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You're right that arrangements that mostly avoid storage are possible, but might not be cost efficient in a way that leads to their eventual adoption, and any m

You're right that arrangements that mostly avoid storage are possible, but might not be cost efficient in a way that leads to their eventual adoption, and any mass adoption of renewables at high percentages of overall capacity requires some kind of major investment beyond the cost of generation itself, to deal with the intermittency, be it storage or transmission (and the latter is really only helpful if by "renewables" you mostly mean wind -- the intermittency of solar is obviously highly correlated over broad geographic areas). Still, I think the more interesting question isn't "could it be done" -- it's pretty clear that it could -- but "could it be done in a manner that's cost-competitive with non-renewable technologies," and there's pretty abundant research at this point that shows that any advantages renewables have in terms of levelized cost of ownership get more than wiped out once these kinds of investments are factored in; see, e.g., https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-2017/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... From the executive summary: > Despite the sustained and growing cost-competitiveness of certain Alternative Energy technologies, advanced economies will require diverse generation fleets to meet baseload generation needs for the foreseeable future with specific numbers in the actual report. It's easy enough to focus on Europe or the Americas where the rich have the comparable luxury of being able to overpay for generation if the political will is there, but the overwhelming majority of new generation capacity brought online globally in the next century won't be in these places, it will be in Asia, Africa, and South America, as these countries work towards developmental parity with the West. We need to come up with solutions that aren't just possible, but cheap, and deployable in places that are starting from basically nothing in terms of modern grid infrastructure, and where hyper-inefficient diesel generation is currently the norm, to the extent that electricity is broadly available at all (as is the case in large parts of Africa in particular today). Again: this isn't to say that renewables can't work, or that any other particular technology will or won't be the solution. We just don't know yet, both in terms of feasibility and economics.

Certhas 8y ago
The study I linked to looks at nothing but the cost of dealing with intermittency and comes to the conclusion that it's barely more expensive than the current system. Also, once you go into the developing world context a lot of things change. What is difficult and expensive in the European context is to guarantee the last few hours of electricity a year. If you can take an area that has a few hours of electricity a week to that point, you have a massive win already. Plus you can build sector coupling in from the beginning. In a green field scenario you _really_ want wind/solar as a decentral bootstrapping technology that scales down, that can get you a really long way. Bangladesh has >5 million solar home systems installed. That's a Norway or a Denmark population running 100% on decentral off-grid solar. Edit: An important point here is to be aware of time horizons. A study looking at a 2025 or a 2030 system looks very different from one that looks at a 2050 system. If the foreseeable future means the next ten years, then sure.
jnxx 8y ago
> We need to come up with solutions that aren't just possible, but cheap Renewable energy sources are already cheaper than traditional nuclear energy, in many parts of the world already cheaper than fossil sources, and rapidly getting even cheaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity And at the same time, Westinghouse had to file for chaper 11 bankruptcy because ... well, nuclear power does not seem to be so economical at all. As an interesting side note, both nuclear power as well as renewable energy sources have the cost structure that almost all investments are up-front, while the relative amount of running costs is very small. Because in a market system, the marginal cost of production per unit determines the market price, and the market price is therefore close to zero, both technologies have the problem that they actually need subsidies and incentives to be created. In other words, while renewable power sources definitively need incentives, nuclear power also can't exist without huge subsidies.
- apendleton 8y ago
  > Renewable energy sources are already cheaper than traditional nuclear energy Again: only when looking at the cost of generation alone. It's more expensive if you factor in the storage and/or long-distance transmission necessary for high utilization (even the study I'm responding to says so, though by a smaller amount than I've seen elsewhere -- ~13%). > well, nuclear power does not seem to be so economical at all. Nuclear power isn't economical under the current regulatory environment and set of political realities. There's no fundamental reason that that need be the case. More people die from wind and solar per year than nuclear (mostly installers and technicians falling off of things), and obviously both are dwarfed by orders of magnitude by coal once externalities are factored in. If we were as risk-averse with those sources as we are with nuclear, they would be expensive too. Coupled with the slowness of construction eliminating economies of scale or effective market competition, and you don't have a great situation.
  - jnxx 8y ago
    I live in Scotland, and was living in Northern Germany before. We do have high penetration here: https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3029756/scottish-wind-power-enjoys-record-breaking-start-to-2018 https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3029756/scottish-wind-... And it works pretty well. The last power failure I can remember which was in any way related to wind energy was in 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_European_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_European_blackout (but wind energy was not the primary cause, the main cause was bad planning) What happens at large scale is that the fluctuations induced by variable wind speeds smooth out over larger regions. And having a large, interconnected grid is usually much cheaper than battery storage. What would also help is diversification. In Scotland, there was a fascinating project to generate electricity from wave power, the Pelamis wave power converter. It had working 500 kW installation but was scrapped then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYzocwUfpNg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYzocwUfpNg Fortunately, some Chinese companies seem to have copied the design: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3832029/Chinese-wave-power-device-suspiciously-similar-Scottish-machine.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3832029/Chinese-wave... > If we were as risk-averse with those sources as we are with nuclear, they would be expensive too. A wind power plant blowing up will not cause half of Europe to be contaminated with huge costs to agriculture, like it happened in 1986. You must also not forgot the extreme health costs of uranium mining.

Certhas 8y ago

The study I linked to looks at nothing but the cost of dealing with intermittency and comes to the conclusion that it's barely more expensive than the current system. Also, once you go into the developing world context a lot of things change. What is difficult and expensive in the European context is to guarantee the last few hours of electricity a year. If you can take an area that has a few hours of electricity a week to that point, you have a massive win already. Plus you can build sector coupling in from the beginning. In a green field scenario you _really_ want wind/solar as a decentral bootstrapping technology that scales down, that can get you a really long way. Bangladesh has >5 million solar home systems installed. That's a Norway or a Denmark population running 100% on decentral off-grid solar. Edit: An important point here is to be aware of time horizons. A study looking at a 2025 or a 2030 system looks very different from one that looks at a 2050 system. If the foreseeable future means the next ten years, then sure.

jnxx 8y ago

> We need to come up with solutions that aren't just possible, but cheap Renewable energy sources are already cheaper than traditional nuclear energy, in many parts of the world already cheaper than fossil sources, and rapidly getting even cheaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity And at the same time, Westinghouse had to file for chaper 11 bankruptcy because ... well, nuclear power does not seem to be so economical at all. As an interesting side note, both nuclear power as well as renewable energy sources have the cost structure that almost all investments are up-front, while the relative amount of running costs is very small. Because in a market system, the marginal cost of production per unit determines the market price, and the market price is therefore close to zero, both technologies have the problem that they actually need subsidies and incentives to be created. In other words, while renewable power sources definitively need incentives, nuclear power also can't exist without huge subsidies.

apendleton 8y ago
> Renewable energy sources are already cheaper than traditional nuclear energy Again: only when looking at the cost of generation alone. It's more expensive if you factor in the storage and/or long-distance transmission necessary for high utilization (even the study I'm responding to says so, though by a smaller amount than I've seen elsewhere -- ~13%). > well, nuclear power does not seem to be so economical at all. Nuclear power isn't economical under the current regulatory environment and set of political realities. There's no fundamental reason that that need be the case. More people die from wind and solar per year than nuclear (mostly installers and technicians falling off of things), and obviously both are dwarfed by orders of magnitude by coal once externalities are factored in. If we were as risk-averse with those sources as we are with nuclear, they would be expensive too. Coupled with the slowness of construction eliminating economies of scale or effective market competition, and you don't have a great situation.
- jnxx 8y ago
  I live in Scotland, and was living in Northern Germany before. We do have high penetration here: https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3029756/scottish-wind-power-enjoys-record-breaking-start-to-2018 https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3029756/scottish-wind-... And it works pretty well. The last power failure I can remember which was in any way related to wind energy was in 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_European_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_European_blackout (but wind energy was not the primary cause, the main cause was bad planning) What happens at large scale is that the fluctuations induced by variable wind speeds smooth out over larger regions. And having a large, interconnected grid is usually much cheaper than battery storage. What would also help is diversification. In Scotland, there was a fascinating project to generate electricity from wave power, the Pelamis wave power converter. It had working 500 kW installation but was scrapped then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYzocwUfpNg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYzocwUfpNg Fortunately, some Chinese companies seem to have copied the design: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3832029/Chinese-wave-power-device-suspiciously-similar-Scottish-machine.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3832029/Chinese-wave... > If we were as risk-averse with those sources as we are with nuclear, they would be expensive too. A wind power plant blowing up will not cause half of Europe to be contaminated with huge costs to agriculture, like it happened in 1986. You must also not forgot the extreme health costs of uranium mining.