capitalism isn't so great after all. We need more responsibility.
- concede_pluto 9y agoGoogle has no competitive advantage in energy. No way to evaluate world class expertise. If I plowed a billion dollars into energy, I'd waste most of it, and they wouldn't do much better.
- thinkfurther 9y agoYou'd waste it only in comparison with some hypothetical others spending a billion dollars in a hypothetical zero sum game where either they or you spend that, but not compared to not spending it at all or on stuff that makes the problem worse.
- markvdb 9y agoFrom the simulations website: "A megawatt-hour of electricity is about the amount a household uses in a month." That is the elephant in the room. Our household of three adults can comfortably live on about one sixth of that amount. Who can tell me with a straight face that living comfortably on three times our electricity consumption is impossible, even in a harsher, less moderate climate? That alone would reduce US household consumption by 50%! I applaud Google for coming up with this tool. I also hope it will open its eyes to the feasibility of changing people's consumption patterns.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoA megawatt-hour is 1.38kW continuous consumption. It's not hard to imagine how a household could use that. Two long how showers per day per person, air conditioning / heating, a pool heater, a fridge, another fridge in the garage, a deep freezer in the back room. Some people have multiple always-on PCs and screens. And now we're expecting everyone to recharge their car at home too.
- icebraining 9y agoThe point is not that it's hard to imagine; it's that it can be considered normal. Why would people take two long showers every day?! Or leave screens turned on all night at home?
- wiz21c 9y agospot on. But now, how do you make people accept the new normal in the (idealistic) time frame required by COP 21 goals ?
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoI gave up asking my partner to close the bathroom and bedroom doors when she is at home during the day with the heat pump set to 25 degrees C. It causes the heat pump to run flat out because it can't deal with that much hear loss. And she's one of these save the whales type. And she wasn't working (receiving welfare) and I was paying the utility bills. So I asked her to move out. Which doesn't solve the problem, just relocates it. Point being, people don't know. And that's ok, there's plenty of stuff I don't know. We just need to engineer solutions to these problems. And maybe some of that is social engineering. But in the mean time: I give up.
- Boothroid 9y agoNow if we could only find a solution to the difficult problem of massively powerful tech companies prying into our lives and selling what they discover for profit.. Oh, Hi Google!
- i_heart_robots 9y agoI heard Australia is doing this thing with clean coal. You just inject the coal with a gas, and you have zero emmissions.
- dboreham 9y agoFundamental problem : Electricity is not sufficiently costly to induce people to figure out how to consume less.