3 ms·

What do you see as providing the majority of baseline load by 2060?

by baking 7y ago

pfdietz 7y ago
There will be no place for high levelized cost baseload generators. There will be intermittent sources, short term storage, and various chemical fuels (natural gas with carbon capture, biomass, hydrogen) for long term variability. Additionally, overproduction w. curtailment, dispatchable demand, and long distance transmission be used to ameliorate variability of supply. By 2060, or likely well before, if solar continues down its historical learning curve, solar should be absurdly cheap, so cheap that resistive heat will be cheaper than burning any fossil fuel. We might even see artificial geothermal, where excess power is just dumped into heating rocks and water underground.
- baking 7y ago
  Current PV factories can only provide about 15% of the total energy need if they run at maximum capacity over the next 40 years. (Maybe much less if panels need to be replaced every 20-30 years.) Since the existing factories are losing money, how can you increase the number of factories by a factor of seven or more and still get absurdly cheap PV cells? New factories will only be built if they can justify the capital expense. Yes PV cells will also get more efficient, but the problem of building all the factories to produce them and installing the low energy density solar farms, then storing the energy for daily and seasonal cycles and transmitting it to the population centers is a hugely wasteful process. Who is to say it is more practical than fusion. Spending a few billion to explore more economical ways to generate energy using one of the few methods that nature permits us seems like a drop in the bucket. If some optimists want to try it, good for them. Edit: Most of the expanded PV factory production will be best utilized for industrial processes, further limiting the amount of PV available to replace baseload. https://kavli.berkeley.edu/kavli-ensi-retreat-solar-energy-fuel-generation https://kavli.berkeley.edu/kavli-ensi-retreat-solar-energy-f...
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    In an industry with a strong learning curve -- and solar has a strong one, better than wind -- it makes sense to take near term loses to accumulate experience. Applying your same argument, one could conclude nuclear has no chance, since there is limited capacity to make nuclear power plants, and those making them have been losing large amounts of money. And unlike solar, there are not good experience effects there. Combustion turbines have also shown economic trouble lately. GE's troubles stem in part from betting on that just before demand started collapsing. Who says solar will be more practical than fusion, you ask? Extrapolating historical learning curves, the levelized cost of solar will drop to $0.01/kWh or so by the time the world transitions to mostly solar, especially in the sunniest areas. This is vastly lower than the projected cost of energy from fusion. If you say fusion will show experience effects too, then I'll note that fusion is most like fission, and fission (as I mentioned above) has not shown such effects, probably due to the inherent complexity and long construction time scales. An ultimate low cost for solar will excuse many sins of variability and seasonality, allowing wasteful overinstallation and inefficient long term storage.
    - baking 7y ago
      Learn from history. Nuclear power with all its cost overruns and other issues claimed 15% of the US electric market in 15 years. Where is solar after 40 years? The difference is building factories to produce cells which are made into modules that need to be installed in a sunny location, connected to the grid, and then incorporated into a 24/365 electric demand cycle, versus building a plant that can produce 100% of its power on day one. Part of using the learning curve is knowing where you are on the curve. And remember that it is log-log so you need to keep doubling production to keep getting those cost reductions (if you don't bottom out against reality.) High-temperature superconductors are presumably on the starting point of their learning curve. Increased demands for magnets for fusion research and other applications along with power transmission devices can potentially drive scale and efficiency factors for the production of REBCO tape to drive down the cost measured in $ per A/m.
      - pfdietz 7y ago

What do you see as providing the majority of baseline load by 2060?

by baking 7y ago

What do you see as providing the majority of baseline load by 2060?

There will be no place for high levelized cost baseload generators. There will be intermittent sources, short term storage, and various chemical fuels (natural gas with carbon capture, biomass, hydrogen) for long term variability. Additionally, overproduction w. curtailment, dispatchable demand, and long distance transmission be used to ameliorate variability of supply. By 2060, or likely well before, if solar continues down its historical learning curve, solar should be absurdly cheap, so cheap that resistive heat will be cheaper than burning any fossil fuel. We might even see artificial geothermal, where excess power is just dumped into heating rocks and water underground.

baking 7y ago
Current PV factories can only provide about 15% of the total energy need if they run at maximum capacity over the next 40 years. (Maybe much less if panels need to be replaced every 20-30 years.) Since the existing factories are losing money, how can you increase the number of factories by a factor of seven or more and still get absurdly cheap PV cells? New factories will only be built if they can justify the capital expense. Yes PV cells will also get more efficient, but the problem of building all the factories to produce them and installing the low energy density solar farms, then storing the energy for daily and seasonal cycles and transmitting it to the population centers is a hugely wasteful process. Who is to say it is more practical than fusion. Spending a few billion to explore more economical ways to generate energy using one of the few methods that nature permits us seems like a drop in the bucket. If some optimists want to try it, good for them. Edit: Most of the expanded PV factory production will be best utilized for industrial processes, further limiting the amount of PV available to replace baseload. https://kavli.berkeley.edu/kavli-ensi-retreat-solar-energy-fuel-generation https://kavli.berkeley.edu/kavli-ensi-retreat-solar-energy-f...
- pfdietz 7y ago
  In an industry with a strong learning curve -- and solar has a strong one, better than wind -- it makes sense to take near term loses to accumulate experience. Applying your same argument, one could conclude nuclear has no chance, since there is limited capacity to make nuclear power plants, and those making them have been losing large amounts of money. And unlike solar, there are not good experience effects there. Combustion turbines have also shown economic trouble lately. GE's troubles stem in part from betting on that just before demand started collapsing. Who says solar will be more practical than fusion, you ask? Extrapolating historical learning curves, the levelized cost of solar will drop to $0.01/kWh or so by the time the world transitions to mostly solar, especially in the sunniest areas. This is vastly lower than the projected cost of energy from fusion. If you say fusion will show experience effects too, then I'll note that fusion is most like fission, and fission (as I mentioned above) has not shown such effects, probably due to the inherent complexity and long construction time scales. An ultimate low cost for solar will excuse many sins of variability and seasonality, allowing wasteful overinstallation and inefficient long term storage.
  - baking 7y ago
    Learn from history. Nuclear power with all its cost overruns and other issues claimed 15% of the US electric market in 15 years. Where is solar after 40 years? The difference is building factories to produce cells which are made into modules that need to be installed in a sunny location, connected to the grid, and then incorporated into a 24/365 electric demand cycle, versus building a plant that can produce 100% of its power on day one. Part of using the learning curve is knowing where you are on the curve. And remember that it is log-log so you need to keep doubling production to keep getting those cost reductions (if you don't bottom out against reality.) High-temperature superconductors are presumably on the starting point of their learning curve. Increased demands for magnets for fusion research and other applications along with power transmission devices can potentially drive scale and efficiency factors for the production of REBCO tape to drive down the cost measured in $ per A/m.
    - pfdietz 7y ago