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« a remaining challenge of implementing their roadmaps is that they require coordination across political boundaries » Maybe it’s the main one ?

neilwilson 7y ago
Indeed. Energy is like currency. It has to be under the control of a political authority with complete control over it. At the moment that structure is still the nation state. Once you step outside the nation state you need sufficient geopolitical diversity of supply between nations that you can abandon one if necessary. As ever you need highly cohesive units, loosely coupled if you want them to be responsive to change.
- roenxi 7y ago
  > Energy ... has to be under the control of a political authority with complete control over it. Energy has been harvested by plants for millions of years before nation states were a thing. It is nothing like currency, which requires advanced political and technological development to exist as we have it today as a form of electronic credit. The only link at all is we can agree that both energy and currency have measurable value. The only reason political authorities get involved in energy is to secure it for their own people, or for Safety/Environmental reasons. How energy gets used is a somewhat political question - but only in the sense that literally everything humans do is a somewhat political question. I could harvest and use energy for myself with very little state involvement, for example.
lumberjack 7y ago
What he means in the paper is, geopolitical boundaries. For example, Japan and China depending on each other's grids. Or the various African countries depending on each other. Or the middle eastern countries sharing a grid.
- petre 7y ago
  Good luck with that. The study could have concentrated on how to balance electrical grids using PHEV and flywheel storage instead on scifi solutions that are either inefficient, not applicable in the current geopolitical context or both.
  - 6thaccount2 7y ago
    Why should someone concentrate on that? This area is mostly understood fairly well. It's just the current amount of storage is tiny compared to the need. California has had 15 GW ramps before to give you the scale of what you'd need for only a grid with renewables and storage and technically you need much more than that. Uncertainty is one of the big topics in this area. Load forecast is very accurate, but wind and solar is difficult to get right in the day out timeline.

neilwilson 7y ago

Indeed. Energy is like currency. It has to be under the control of a political authority with complete control over it. At the moment that structure is still the nation state. Once you step outside the nation state you need sufficient geopolitical diversity of supply between nations that you can abandon one if necessary. As ever you need highly cohesive units, loosely coupled if you want them to be responsive to change.

roenxi 7y ago
> Energy ... has to be under the control of a political authority with complete control over it. Energy has been harvested by plants for millions of years before nation states were a thing. It is nothing like currency, which requires advanced political and technological development to exist as we have it today as a form of electronic credit. The only link at all is we can agree that both energy and currency have measurable value. The only reason political authorities get involved in energy is to secure it for their own people, or for Safety/Environmental reasons. How energy gets used is a somewhat political question - but only in the sense that literally everything humans do is a somewhat political question. I could harvest and use energy for myself with very little state involvement, for example.

lumberjack 7y ago

What he means in the paper is, geopolitical boundaries. For example, Japan and China depending on each other's grids. Or the various African countries depending on each other. Or the middle eastern countries sharing a grid.

petre 7y ago
Good luck with that. The study could have concentrated on how to balance electrical grids using PHEV and flywheel storage instead on scifi solutions that are either inefficient, not applicable in the current geopolitical context or both.
- 6thaccount2 7y ago
  Why should someone concentrate on that? This area is mostly understood fairly well. It's just the current amount of storage is tiny compared to the need. California has had 15 GW ramps before to give you the scale of what you'd need for only a grid with renewables and storage and technically you need much more than that. Uncertainty is one of the big topics in this area. Load forecast is very accurate, but wind and solar is difficult to get right in the day out timeline.