5 ms·

We'll need a lot more wind and solar, so Prometheus will drive the expansion of these. We'll start out taking intermittent power that's low cost (wind at midnig

We'll need a lot more wind and solar, so Prometheus will drive the expansion of these. We'll start out taking intermittent power that's low cost (wind at midnight, for example), but will soon have resources built for us to expand. This will be good for displacing other fossil fuel use (other than transportation), as we will be increasing the availability of renewable power, and also solving the problem of being able to use the excess (we can be seen as a kind of grid storage).

mrguyorama 7y ago
Wouldn't you have to really be paying above market rates to "drive" the expansion of renewables? Any thoughts about essentially building/running your own renewable power facilities?
- rmcginnis 7y ago
  We will just have to agree to a purchase power agreement (PPA), and others will build the renewable power plants for us. We will be going for very large scale, so will help to drive electricty prices down from where they are now. There is a lot of competition to build renewable power plants.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Renewable power plants are not reliable producers of power. When they produce power they are the cheapest, so utilities would love to have more - but they need a backup plan for when renewable power isn't running which they have complex management schemes to deal with. Expansion of renewable energy it limited more by the power companies willingness to buy it than by ability to install more (though that is of course an issue as well). If they can scale their process quickly (not just on-off, but to levels in between) the power company will be happy to give them a substantial discount. They can probably get power for $.03/kwh - windmills are about $.02 for profit so that is plenty of profit to pay for transmission infrastructure. Of course they have to agree to how quickly they can change their production. This assumes they can turn off completely at 5pm when everyone gets home and jumps in the shower needing hot water. Then go to full production as they go to bed while the wind blows the best. Then drop down overnight. Then scaling up again as the sun comes up. In the late afternoon as the sun is hot they scale down to account for air conditioning. Of course they may as well shut down for maintenance in December (Christmas lights). If they can pull this off renewable energy can scale grow to be much better while taking more power plants offline. That is a big if though.
femto 7y ago
So the plan is to only use excess renewable energy that otherwise wouldn't get produced and consumed? If not wouldn't you be a net carbon generator, as you would be burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon in order to capture a lesser amount of carbon in your process? What steps are in place to prevent the process from displacing other renewable use? Take the fact that it is less than 100% efficient to store renewable energy as gasoline. Others might make more efficient use of this renewable energy by immediately using it to displace fossil fuels, with no or lower storage losses. Under this scenario Prometheus is again a net carbon generator. (edit: The same dilemma is faced by any other type of storage.) It strikes me that Prometheus will come into its own if it can guarantee that it doesn't displace more efficient users. This will happen when fossil fuel usage becomes negligible or we (as a society) come up with a sophisticated energy scheduling algorithm that can take account of efficiency. It comes back to that fact that whilst it is green to replace fossil with renewable energy, it's even greener if we can increase efficiency and avoid consuming that energy in the first place. Don't get me wrong, correctly used it's a great thing you are doing.
- LamaOfRuin 7y ago
  Allocating commodity resources efficiently is what capitalist economies are actually pretty good at. A couple of scenarios where this is ideal: 1. Located close to intermittent renewable generation that is already hooked up to the grid, especially in places like California where intermittent renewables can already push generation beyond load at peak times and result in near zero or negative prices, this can soak up electricity usefully in a way that displaces other carbon emitting fuel. 2. Deployed along with intermittent renewables in the most optimal places for generation, where connection to the grid is impossible, inefficient, or will simply take time. This can soak up the most efficient possible generation of deployable renewables which would make otherwise uneconomical utility scale deployment viable. Both of these are scenarios that our capitalist market system should work well to optimize for assuming the electricity->fuel technology reaches suitable efficiency (and not before then).

mrguyorama 7y ago

Wouldn't you have to really be paying above market rates to "drive" the expansion of renewables? Any thoughts about essentially building/running your own renewable power facilities?

rmcginnis 7y ago
We will just have to agree to a purchase power agreement (PPA), and others will build the renewable power plants for us. We will be going for very large scale, so will help to drive electricty prices down from where they are now. There is a lot of competition to build renewable power plants.
bluGill 7y ago
Renewable power plants are not reliable producers of power. When they produce power they are the cheapest, so utilities would love to have more - but they need a backup plan for when renewable power isn't running which they have complex management schemes to deal with. Expansion of renewable energy it limited more by the power companies willingness to buy it than by ability to install more (though that is of course an issue as well). If they can scale their process quickly (not just on-off, but to levels in between) the power company will be happy to give them a substantial discount. They can probably get power for $.03/kwh - windmills are about $.02 for profit so that is plenty of profit to pay for transmission infrastructure. Of course they have to agree to how quickly they can change their production. This assumes they can turn off completely at 5pm when everyone gets home and jumps in the shower needing hot water. Then go to full production as they go to bed while the wind blows the best. Then drop down overnight. Then scaling up again as the sun comes up. In the late afternoon as the sun is hot they scale down to account for air conditioning. Of course they may as well shut down for maintenance in December (Christmas lights). If they can pull this off renewable energy can scale grow to be much better while taking more power plants offline. That is a big if though.

femto 7y ago

So the plan is to only use excess renewable energy that otherwise wouldn't get produced and consumed? If not wouldn't you be a net carbon generator, as you would be burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon in order to capture a lesser amount of carbon in your process? What steps are in place to prevent the process from displacing other renewable use? Take the fact that it is less than 100% efficient to store renewable energy as gasoline. Others might make more efficient use of this renewable energy by immediately using it to displace fossil fuels, with no or lower storage losses. Under this scenario Prometheus is again a net carbon generator. (edit: The same dilemma is faced by any other type of storage.) It strikes me that Prometheus will come into its own if it can guarantee that it doesn't displace more efficient users. This will happen when fossil fuel usage becomes negligible or we (as a society) come up with a sophisticated energy scheduling algorithm that can take account of efficiency. It comes back to that fact that whilst it is green to replace fossil with renewable energy, it's even greener if we can increase efficiency and avoid consuming that energy in the first place. Don't get me wrong, correctly used it's a great thing you are doing.

LamaOfRuin 7y ago
Allocating commodity resources efficiently is what capitalist economies are actually pretty good at. A couple of scenarios where this is ideal: 1. Located close to intermittent renewable generation that is already hooked up to the grid, especially in places like California where intermittent renewables can already push generation beyond load at peak times and result in near zero or negative prices, this can soak up electricity usefully in a way that displaces other carbon emitting fuel. 2. Deployed along with intermittent renewables in the most optimal places for generation, where connection to the grid is impossible, inefficient, or will simply take time. This can soak up the most efficient possible generation of deployable renewables which would make otherwise uneconomical utility scale deployment viable. Both of these are scenarios that our capitalist market system should work well to optimize for assuming the electricity->fuel technology reaches suitable efficiency (and not before then).