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Headline says: "US can reach 90 percent clean electricity by 2035" and you gave your analysis. GP is asking how your analysis would change if we drop the targe

by desdiv 6y ago

Headline says: "US can reach 90 percent clean electricity by 2035" and you gave your analysis. GP is asking how your analysis would change if we drop the target to "US reaching 80 percent clean electricity by 2035".

hairytrog 6y ago
Short answer: anything above 20% is unproven and will cost significantly more if you expect to have 100% uptime/reliability. If you're okay with 95% uptime, wind/solar can get the job done, and I believe cheaper based on https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2542435119303009 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S25424... ____ The flaw with renewables is they are so dam cheap and so dam finicky. Basically, renewables force nukes and nat gas to sell power at a loss or sit idly by for most of the time. This becomes worse and worse as the renewable's market share increases and they eat away at the profitability of the dispatchable sources. The limit is something like 20% at which point nukes and nat gas just can't make any money and so a free market system would just get rid of them. But yet, they need to be there, just in case, because they are dispatchable and you want shit to work at all times. Unfortunately, prices for consumers don't go down because you need the super dispatchable power sources which just sit there for a lot of the time and cost just about the same if you have em on or off, and you also just built a bunch of renewables which are cheap and make money for the guys who built them, but hurt the rest of the grid because you have a bunch of idle equipment (gas/nukes during the day and most of the year, panels at night). Lower cost storage is a way to address that, but has to be really low cost, especially when you increase wind/solar market share. Keep in mind, there's not yet a good solution for long term storage (days or weeks or months). To go beyond 20% renewables you need a power market that rewards dispatchable sources, essentially preventing solar and wind from taking all the money and bidding everyone into oblivion. If the market is fair, there will be little incentive to push renewables because they just make things more expensive. There's a bunch of ideas on how to do this like capacity payments. Might work, but it's gonna cost more because of all the unused equipment. Everything is possible, you just need to be willing to pay for it. In an 80% renewables grid, most of the time, renewables will be meeting 100% of demand and producing much more than needed. 20% of the power is delivered by nat gas. But they will mostly be called to do that only on the bad days where they will have to be able to match closer to 100% of the demand. So you've basically got two nearly complete fleets. Who's gonna pay for the idle equipment? The solar power producers should right? One data point: Germany is 30% renewables and pays 50% higher than EU average. That's old prices in a country not ideal for renewables. It's no Arizona or Washington.
- bildung 6y ago
  > One data point: Germany is 30% renewables and pays 50% higher than EU average. The price of energy in Germany was already high before the switch to renewables, for reasons unrelated to renewables. The renewables surcharge only is 21% of the price per kWh: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1009248/household-power-price-composition-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1009248/household-power-... Edit: I feel it's worth mentioning that the price per kWh only tells half the story. High energy prices also incentivize buying efficient appliances and having well-insulated houses: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Annual-household-electrical-consumption-Enerdata-via-World-Energy-Council-15_fig4_329680977 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Annual-household-electri... As anecdata, our German household of five only pays about 80€/month for electricity (cooking with electricity, heating and warm water with gas). Every serious plan of conversion of an economy towards renewables has reduced energy consumption through reduction of waste as a core element.
- autokad 6y ago
  That's interesting, I didn't know of these limitations. I wonder if we could end up doing something like we do with farming and pay farmers not to grow crops
- bretpiatt 6y ago
  > Short answer: anything above 20% is unproven and will cost significantly more if you expect to have 100% uptime/reliability CPS Energy, serving the San Antonio, TX metro is already above 20% renewable[1] and its rates are very low, to the point San Antonio is a preferred data center location. [1] https://cpsenergy.com/en/about-us/programs-services/energy-generation.html https://cpsenergy.com/en/about-us/programs-services/energy-g...
  - evgen 6y ago
    So CPS energy and it’s grid are disconnected from the rest of the national grid and have no reliance upon external sources to ensure dispatchability? Cool. Would love to hear more about how they managed that trick.
7thaccount 6y ago
The SPP region (small piece of Texas and then the heartland around Oklahoma and Kansas although there are many states) has already hit > 70% renewable penetration during some hours of the day with very little storage, but a LOT of wind (> 20 GW). The problem is sustaining that 70% for a longer time period. Wind is intermittent, so firming it up with additional solar (also intermittent, but generally at different times) and a lot of storage would have to be the next step if you wanted a sustained > 70%. I'd guess with very high probability that this region (very geographically large), but not too many large population centers will hit 80% renewable penetration within 3 years based off of current growth. It is still a guess as to how long it will take before you'd see 80% across peak and not in the morning. Still, this has all happened in a few years.

by desdiv 6y ago

hairytrog 6y ago

Short answer: anything above 20% is unproven and will cost significantly more if you expect to have 100% uptime/reliability. If you're okay with 95% uptime, wind/solar can get the job done, and I believe cheaper based on https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2542435119303009 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S25424... ____ The flaw with renewables is they are so dam cheap and so dam finicky. Basically, renewables force nukes and nat gas to sell power at a loss or sit idly by for most of the time. This becomes worse and worse as the renewable's market share increases and they eat away at the profitability of the dispatchable sources. The limit is something like 20% at which point nukes and nat gas just can't make any money and so a free market system would just get rid of them. But yet, they need to be there, just in case, because they are dispatchable and you want shit to work at all times. Unfortunately, prices for consumers don't go down because you need the super dispatchable power sources which just sit there for a lot of the time and cost just about the same if you have em on or off, and you also just built a bunch of renewables which are cheap and make money for the guys who built them, but hurt the rest of the grid because you have a bunch of idle equipment (gas/nukes during the day and most of the year, panels at night). Lower cost storage is a way to address that, but has to be really low cost, especially when you increase wind/solar market share. Keep in mind, there's not yet a good solution for long term storage (days or weeks or months). To go beyond 20% renewables you need a power market that rewards dispatchable sources, essentially preventing solar and wind from taking all the money and bidding everyone into oblivion. If the market is fair, there will be little incentive to push renewables because they just make things more expensive. There's a bunch of ideas on how to do this like capacity payments. Might work, but it's gonna cost more because of all the unused equipment. Everything is possible, you just need to be willing to pay for it. In an 80% renewables grid, most of the time, renewables will be meeting 100% of demand and producing much more than needed. 20% of the power is delivered by nat gas. But they will mostly be called to do that only on the bad days where they will have to be able to match closer to 100% of the demand. So you've basically got two nearly complete fleets. Who's gonna pay for the idle equipment? The solar power producers should right? One data point: Germany is 30% renewables and pays 50% higher than EU average. That's old prices in a country not ideal for renewables. It's no Arizona or Washington.

bildung 6y ago
> One data point: Germany is 30% renewables and pays 50% higher than EU average. The price of energy in Germany was already high before the switch to renewables, for reasons unrelated to renewables. The renewables surcharge only is 21% of the price per kWh: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1009248/household-power-price-composition-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1009248/household-power-... Edit: I feel it's worth mentioning that the price per kWh only tells half the story. High energy prices also incentivize buying efficient appliances and having well-insulated houses: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Annual-household-electrical-consumption-Enerdata-via-World-Energy-Council-15_fig4_329680977 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Annual-household-electri... As anecdata, our German household of five only pays about 80€/month for electricity (cooking with electricity, heating and warm water with gas). Every serious plan of conversion of an economy towards renewables has reduced energy consumption through reduction of waste as a core element.
autokad 6y ago
That's interesting, I didn't know of these limitations. I wonder if we could end up doing something like we do with farming and pay farmers not to grow crops
bretpiatt 6y ago
> Short answer: anything above 20% is unproven and will cost significantly more if you expect to have 100% uptime/reliability CPS Energy, serving the San Antonio, TX metro is already above 20% renewable[1] and its rates are very low, to the point San Antonio is a preferred data center location. [1] https://cpsenergy.com/en/about-us/programs-services/energy-generation.html https://cpsenergy.com/en/about-us/programs-services/energy-g...
- evgen 6y ago
  So CPS energy and it’s grid are disconnected from the rest of the national grid and have no reliance upon external sources to ensure dispatchability? Cool. Would love to hear more about how they managed that trick.

7thaccount 6y ago

The SPP region (small piece of Texas and then the heartland around Oklahoma and Kansas although there are many states) has already hit > 70% renewable penetration during some hours of the day with very little storage, but a LOT of wind (> 20 GW). The problem is sustaining that 70% for a longer time period. Wind is intermittent, so firming it up with additional solar (also intermittent, but generally at different times) and a lot of storage would have to be the next step if you wanted a sustained > 70%. I'd guess with very high probability that this region (very geographically large), but not too many large population centers will hit 80% renewable penetration within 3 years based off of current growth. It is still a guess as to how long it will take before you'd see 80% across peak and not in the morning. Still, this has all happened in a few years.