8 ms·

You're not wrong here, but solar isn't the whole answer either. While storage is also important, there will always be a need for reliable "baseline" power locat

You're not wrong here, but solar isn't the whole answer either. While storage is also important, there will always be a need for reliable "baseline" power located closer to usage centers in order to reduce strain on the national grid. Right now, that is produced by coal or gas. Nuclear is the only realistic "green" option to replace them. Newer small-scale sealed reactor designs make nuclear energy both safer and cheaper than it ever has been. Solar / wind / hydro will certainly displace a lot of coal and gas, but they're not the whole answer in every location.

arghwhat 7y ago
At the same time, nuclear, coal and gas are exactly the power sources that you do not want located close to usage centers, due to their environmental problems. If grid strain is a concern, local storage is likely the best solution, which could be charged slowly from large remote sites. A small windmill or solar farm could also be present nearby. Plus, with solar panels on the roof and batteries like the PowerWall, it's possible for many homes to be self-sufficient from the solar panels, as well as run off their storage (even if charged by the grid instead of solar) to offload the grid, either due to supply issues or just to level out peak demand.
- readams 7y ago
  there is no technology that exists or is contemplated that can provide storage at the required scale. renewables are very cheap when they are a smaller percentage of the power, but as the percentage increases you need to massively over provision them to deal with the variability.
  - kragen 7y ago
    You'll probably want to read the calculations in Dercuano about lithium reserves, but I agree that massive overprovisioning is a better solution than just massive batteries.
  - arghwhat 7y ago
    For current large-scale battery projects, see the 100MW (soon 150MW) Tesla battery deployment in Australia. It is also much easier to install something like a PowerWall in individual homes, and alternative storage forms such as good ol' potential energy storage with water dams or hoisted weights are also available. Finally, unlike with coal/gas/nuclear where plant size and number has a direct negative environmental impact (one thing being that they all need to run idle even if unused), over-provisioning with renewable energy, especially wind, is not really a problem.
    - wayoutthere 7y ago
      PowerWall doesn't remotely scale to grid-scale, and 150MW battery deployments don't begin to address the hundreds of 2000+ MW coal plants [1] out there. They're a band-aid that only works in specific use cases. Battery manufacture, recycling and transport, combined with the need to replace most of the cells every decade are seen to largely negate both the carbon offset and cost benefits of solar. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal_power_stations
      - kragen 7y ago
        Clearly you haven't done the calculations. And what is this nonsense about negating carbon offsets?
      - keanzu 7y ago
        PowerWall scales fine, like most things do, with infinite money. All you need is a ~$10K [1] investment (including installation) for every house every 10 years (warranty period) and voila - grid scale! Oh warranty doesn't cover normal degradation of energy capacity over time. [2] [1] https://www.energysage.com/solar/solar-energy-storage/tesla-powerwall-home-battery/ https://www.energysage.com/solar/solar-energy-storage/tesla-... [2] https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/new-powerwall-warranty/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/new-powerwall-warranty/
- hokkos 7y ago
  No, not for winter heating, also shared is cheaper than privately owned.
  - kragen 7y ago
    You can definitely provide winter heating from rooftop solar panels except within the Arctic and Antarctic circles. Shared things may or may not be cheaper than privately owned; it depends on the particular situation. A utility-scale battery energy storage system needs inverters and distribution lines, each of which have both costs and energy losses; a home battery energy storage system doesn't need distribution lines and may not need inverters. And even if you have shared utility energy storage, it may not meet your reliability needs, so you may need private energy storage anyway, as most data centers do, adding to the costs.
  - arghwhat 7y ago
    Solar in winter is not as bad as you might think. Up here in Scandinavia, the primary issue is the shortened days, which obviously cut our capacity a bit. However, if you're using electric heating in your country, maybe we should start by fixing that first. Use something more efficient like ground heat exchange, and possibly remote heating for residential areas. Electric heating is silly.
skitout 7y ago
Well, hydro is still a big source of energy... A diversified renewable energy mix, including offshore wind is much less intermittent than what u imagine Massive investment in both energy efficiency and demand-response would reduce the need of electricity (even with electric car), and would make the energy consumption more controlable... And mechanical, thermal and electricity storage could be the final peace allowing a mostly renewable grid... Nuclear could definitely help, but not required
- koheripbal 7y ago
  Hydro is not possible in most locations. Diversification is important, but each region must have its own 99.95% reliable power sources. The national grid cannot provide power beyond a few hundred miles without major losses in power. If you look at Quebec, as an example, they lose between 20-40% of their power in transmission because the hydro dams are so much further north than the population centers.
  - kragen 7y ago
    "Cannot" and "does not" are not the same thing; existing 735kV lines in Québec have losses in the 5%–8% range, and new HVDC designs can lower the losses even further. HVDC transmission is potentially economical even at transoceanic distances — thousands of "miles", if you insist on using poorly defined units from the Roman Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro-Qu%C3%A9bec's_electricity_transmission_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro-Qu%C3%A9bec's_electricit...
- belorn 7y ago
  https://www.electricitymap.org https://www.electricitymap.org shows a rather simple pattern. When the wind is clam in EU it goes brown in most countries right now. I take a walk outside and even if south of Sweden is only a single data point, I can often make a pretty good prediction about the color of the map. More dynamic energy grid and storage could change that, as could investment in nuclear. In the mean time the investment money are currently going into the combination of gas plants and wind farms. Its a local maximum where investment into wind pays off as it is cheaper than fossil fuels when the winds blows, and investment into natural gas pays when the wind is still because then its a sellers market.
keanzu 7y ago
> power located closer to usage centers If you are willing to throw money at the problem then high voltage DC transmission lines can move a lot of power over long distances with surprisingly little loss. A 1,100 kV link in China was completed in 2019 over a distance of 3,300 km with a power of 12 GW. HVDC transmission losses are quoted as less than 3% per 1,000 km.
- belorn 7y ago
  What did that cost per km? A large part of the nuclear vs renewable discussing is one about which is cheaper.
  - kragen 7y ago
    Probably not much more than regular transmission lines. Making transmission lines higher in voltage means that they can carry more power over the same amount of current, which means the same amount of aluminum. You just have to put them further apart. A lot of the costs of transmission lines have to do with safety: it's dangerous to repair them, even when you take expensive safety measures. AC and DC lines have different safety characteristics. You've probably seen the videos of helicopter transmission line mechanics working on HVAC lines like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x94BH9TUiHM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x94BH9TUiHM — you see those meter-long arcs when they establish and terminate contact with the lines? Those don't happen on HVDC lines. But HVDC lines have their own special safety concerns. We just don't have the century-plus of experience with them, so it wouldn't be surprising if they were more dangerous at first.
  - keanzu 7y ago
    Unknown. ABB has won orders worth over $300 million to supply breakthrough technologies for the world's first 1,100 kilovolt (kV) ultra-high-voltage direct current (UHVDC) transmission link. [1] For an 8 GW 40 km link laid under the English Channel, the cost was ~£750M. An April 2010 announcement for a 2,000 MW, 64 km line between Spain and France is estimated at €700 million. This includes the cost of a tunnel through the Pyrenees. I'd guess ABB's contract was equipment only and that installing 3000km of power line would have been the majority of the costs based on the Spanish/English/French pricing. [1] https://new.abb.com/news/detail/13922/abb-wins-orders-of-over-300-million-for-worlds-first-1100-kv-uhvdc-power-link-in-china https://new.abb.com/news/detail/13922/abb-wins-orders-of-ove...

arghwhat 7y ago

At the same time, nuclear, coal and gas are exactly the power sources that you do not want located close to usage centers, due to their environmental problems. If grid strain is a concern, local storage is likely the best solution, which could be charged slowly from large remote sites. A small windmill or solar farm could also be present nearby. Plus, with solar panels on the roof and batteries like the PowerWall, it's possible for many homes to be self-sufficient from the solar panels, as well as run off their storage (even if charged by the grid instead of solar) to offload the grid, either due to supply issues or just to level out peak demand.

readams 7y ago
there is no technology that exists or is contemplated that can provide storage at the required scale. renewables are very cheap when they are a smaller percentage of the power, but as the percentage increases you need to massively over provision them to deal with the variability.
- kragen 7y ago
  You'll probably want to read the calculations in Dercuano about lithium reserves, but I agree that massive overprovisioning is a better solution than just massive batteries.
- arghwhat 7y ago
  For current large-scale battery projects, see the 100MW (soon 150MW) Tesla battery deployment in Australia. It is also much easier to install something like a PowerWall in individual homes, and alternative storage forms such as good ol' potential energy storage with water dams or hoisted weights are also available. Finally, unlike with coal/gas/nuclear where plant size and number has a direct negative environmental impact (one thing being that they all need to run idle even if unused), over-provisioning with renewable energy, especially wind, is not really a problem.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    PowerWall doesn't remotely scale to grid-scale, and 150MW battery deployments don't begin to address the hundreds of 2000+ MW coal plants [1] out there. They're a band-aid that only works in specific use cases. Battery manufacture, recycling and transport, combined with the need to replace most of the cells every decade are seen to largely negate both the carbon offset and cost benefits of solar. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal_power_stations
    - kragen 7y ago
      Clearly you haven't done the calculations. And what is this nonsense about negating carbon offsets?
    - keanzu 7y ago
      PowerWall scales fine, like most things do, with infinite money. All you need is a ~$10K [1] investment (including installation) for every house every 10 years (warranty period) and voila - grid scale! Oh warranty doesn't cover normal degradation of energy capacity over time. [2] [1] https://www.energysage.com/solar/solar-energy-storage/tesla-powerwall-home-battery/ https://www.energysage.com/solar/solar-energy-storage/tesla-... [2] https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/new-powerwall-warranty/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/new-powerwall-warranty/
hokkos 7y ago
No, not for winter heating, also shared is cheaper than privately owned.
- kragen 7y ago
  You can definitely provide winter heating from rooftop solar panels except within the Arctic and Antarctic circles. Shared things may or may not be cheaper than privately owned; it depends on the particular situation. A utility-scale battery energy storage system needs inverters and distribution lines, each of which have both costs and energy losses; a home battery energy storage system doesn't need distribution lines and may not need inverters. And even if you have shared utility energy storage, it may not meet your reliability needs, so you may need private energy storage anyway, as most data centers do, adding to the costs.
- arghwhat 7y ago
  Solar in winter is not as bad as you might think. Up here in Scandinavia, the primary issue is the shortened days, which obviously cut our capacity a bit. However, if you're using electric heating in your country, maybe we should start by fixing that first. Use something more efficient like ground heat exchange, and possibly remote heating for residential areas. Electric heating is silly.

skitout 7y ago

Well, hydro is still a big source of energy... A diversified renewable energy mix, including offshore wind is much less intermittent than what u imagine Massive investment in both energy efficiency and demand-response would reduce the need of electricity (even with electric car), and would make the energy consumption more controlable... And mechanical, thermal and electricity storage could be the final peace allowing a mostly renewable grid... Nuclear could definitely help, but not required

koheripbal 7y ago
Hydro is not possible in most locations. Diversification is important, but each region must have its own 99.95% reliable power sources. The national grid cannot provide power beyond a few hundred miles without major losses in power. If you look at Quebec, as an example, they lose between 20-40% of their power in transmission because the hydro dams are so much further north than the population centers.
- kragen 7y ago
  "Cannot" and "does not" are not the same thing; existing 735kV lines in Québec have losses in the 5%–8% range, and new HVDC designs can lower the losses even further. HVDC transmission is potentially economical even at transoceanic distances — thousands of "miles", if you insist on using poorly defined units from the Roman Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro-Qu%C3%A9bec's_electricity_transmission_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro-Qu%C3%A9bec's_electricit...
belorn 7y ago
https://www.electricitymap.org https://www.electricitymap.org shows a rather simple pattern. When the wind is clam in EU it goes brown in most countries right now. I take a walk outside and even if south of Sweden is only a single data point, I can often make a pretty good prediction about the color of the map. More dynamic energy grid and storage could change that, as could investment in nuclear. In the mean time the investment money are currently going into the combination of gas plants and wind farms. Its a local maximum where investment into wind pays off as it is cheaper than fossil fuels when the winds blows, and investment into natural gas pays when the wind is still because then its a sellers market.

keanzu 7y ago

> power located closer to usage centers If you are willing to throw money at the problem then high voltage DC transmission lines can move a lot of power over long distances with surprisingly little loss. A 1,100 kV link in China was completed in 2019 over a distance of 3,300 km with a power of 12 GW. HVDC transmission losses are quoted as less than 3% per 1,000 km.

belorn 7y ago
What did that cost per km? A large part of the nuclear vs renewable discussing is one about which is cheaper.
- kragen 7y ago
  Probably not much more than regular transmission lines. Making transmission lines higher in voltage means that they can carry more power over the same amount of current, which means the same amount of aluminum. You just have to put them further apart. A lot of the costs of transmission lines have to do with safety: it's dangerous to repair them, even when you take expensive safety measures. AC and DC lines have different safety characteristics. You've probably seen the videos of helicopter transmission line mechanics working on HVAC lines like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x94BH9TUiHM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x94BH9TUiHM — you see those meter-long arcs when they establish and terminate contact with the lines? Those don't happen on HVDC lines. But HVDC lines have their own special safety concerns. We just don't have the century-plus of experience with them, so it wouldn't be surprising if they were more dangerous at first.
- keanzu 7y ago
  Unknown. ABB has won orders worth over $300 million to supply breakthrough technologies for the world's first 1,100 kilovolt (kV) ultra-high-voltage direct current (UHVDC) transmission link. [1] For an 8 GW 40 km link laid under the English Channel, the cost was ~£750M. An April 2010 announcement for a 2,000 MW, 64 km line between Spain and France is estimated at €700 million. This includes the cost of a tunnel through the Pyrenees. I'd guess ABB's contract was equipment only and that installing 3000km of power line would have been the majority of the costs based on the Spanish/English/French pricing. [1] https://new.abb.com/news/detail/13922/abb-wins-orders-of-over-300-million-for-worlds-first-1100-kv-uhvdc-power-link-in-china https://new.abb.com/news/detail/13922/abb-wins-orders-of-ove...