4 ms·

Of course it will provide some output. The issue here is that if you want the diminished power output in winter to cover the energy use in winter, you need to e

by xyzzyz 7y ago

Of course it will provide some output. The issue here is that if you want the diminished power output in winter to cover the energy use in winter, you need to either store the summer energy in some way, or overbuild by adding additional generation capacity, so that in summer you have some good multiple generating capacity of what you actually need, especially if you account for transmission losses, which are 2/3rds of current electricity generation. The result is that the spot price of energy in summer will be extremely low, and so the capital costs of building solar panels will have to be recovered by selling winter energy, precisely when solar panels generate least power. This will push the cost of electricity from renewables through the roof: right now they are quite competitive, because they can sell it for good price in summer.

ggm 7y ago
You don't seem to understand either pumped-hydro, or economics. Using hyperbolic language like "through the roof" when we cannot magically wave a wand to make a 100% renewables world in one go, but are approaching it asymptotically means that the pricing function, the costs, and the outcomes are not 'through the roof' but a function of where we are in a migration. I don't know how to predict the future reliably either. I just think the argument here is ridiculously reductive. We aren't on mars. The current systems exist, and won't be turned off overnight, and we don't have a single global network in the economy under discussion. Pricing and distribution and storage have to be approached, not arrived at suddenly, And have upside consequences like increased employment, which means the spend is not 'hole in the ground' but actually has net beneficial effects on the economy. To repeat what I said elsewhere you have mis-represented the 2/3 losses figure. https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/electricity.pdf https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/electr... (same source as you) is clear transmission losses are significantly different. You rolled up energy conversion and production losses from all sources which includes Coal and Gas and Oil and Nuclear.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  > You don't seem to understand either pumped-hydro, No, you don't seem to understand pumped-hydro. The largest pumped-hydro plant in the US, the Bath County Pumped Storage Station, can store enough energy to satisfy US energy use for 250 milliseconds. Yes, milliseconds. Suppose you want to have enough pumped-hydro to store US energy use for, say, 1 hour. There are 3600 seconds in an hour. You need ~15 000 pumped hydro plants. Where are you going to build them? Where are you going to get enough water from? > or economics. Using hyperbolic language like "through the roof" when we cannot magically wave a wand to make a 100% renewables world in one go, but are approaching it asymptotically means that the pricing function, the costs, and the outcomes are not 'through the roof' but a function of where we are in a migration. Of course it will be "a function" of something. The above sentence is devoid of content. The real question is, what will be the shape of the function? I argue that if we depend on renewables on majority of our energy, the cost per kWh produced will go through the roof. I argue why it is so. Do you have any argument? Show me your math, like I do in my every comment. > And have upside consequences like increased employment, which means the spend is not 'hole in the ground' but actually has net beneficial effects on the economy. This is just a broken window fallacy. Having lots of people spend lots of effort on something that before didn't require so many people will be greatly detrimental, not beneficial to economy. > To repeat what I said elsewhere you have mis-represented the 2/3 losses figure. Ah, thanks. I misinterpreted the figure.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Where are you getting 250 milliseconds and needing 15,000 from? Wikipedia claims US yearly electricity consumption is 4,090 TWh, and Bath County stores 24 TWh, with a generation capacity of 3,003 MW. That comes out as enough storage for a couple of days worth of US electricity use. Obviously you'd need 3 more to cover generation capacity.
    - xyzzyz 7y ago
      Ah, I rechecked, I actually lost 2 orders of magnitude. It's 25 seconds, not 250 milliseconds. However, you lost 3 orders of magnitude: Bath County is 24 GWh, not TWh. My calculation was done under assumption of 101 quads of annual US energy use, but I'll redo this calculation with assumption more charitable to your argument. US uses only 4090 TWh worth of electricity, which is about 13 quads, but it also uses about 70 quads of energy in other forms than electricity. See the breakdown at [1]. Let's assume that moving to all-electric world reduces the transportation energy use by half. In all electric world, the 25 quads we waste to generate electricity also vanish. Thus, the annual US energy needs is 101 - 25 - 14 = 62 quads, assuming we can increase efficiency by replacing majority of heat engines with electric engines. Putting this in Wolfram Alpha[2] gives you about 40 seconds. So, now we need about 100 pumped hydro plants of the same size as largest one energy storage facility in existence, to cover 1 hour of US energy use (I'm ignoring of course the problem of not enough generating capacity to convert that storage to electricity fast enough as needed). Where are you going to build them? Where are you going to take water from? [1] - https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained//us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained//us-energy-facts/ [2] - https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2824GWh%2F62+quads%2Fyear%29+to+seconds https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2824GWh%2F62+quads%2F...
      - flukus 7y ago
        > So, now we need about 100 pumped hydro plants of the same size as largest one energy storage facility in existence There are about 70 > 1MW pumped storage stations around the world already, with 40 more planned (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroel...), mostly in China. These are just glorified dams and as far as dams go they're tiny, so scaling up (and maybe down too) isn't an issue, there are an estimated 84,000 dams already in the United States. At ~$4 bilion dollars to build 100 of them would come in at the cost of about 1/3 the F-35 program and deliver much more national security. So it's entirely feasible to have enough pumped hydro storage to cover this mythical scenario of a continent having no wind for an hour.

by xyzzyz 7y ago

ggm 7y ago

You don't seem to understand either pumped-hydro, or economics. Using hyperbolic language like "through the roof" when we cannot magically wave a wand to make a 100% renewables world in one go, but are approaching it asymptotically means that the pricing function, the costs, and the outcomes are not 'through the roof' but a function of where we are in a migration. I don't know how to predict the future reliably either. I just think the argument here is ridiculously reductive. We aren't on mars. The current systems exist, and won't be turned off overnight, and we don't have a single global network in the economy under discussion. Pricing and distribution and storage have to be approached, not arrived at suddenly, And have upside consequences like increased employment, which means the spend is not 'hole in the ground' but actually has net beneficial effects on the economy. To repeat what I said elsewhere you have mis-represented the 2/3 losses figure. https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/electricity.pdf https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/electr... (same source as you) is clear transmission losses are significantly different. You rolled up energy conversion and production losses from all sources which includes Coal and Gas and Oil and Nuclear.

xyzzyz 7y ago
> You don't seem to understand either pumped-hydro, No, you don't seem to understand pumped-hydro. The largest pumped-hydro plant in the US, the Bath County Pumped Storage Station, can store enough energy to satisfy US energy use for 250 milliseconds. Yes, milliseconds. Suppose you want to have enough pumped-hydro to store US energy use for, say, 1 hour. There are 3600 seconds in an hour. You need ~15 000 pumped hydro plants. Where are you going to build them? Where are you going to get enough water from? > or economics. Using hyperbolic language like "through the roof" when we cannot magically wave a wand to make a 100% renewables world in one go, but are approaching it asymptotically means that the pricing function, the costs, and the outcomes are not 'through the roof' but a function of where we are in a migration. Of course it will be "a function" of something. The above sentence is devoid of content. The real question is, what will be the shape of the function? I argue that if we depend on renewables on majority of our energy, the cost per kWh produced will go through the roof. I argue why it is so. Do you have any argument? Show me your math, like I do in my every comment. > And have upside consequences like increased employment, which means the spend is not 'hole in the ground' but actually has net beneficial effects on the economy. This is just a broken window fallacy. Having lots of people spend lots of effort on something that before didn't require so many people will be greatly detrimental, not beneficial to economy. > To repeat what I said elsewhere you have mis-represented the 2/3 losses figure. Ah, thanks. I misinterpreted the figure.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Where are you getting 250 milliseconds and needing 15,000 from? Wikipedia claims US yearly electricity consumption is 4,090 TWh, and Bath County stores 24 TWh, with a generation capacity of 3,003 MW. That comes out as enough storage for a couple of days worth of US electricity use. Obviously you'd need 3 more to cover generation capacity.
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    Ah, I rechecked, I actually lost 2 orders of magnitude. It's 25 seconds, not 250 milliseconds. However, you lost 3 orders of magnitude: Bath County is 24 GWh, not TWh. My calculation was done under assumption of 101 quads of annual US energy use, but I'll redo this calculation with assumption more charitable to your argument. US uses only 4090 TWh worth of electricity, which is about 13 quads, but it also uses about 70 quads of energy in other forms than electricity. See the breakdown at [1]. Let's assume that moving to all-electric world reduces the transportation energy use by half. In all electric world, the 25 quads we waste to generate electricity also vanish. Thus, the annual US energy needs is 101 - 25 - 14 = 62 quads, assuming we can increase efficiency by replacing majority of heat engines with electric engines. Putting this in Wolfram Alpha[2] gives you about 40 seconds. So, now we need about 100 pumped hydro plants of the same size as largest one energy storage facility in existence, to cover 1 hour of US energy use (I'm ignoring of course the problem of not enough generating capacity to convert that storage to electricity fast enough as needed). Where are you going to build them? Where are you going to take water from? [1] - https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained//us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained//us-energy-facts/ [2] - https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2824GWh%2F62+quads%2Fyear%29+to+seconds https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2824GWh%2F62+quads%2F...
    - flukus 7y ago
      > So, now we need about 100 pumped hydro plants of the same size as largest one energy storage facility in existence There are about 70 > 1MW pumped storage stations around the world already, with 40 more planned (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroelectric_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroel...), mostly in China. These are just glorified dams and as far as dams go they're tiny, so scaling up (and maybe down too) isn't an issue, there are an estimated 84,000 dams already in the United States. At ~$4 bilion dollars to build 100 of them would come in at the cost of about 1/3 the F-35 program and deliver much more national security. So it's entirely feasible to have enough pumped hydro storage to cover this mythical scenario of a continent having no wind for an hour.