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Is no one pointing out that this isn’t the part that makes replacing fossil fuels hard? This is focusing on a completely irrelevant metric. It’s a great motivat

Is no one pointing out that this isn’t the part that makes replacing fossil fuels hard? This is focusing on a completely irrelevant metric. It’s a great motivator for why we need to shift but it has no impact on how hard it will be to replace oil. There’s 100 practical reason for why it’s hard, namely that clean energy sources are not under our direct control to scale up and down as we need more/less. We can’t tell the sun to be strongest at 6pm when everyone gets off work so we’ll need more energy. You can force the wind to blow. The best way to solve this is improving battery tech but that’s a HUGE task. What we have currently is a focus on quickly growing increase in clean energy sources as a baseline energy source with a diversified mix of other sources along with natural gas peaking plants that are far cleaner than coal and provide near immediate response times to surges on energy demand which is incredible.

ip26 6y ago
FWIW long distance transmission lines work too. Solar peaks a few hours earlier than demand. So ship that power east two timezones.
- kortilla 6y ago
  And which solar panels power California?
  - epistasis 6y ago
    Batteries and hopefully offshore wind. And people will time shift energy consumption when incentivized. If we were able to charge cars at work, for example, that would shift massive amounts of load to peak solar hours, when electricity will be essentially free on the generation side, and transmission/congestion costs will be the major factor. We are well on our way to making enough batteries to replace our car fleet. If we do that, we will have already built the industrial manufacturing capacity to store several days worth of energy. I forget the numbers, but a huge proportion of wind and solar installs are planning foe good chunks of battery right now. The contracts I've seen indicate a storage cost of $80-$110/MWh, which is cheaper than new nuclear, and pretty much in coal territory. The future is one of super abundant renewable energy, with the huge fractions of it thrown away, unless somebody can figure out used for it or ways to transmit/store it.
  - ip26 6y ago
    If California is the only market powered by batteries, that's a huge reduction in battery-scope. Washington has a lot of hydro, etc.
notthemessiah 6y ago
This problem is way overstated, as most fossil fuel and nuclear power can't be easily or efficiently ramped down either. We also have energy storage technologies other than batteries: the most common being pumped-storage hydroelectricity (basically a reversible hydroelectric dam, where we pump water up during excess power usage and use the generators during high demand).
- akira2501 6y ago
  > being pumped-storage hydroelectricity Which isn't great as far as the "Power Generated" : "Land Used" ratio is concerned.. the same is true of most hydro-electric solutions.
  - alacombe 6y ago
    Neither are solar or wind farms.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      What's wrong with wind farms? They literally take no land, you can graze cattle / farm right under them.
      - alacombe 6y ago
        They decimate bird populations.
- kortilla 6y ago
  Natural gas absolutely can be ramped up and down and that’s critical to the stability of our grid. Just because there are other fossil fuel plants that can’t doesn’t somehow downplay the critical nature of peaker plants. > We also have energy storage technologies other than batteries: the most common being pumped-storage hydroelectricity These take tons of land and aren’t really anything like reverse hydro electric dams because if you tried to reverse a dam during high production you will be running a river dry and run out of water quickly.
toomuchtodo 6y ago
South Australia already has days when solar alone is providing most of it's power [1] [2]. It's not that hard. You scale up renewables, and build curtailing (throwing away excess clean energy) into your cost model (until storage gets cheaper, which it will; Tesla is shipping almost 800 MW of utility scale battery storage per quarter). Australia's entirely grid will be clean by 2030 at their current rate of renewables deployment. Yes, yes, not everywhere is Australia, but the sun and wind potential is significant in most geographies where people exist. Let us not use edge cases to guide our path forward. [1] https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&interval=30m https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&interval=30m (OpenNEM scoped to South Australia, trailing 7 days 30 min granularity) [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-25/all-sa-power-from-solar-for-first-time/12810366 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-25/all-sa-power-from-sol... (All of South Australia's power comes from solar panels in world first for major jurisdiction)
- kortilla 6y ago
  > Let us not use edge cases to guide our path forward. Funny you should say that after presenting an edge case. In North America during the winter the sun is setting during peak demand in the Northern states. That means we need to overbuild wind so much that we can run entirely on wind on non-windy days. The economics do not support that. Storage is critical to make the US case work.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Edge cases are the Arctic Circle. Naysayers keep naysaying while it's being done [1]. Enough sunlight falls on the Earth in an hour to power the world for a year, and there's roughly 200GW of solar PV manufacturing capacity globally. [1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/#tabs_unit-4 https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/#tabs_unit-4 (Maps, right hand side showing retirements and commissioning; note wind is green, solar is yellow)
    - kortilla 6y ago
      > Enough sunlight falls on the Earth in an hour This isn’t relevant because we don’t have transmission from where the sun is at a given point in time to where the electricity is needed. It’s like having enough nuclear plants in Fiji to power the world and calling this a “solved problem”. We would need a global grid and solar more than 2X built for demand to handle the fact that the earth rotates and that there will be clouds on average.
Nasrudith 6y ago
It is relevant to the improved battery tech problem however and makes the task less huge. Wind is also fairly reliable in that the day night cycle alone creates it since it is created by temperature differentials. Across a broad area it is impossible for there to not be wind short of being messed with by hyperadvanced aliens scenarios like ensuring all areas of the earth are being heated equally.

ip26 6y ago

FWIW long distance transmission lines work too. Solar peaks a few hours earlier than demand. So ship that power east two timezones.

kortilla 6y ago
And which solar panels power California?
- epistasis 6y ago
  Batteries and hopefully offshore wind. And people will time shift energy consumption when incentivized. If we were able to charge cars at work, for example, that would shift massive amounts of load to peak solar hours, when electricity will be essentially free on the generation side, and transmission/congestion costs will be the major factor. We are well on our way to making enough batteries to replace our car fleet. If we do that, we will have already built the industrial manufacturing capacity to store several days worth of energy. I forget the numbers, but a huge proportion of wind and solar installs are planning foe good chunks of battery right now. The contracts I've seen indicate a storage cost of $80-$110/MWh, which is cheaper than new nuclear, and pretty much in coal territory. The future is one of super abundant renewable energy, with the huge fractions of it thrown away, unless somebody can figure out used for it or ways to transmit/store it.
- ip26 6y ago
  If California is the only market powered by batteries, that's a huge reduction in battery-scope. Washington has a lot of hydro, etc.

notthemessiah 6y ago

This problem is way overstated, as most fossil fuel and nuclear power can't be easily or efficiently ramped down either. We also have energy storage technologies other than batteries: the most common being pumped-storage hydroelectricity (basically a reversible hydroelectric dam, where we pump water up during excess power usage and use the generators during high demand).

akira2501 6y ago
> being pumped-storage hydroelectricity Which isn't great as far as the "Power Generated" : "Land Used" ratio is concerned.. the same is true of most hydro-electric solutions.
- alacombe 6y ago
  Neither are solar or wind farms.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    What's wrong with wind farms? They literally take no land, you can graze cattle / farm right under them.
    - alacombe 6y ago
      They decimate bird populations.
kortilla 6y ago
Natural gas absolutely can be ramped up and down and that’s critical to the stability of our grid. Just because there are other fossil fuel plants that can’t doesn’t somehow downplay the critical nature of peaker plants. > We also have energy storage technologies other than batteries: the most common being pumped-storage hydroelectricity These take tons of land and aren’t really anything like reverse hydro electric dams because if you tried to reverse a dam during high production you will be running a river dry and run out of water quickly.

toomuchtodo 6y ago

South Australia already has days when solar alone is providing most of it's power [1] [2]. It's not that hard. You scale up renewables, and build curtailing (throwing away excess clean energy) into your cost model (until storage gets cheaper, which it will; Tesla is shipping almost 800 MW of utility scale battery storage per quarter). Australia's entirely grid will be clean by 2030 at their current rate of renewables deployment. Yes, yes, not everywhere is Australia, but the sun and wind potential is significant in most geographies where people exist. Let us not use edge cases to guide our path forward. [1] https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&interval=30m https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&interval=30m (OpenNEM scoped to South Australia, trailing 7 days 30 min granularity) [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-25/all-sa-power-from-solar-for-first-time/12810366 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-25/all-sa-power-from-sol... (All of South Australia's power comes from solar panels in world first for major jurisdiction)

kortilla 6y ago
> Let us not use edge cases to guide our path forward. Funny you should say that after presenting an edge case. In North America during the winter the sun is setting during peak demand in the Northern states. That means we need to overbuild wind so much that we can run entirely on wind on non-windy days. The economics do not support that. Storage is critical to make the US case work.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Edge cases are the Arctic Circle. Naysayers keep naysaying while it's being done [1]. Enough sunlight falls on the Earth in an hour to power the world for a year, and there's roughly 200GW of solar PV manufacturing capacity globally. [1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/#tabs_unit-4 https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/#tabs_unit-4 (Maps, right hand side showing retirements and commissioning; note wind is green, solar is yellow)
  - kortilla 6y ago
    > Enough sunlight falls on the Earth in an hour This isn’t relevant because we don’t have transmission from where the sun is at a given point in time to where the electricity is needed. It’s like having enough nuclear plants in Fiji to power the world and calling this a “solved problem”. We would need a global grid and solar more than 2X built for demand to handle the fact that the earth rotates and that there will be clouds on average.

Nasrudith 6y ago

It is relevant to the improved battery tech problem however and makes the task less huge. Wind is also fairly reliable in that the day night cycle alone creates it since it is created by temperature differentials. Across a broad area it is impossible for there to not be wind short of being messed with by hyperadvanced aliens scenarios like ensuring all areas of the earth are being heated equally.