4 ms·

Ahh thanks for pointing those out I missed those skimming for `Wh`. "Storage needs to provide 55GW" seems to come from peak consumption rate considering gross

Ahh thanks for pointing those out I missed those skimming for `Wh`. "Storage needs to provide 55GW" seems to come from peak consumption rate considering gross yearly generation was at 556TWh in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France This seems to be assuming that there will be 0 generation and all must come from storage which is not really a something that will happen in practice and also over night (when all solar is at 0 generation) consumption is usually a lot lower than peak. "Even with Tesla Model X (which has the biggest battery currently) you'll need 260 millions car to provide enough storage for France" This is just strange figures considering that the Model X base model battery size is 75kWh. Why would France need 19.5 TWh of car based storage? Even at a peak of 55GW usage, this fleet of 260M Model X cars would power all of France for 2 weeks! Realistically, vehicle to grid will only be a portion of storage and to get into the 90% renewable range only 12 hours of storage would be required which would be ~600GWh which even if all had to come from cars (overly expensive, not practical etc..) that would be <20 million Model X or ~30% of current cars on their roads (assuming owners would only allow their batteries to become 50% depleted). Again, this is assuming 0 generation over night which with a lot of wind all over the country would be unlikely, AND peak load over night, which doesn't happen in practice.

littlestymaar 9y ago
> "Storage needs to provide 55GW" seems to come from peak consumption rate Peek consumption in France is around 90 GW if we don't face exceptional weather conditions, but it has been as high as 102GW in 2012. sources [1] > is not really a something that will happen in practice and also over night (when all solar is at 0 generation) consumption is usually a lot lower than peak. In France the peak is in winter (due to electric heating) and the daily peak is around 7pm, at which time France is in the dark for 2 hours already (the sunset is around 5pm in winter). Then no solar production at this point. And there's been some days with wind power producing less than 5% of its capacity. At this point you really need a good backup, and my point is that the storage will never be enough. > Why would France need 19.5 TWh of car based storage? Even at a peak of 55GW usage, this fleet of 260M Model X cars would power all of France for 2 weeks! As I said earlier, peak is far from 55GW in winter. And the correct amount of storage needed is 26 TWh, it's calculated based on the actual wind and solar efficiency during 2017[2]. And you're right, what France needs two weeks of storage in winter, because that's how long episodes without wind lasted in 2017 (I'm not even taking historical records here, just the most recent year we have data about). > Realistically, vehicle to grid will only be a portion of storage and to get into the 90% renewable range only 12 hours of storage would be required which would be ~600GWh which even if all had to come from cars (overly expensive, not practical etc..) that would be <20 million Model X or ~30% of current cars on their roads (assuming owners would only allow their batteries to become 50% depleted). That's hand-wavy reasoning, but that doesn't resist the actual analysis I did when writing this article. It might be true for some country, but it surely doesn't work like that for France. If you're curious, don't hesitate to have a look at the data and the calculation [2]. [1] : http://www.rte-france.com/fr/eco2mix/chiffres-cles http://www.rte-france.com/fr/eco2mix/chiffres-cles [2] : https://bourrasque.info/images/20180116-moulins-%C3%A0-vent/donn%C3%A9es%20RTE%20+%20stats.ods https://bourrasque.info/images/20180116-moulins-%C3%A0-vent/...
- layoric 9y ago
  Great response, thank you! Showing my ignorance of situations in Europe and how they differ from Australia. Thanks for the corrections around usage as well as the spreadsheet full of data! 50 times for solar is quite a lot (~350GW installed rooftop or does it include solar parks?), not practical for solar alone, at least not in the next 20 years. I'm not sure about France, but in other parts of the world, most of the solar power generation has been added in the last 5 or so years I remain optimistic that installation rates will continue to grow, but your data has shown me that for locations with heavy heating requirements, aiming for 100% renewable anytime soon is just not practical. Thanks again for the spreadsheet, I work with solar forecasting (including for Europe!), we have only started modeling for storage and would be very interested where the hourly solar generation on the grid came from and other work you've done in this area. My email is [darren at solcast dot com dot au].

littlestymaar 9y ago

> "Storage needs to provide 55GW" seems to come from peak consumption rate Peek consumption in France is around 90 GW if we don't face exceptional weather conditions, but it has been as high as 102GW in 2012. sources [1] > is not really a something that will happen in practice and also over night (when all solar is at 0 generation) consumption is usually a lot lower than peak. In France the peak is in winter (due to electric heating) and the daily peak is around 7pm, at which time France is in the dark for 2 hours already (the sunset is around 5pm in winter). Then no solar production at this point. And there's been some days with wind power producing less than 5% of its capacity. At this point you really need a good backup, and my point is that the storage will never be enough. > Why would France need 19.5 TWh of car based storage? Even at a peak of 55GW usage, this fleet of 260M Model X cars would power all of France for 2 weeks! As I said earlier, peak is far from 55GW in winter. And the correct amount of storage needed is 26 TWh, it's calculated based on the actual wind and solar efficiency during 2017[2]. And you're right, what France needs two weeks of storage in winter, because that's how long episodes without wind lasted in 2017 (I'm not even taking historical records here, just the most recent year we have data about). > Realistically, vehicle to grid will only be a portion of storage and to get into the 90% renewable range only 12 hours of storage would be required which would be ~600GWh which even if all had to come from cars (overly expensive, not practical etc..) that would be <20 million Model X or ~30% of current cars on their roads (assuming owners would only allow their batteries to become 50% depleted). That's hand-wavy reasoning, but that doesn't resist the actual analysis I did when writing this article. It might be true for some country, but it surely doesn't work like that for France. If you're curious, don't hesitate to have a look at the data and the calculation [2]. [1] : http://www.rte-france.com/fr/eco2mix/chiffres-cles http://www.rte-france.com/fr/eco2mix/chiffres-cles [2] : https://bourrasque.info/images/20180116-moulins-%C3%A0-vent/donn%C3%A9es%20RTE%20+%20stats.ods https://bourrasque.info/images/20180116-moulins-%C3%A0-vent/...

layoric 9y ago
Great response, thank you! Showing my ignorance of situations in Europe and how they differ from Australia. Thanks for the corrections around usage as well as the spreadsheet full of data! 50 times for solar is quite a lot (~350GW installed rooftop or does it include solar parks?), not practical for solar alone, at least not in the next 20 years. I'm not sure about France, but in other parts of the world, most of the solar power generation has been added in the last 5 or so years I remain optimistic that installation rates will continue to grow, but your data has shown me that for locations with heavy heating requirements, aiming for 100% renewable anytime soon is just not practical. Thanks again for the spreadsheet, I work with solar forecasting (including for Europe!), we have only started modeling for storage and would be very interested where the hourly solar generation on the grid came from and other work you've done in this area. My email is [darren at solcast dot com dot au].