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Can you provide a link to some of that research, I'm not familiar with it, but am interested in reading it. Edit: I think solar/wind prices are artificially lo

Can you provide a link to some of that research, I'm not familiar with it, but am interested in reading it. Edit: I think solar/wind prices are artificially low because they exist in a system with peaker plants. When you remove the peaker plants the solar/wind utilities have to internalize the cost of storage, which is currently being externalized on natural gas peaker plants.

epistasis 6y ago
I'm having trouble finding the time for a proper literature cull (this is now area of research so I don't keep these articles in my bibliography...), but here's a few: Very old article about using HVDC to drop prices (still assumes coal is viable, because it uses old tech prices) https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/making-a-single-us-electrical-system-boosts-renewables-lowers-costs/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/making-a-single-us-e... The more publicized papers are those from Clack and Jacobson in PNAS arguing about whether nuclear/storage would be needed or not; both situations assumed that renewables would be far above 50%. There was a really silly lawsuit even, which is pretty awful: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/100-percent-renewables-plan-has-significant-shortcomings-say-experts https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/100-percent-ren... So even in the case of bad modeling for 100% renewables, the critics are mostly people who think that 80% renewables is quite achievable with our current tech curves, and with building more nuclear. Apologies again for not being more specific, but hopefully the papers in these press articles will help follow the citation chain to even better modeling. Both spatial and temporal modeling are important for both weather and electricity demand, so it's not an easy thing to get right. And I suspect that the market will find minimums that are quite different than anything these programs will find, due to political and other social factors nor modeled. But the models do show that a different future is possible, at least.
- jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  Thanks, this is causing me to re-evaluate my views a bit. I am still skeptical that renewables can replace existing electricity generation without peaker plants because of the large cost of storage in those scenarios, but it may be less of a problem than I thought.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    If you come to different conclusions from reading some of these, I'd love to hear about it! These were the sort of papers that gave me a looooot of hope a few years ago. Since then I have found the non-tech challenges to be the biggest concern for an interchange to a low- or zero-carbon economy. As I understand it, the only really hard part is that one week of really bad combination of weather for wind and solar in the winter. Because of that, we need to keep around a ton of backup fuel-based generation (which includes nuclear).

epistasis 6y ago

I'm having trouble finding the time for a proper literature cull (this is now area of research so I don't keep these articles in my bibliography...), but here's a few: Very old article about using HVDC to drop prices (still assumes coal is viable, because it uses old tech prices) https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/making-a-single-us-electrical-system-boosts-renewables-lowers-costs/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/making-a-single-us-e... The more publicized papers are those from Clack and Jacobson in PNAS arguing about whether nuclear/storage would be needed or not; both situations assumed that renewables would be far above 50%. There was a really silly lawsuit even, which is pretty awful: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/100-percent-renewables-plan-has-significant-shortcomings-say-experts https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/100-percent-ren... So even in the case of bad modeling for 100% renewables, the critics are mostly people who think that 80% renewables is quite achievable with our current tech curves, and with building more nuclear. Apologies again for not being more specific, but hopefully the papers in these press articles will help follow the citation chain to even better modeling. Both spatial and temporal modeling are important for both weather and electricity demand, so it's not an easy thing to get right. And I suspect that the market will find minimums that are quite different than anything these programs will find, due to political and other social factors nor modeled. But the models do show that a different future is possible, at least.

jeffreyrogers 6y ago
Thanks, this is causing me to re-evaluate my views a bit. I am still skeptical that renewables can replace existing electricity generation without peaker plants because of the large cost of storage in those scenarios, but it may be less of a problem than I thought.
- epistasis 6y ago
  If you come to different conclusions from reading some of these, I'd love to hear about it! These were the sort of papers that gave me a looooot of hope a few years ago. Since then I have found the non-tech challenges to be the biggest concern for an interchange to a low- or zero-carbon economy. As I understand it, the only really hard part is that one week of really bad combination of weather for wind and solar in the winter. Because of that, we need to keep around a ton of backup fuel-based generation (which includes nuclear).