4 ms·

Seasonal storage? That's not a thing. You just scale your solar/wind installations to the part of the season with the least resource (solar and wind do not oft

Seasonal storage? That's not a thing. You just scale your solar/wind installations to the part of the season with the least resource (solar and wind do not often have the same low point, either), which is economically feasible because it is cheaper than nuclear (and coal).

the8472 6y ago
That dramatically changes cost calculation. Currently "cheaper than X" models don't account for such overcapacity factors. If there's no wind in summer and no insolation during winter you'll have to overbuild each by a factor of 5 or so and then build short-term storage on top of that. Conversely that means the bar to meet now is (renewables + storage) < fuel-based / 5. That's a rather fat margin. And things would be a lot cheaper overall if we could shave that off with some long-term storage.
- deeviant 6y ago
  > If there's no wind in summer and no insolation during winter you'll have to overbuild each by a factor of 5... If nuclear power physics stopped working October to March, that would drastically effect nuclear power economic competitiveness... Wait, what's this people are telling me, I can't just make stuff up? You make up a completely BS example but then actually go through and try to come out with actual numbers. Right.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - manfredo 6y ago
    Windless days and cloud cover are phenomena that actually exist and are observed. The behavior of beta particles suddenly changing is not. Yes, 5x variability in wind production has actually been observed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Erie_Shores_Wind_Farm_output_Aug-Jul_2008.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Erie_Shores_Wind_Farm_out... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windpowerprediction.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windpowerprediction.png
    - deeviant 6y ago
      The statement was no X in Summer, no Y in winter. It was not talking about a daily or even weekly phenomena but seasonal one. There is no summer which have had no winds, no winters that have had no insolation or vice versa. Instead of making up numbers, you can use a site like this: https://www.solar-electric.com/learning-center/solar-insolation-maps.html/ https://www.solar-electric.com/learning-center/solar-insolat.... You'll find that by comparing seasonal best case to seasonal worst case it is something like, on average, 50% difference. It gets worse the closer you to get to the pole obviously. Furthermore, surplus production does not go into dev/null. Excess resources create markets, and there will be consumers that take advantage of cheaper surplus power (smelting, heavy industrial, desalination, hydrogen production, and whatever else anybody cooks up).
      - the8472 6y ago
        > There is no summer which have had no winds, no winters that have had no insolation or vice versa. The part of "no production" were not meant to be taken literally. If you want a more precise statement then let me put it this way: For PV in central europe even an overcapacity factor of 5 would be insufficient to cover the difference between summer and winter. Germany's PV plants produced 7.3TWh during June 2019 and 0.58TWh during december 2018. Wind does look a bit better as far as seasonal differences go (about 4-5x) but it suffers from more short-term variability, so you might need less seasonal storage for it but it would require more medium-term (multi-day or -week) storage compared to solar which is a bit less variable during its peak months compared to wind's peak months.
        pedrocr 6y ago
        Building out the grid will help out a lot. Put those solar panels in Portugal and Spain and the difference between winter and summer is much less. I ran some numbers recently for Portugal's grid and was surprised to find out that with the current seasonality of solar, wind and hydro we have on the grid, we could scale up solar and wind to have 100% renewables with very little overcapacity and we could keep going and produce twice our current needs while exporting about the same amount of energy every month of the year. Solar and wind's seasonality match up quite well and hydro gives great flexibility.
- sp332 6y ago
  It may be dramatic, but so far it's still a lot less money than building several months worth of batteries.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  Running the numbers usually gives you numbers like 50% overbuild, but even if you're right, a 5x overbuild still is significantly cheaper than nuclear. A 5x overbuild would give you massive amounts of "free" electricity. I'm sure the world would find something economically useful to do with it. Maybe you could use it to generate green hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2, killing several birds with one stone.
  - the8472 6y ago
    > Maybe you could use it to generate green hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2 Which would start to look a lot like long-term storage. But subsidized by negative energy prices during excess production. So rather than bleeding money while someone else makes profits any power company will prefer to build less overcapacity (which also avoids risking devalued assets) and run their own peak-shaving if they can. Which means this problem still has to be solved one way or another. Whether you call it long-term storage or excess energy use.
  - HexagonalKitten 6y ago
    It isn't quite that easy though because it's night for all 5x at once, for instance. So you need to have transmission capacity for the 4x you don't use locally, to send it elsewhere when it is sunny, and to import 1x at night from your sunlit neighbors. > generate green hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2, killing several birds with one stone. This is great because it means we can use guilt-free hydrocarbons where they're important. Like rocketry and airplanes, making lubricants, plastic bags, etc. > overbuild would give you massive amounts of "free" electricity. I'm sure the world would find something economically useful to do with it. Generating proofs of work for a blockchain collectible card game? :D

the8472 6y ago

That dramatically changes cost calculation. Currently "cheaper than X" models don't account for such overcapacity factors. If there's no wind in summer and no insolation during winter you'll have to overbuild each by a factor of 5 or so and then build short-term storage on top of that. Conversely that means the bar to meet now is (renewables + storage) < fuel-based / 5. That's a rather fat margin. And things would be a lot cheaper overall if we could shave that off with some long-term storage.

deeviant 6y ago
> If there's no wind in summer and no insolation during winter you'll have to overbuild each by a factor of 5... If nuclear power physics stopped working October to March, that would drastically effect nuclear power economic competitiveness... Wait, what's this people are telling me, I can't just make stuff up? You make up a completely BS example but then actually go through and try to come out with actual numbers. Right.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- manfredo 6y ago
  Windless days and cloud cover are phenomena that actually exist and are observed. The behavior of beta particles suddenly changing is not. Yes, 5x variability in wind production has actually been observed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Erie_Shores_Wind_Farm_output_Aug-Jul_2008.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Erie_Shores_Wind_Farm_out... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windpowerprediction.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windpowerprediction.png
  - deeviant 6y ago
    The statement was no X in Summer, no Y in winter. It was not talking about a daily or even weekly phenomena but seasonal one. There is no summer which have had no winds, no winters that have had no insolation or vice versa. Instead of making up numbers, you can use a site like this: https://www.solar-electric.com/learning-center/solar-insolation-maps.html/ https://www.solar-electric.com/learning-center/solar-insolat.... You'll find that by comparing seasonal best case to seasonal worst case it is something like, on average, 50% difference. It gets worse the closer you to get to the pole obviously. Furthermore, surplus production does not go into dev/null. Excess resources create markets, and there will be consumers that take advantage of cheaper surplus power (smelting, heavy industrial, desalination, hydrogen production, and whatever else anybody cooks up).
    - the8472 6y ago
      > There is no summer which have had no winds, no winters that have had no insolation or vice versa. The part of "no production" were not meant to be taken literally. If you want a more precise statement then let me put it this way: For PV in central europe even an overcapacity factor of 5 would be insufficient to cover the difference between summer and winter. Germany's PV plants produced 7.3TWh during June 2019 and 0.58TWh during december 2018. Wind does look a bit better as far as seasonal differences go (about 4-5x) but it suffers from more short-term variability, so you might need less seasonal storage for it but it would require more medium-term (multi-day or -week) storage compared to solar which is a bit less variable during its peak months compared to wind's peak months.
      - pedrocr 6y ago
        Building out the grid will help out a lot. Put those solar panels in Portugal and Spain and the difference between winter and summer is much less. I ran some numbers recently for Portugal's grid and was surprised to find out that with the current seasonality of solar, wind and hydro we have on the grid, we could scale up solar and wind to have 100% renewables with very little overcapacity and we could keep going and produce twice our current needs while exporting about the same amount of energy every month of the year. Solar and wind's seasonality match up quite well and hydro gives great flexibility.
sp332 6y ago
It may be dramatic, but so far it's still a lot less money than building several months worth of batteries.
bryanlarsen 6y ago
Running the numbers usually gives you numbers like 50% overbuild, but even if you're right, a 5x overbuild still is significantly cheaper than nuclear. A 5x overbuild would give you massive amounts of "free" electricity. I'm sure the world would find something economically useful to do with it. Maybe you could use it to generate green hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2, killing several birds with one stone.
- the8472 6y ago
  > Maybe you could use it to generate green hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2 Which would start to look a lot like long-term storage. But subsidized by negative energy prices during excess production. So rather than bleeding money while someone else makes profits any power company will prefer to build less overcapacity (which also avoids risking devalued assets) and run their own peak-shaving if they can. Which means this problem still has to be solved one way or another. Whether you call it long-term storage or excess energy use.
- HexagonalKitten 6y ago
  It isn't quite that easy though because it's night for all 5x at once, for instance. So you need to have transmission capacity for the 4x you don't use locally, to send it elsewhere when it is sunny, and to import 1x at night from your sunlit neighbors. > generate green hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2, killing several birds with one stone. This is great because it means we can use guilt-free hydrocarbons where they're important. Like rocketry and airplanes, making lubricants, plastic bags, etc. > overbuild would give you massive amounts of "free" electricity. I'm sure the world would find something economically useful to do with it. Generating proofs of work for a blockchain collectible card game? :D