3 ms·

> to run for the few percent of the year which the renewables can't cover. Citation needed. Honestly. A graph with power factor -> expected average number of d

by mrpopo 6y ago

> to run for the few percent of the year which the renewables can't cover. Citation needed. Honestly. A graph with power factor -> expected average number of days per year would add to the discussion.

fy20 6y ago
Where I am in Europe, solar panels produce around 15% in December of what they do in June. I'm not even that far north. We don't have that much wind (even on the coast), and the country is very flat so hydro isn't an option. To use 100% green power we would need a combination of long term energy storage, and HVDC transmission across Europe.
- stdbrouw 6y ago
  Nobody expects wind to cover the majority of our electricity needs, but don't discount it either. There are some positive signs re: winter production, too: https://www.belgianoffshoreplatform.be/en/news/winter-2019-2020-offshore-wind-energy-in-the-belgian-north-sea-breaks-record/ https://www.belgianoffshoreplatform.be/en/news/winter-2019-2...
- sveme 6y ago
  Which is being built (e.g. the one between Germany and Norway is currently being finalized. Obviously, we need to connect vastly larger areas.
jakewins 6y ago
Hour-by-hour multi-year simulations show the US grid can be ran with 90% clean power with current technology. "Clean" being the current nuke and hydro fleet plus a massive expansion of wind, solar and storage. The latest such simulation I've seen is the 2035 Report from Berkeley, I wrote a summary of it here: https://climate.davis-hansson.com/p/90percent-grid/ https://climate.davis-hansson.com/p/90percent-grid/ You can read the full report here: https://www.2035report.com/ https://www.2035report.com/
- igravious 6y ago
  That's an advocacy report, reaching 90% by 2035 requires an awful lot of policy changes. Without any change the US will hit 55% by 2035. Also, I think advocacy groups tend to underestimate the obvious and not so obvious impacts an increasingly larger share of so-called clean power. I suggest we do not yet know the true cost of grid-scale battery, e-mobility battery, solar pv and wind because we have not yet reached the end-of-life for a statistically significant percentage of installed projects. “Solar photovoltaic (PV) deployment has grown at unprecedented rates since the early 2000s. As the global PV market increases, so will the volume of decommissioned PV panels, and large amounts of annual waste are anticipated by the early 2030s. Growing PV panel waste presents a new environmental challenge, but also unprecedented opportunities to create value and pursue new economic avenues.” https://www.irena.org/publications/2016/Jun/End-of-life-management-Solar-Photovoltaic-Panels https://www.irena.org/publications/2016/Jun/End-of-life-mana... “This report, prepared jointly by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the International Energy Agency Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (IEA-PVPS), is the first-ever projection of PV panel waste volumes to 2050. It highlights that recycling or repurposing solar PV panels at the end of their roughly 30-year lifetime can unlock an estimated stock of 78 million tonnes of raw materials and other valuable components globally by 2050. If fully injected back into the economy, the value of the recovered material could exceed USD 15 billion by 2050.” edit: here's a 2017 in depth EU sponsored study EU Commission: JRC Science for Policy Report – Materials Impact on the EU’s Competitiveness of the Renewable Energy, Storage and E-mobility Sectors – wind power, solar photovoltaic and battery technologies See section 6.1 "Recycling of materials from wind turbines, solar panels and batteries" https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC108356/jrc108356_report_competitiveness_online.pdf https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J...
  - jakewins 6y ago
    Agree, lots of unknowns ahead. My response was simply to the comment above asking for citations whether it is even technically possible to run the grid at such high penetration. Someone made the point that it's a rather daunting materials design challenge to make PV panels: They must withstand 30 years of water, heat, salt and UV light with no degradation, and then trivially separate into their constituent components at recycling time. We are definitely gearing up to create an enormous recycling headache 30 years from now.
pjc50 6y ago
You could look for you own graphs? I don't think it's in dispute that the power output of wind and solar varies, and that its output is somewhat stochastic. And that there's a market for extremely intermittent capacity. https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/balancing-mechanism-price-jumps-to-highest-level-since-2001-hitting-4-000-mwh https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/balancing-mechanism-pric... : UK is currently paying quite a lot ot the few marginal producers ("peaker plants"). Peaker plants are a big business: https://www.energyassets.co.uk/about-us/news/article/peaking-plants-generate-growth-eau/ https://www.energyassets.co.uk/about-us/news/article/peaking... Yes, as you overbuild renewable capacity the number of such occasions goes down. This is why is said that it's hard to reach 100%, but it's not impossible.
aksss 6y ago
Germany’s renewables power factor is ~20%. There’s a significant gap in supply made up by coal. In shutting down a sizable portion of their nuclear capacity, I believe 2020 hit record levels of fossil fuel consumption. https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/germanys-energiewende-20-years-later https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/germanys-energie...

by mrpopo 6y ago

fy20 6y ago

Where I am in Europe, solar panels produce around 15% in December of what they do in June. I'm not even that far north. We don't have that much wind (even on the coast), and the country is very flat so hydro isn't an option. To use 100% green power we would need a combination of long term energy storage, and HVDC transmission across Europe.

stdbrouw 6y ago
Nobody expects wind to cover the majority of our electricity needs, but don't discount it either. There are some positive signs re: winter production, too: https://www.belgianoffshoreplatform.be/en/news/winter-2019-2020-offshore-wind-energy-in-the-belgian-north-sea-breaks-record/ https://www.belgianoffshoreplatform.be/en/news/winter-2019-2...
sveme 6y ago
Which is being built (e.g. the one between Germany and Norway is currently being finalized. Obviously, we need to connect vastly larger areas.

jakewins 6y ago

Hour-by-hour multi-year simulations show the US grid can be ran with 90% clean power with current technology. "Clean" being the current nuke and hydro fleet plus a massive expansion of wind, solar and storage. The latest such simulation I've seen is the 2035 Report from Berkeley, I wrote a summary of it here: https://climate.davis-hansson.com/p/90percent-grid/ https://climate.davis-hansson.com/p/90percent-grid/ You can read the full report here: https://www.2035report.com/ https://www.2035report.com/

igravious 6y ago
That's an advocacy report, reaching 90% by 2035 requires an awful lot of policy changes. Without any change the US will hit 55% by 2035. Also, I think advocacy groups tend to underestimate the obvious and not so obvious impacts an increasingly larger share of so-called clean power. I suggest we do not yet know the true cost of grid-scale battery, e-mobility battery, solar pv and wind because we have not yet reached the end-of-life for a statistically significant percentage of installed projects. “Solar photovoltaic (PV) deployment has grown at unprecedented rates since the early 2000s. As the global PV market increases, so will the volume of decommissioned PV panels, and large amounts of annual waste are anticipated by the early 2030s. Growing PV panel waste presents a new environmental challenge, but also unprecedented opportunities to create value and pursue new economic avenues.” https://www.irena.org/publications/2016/Jun/End-of-life-management-Solar-Photovoltaic-Panels https://www.irena.org/publications/2016/Jun/End-of-life-mana... “This report, prepared jointly by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the International Energy Agency Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (IEA-PVPS), is the first-ever projection of PV panel waste volumes to 2050. It highlights that recycling or repurposing solar PV panels at the end of their roughly 30-year lifetime can unlock an estimated stock of 78 million tonnes of raw materials and other valuable components globally by 2050. If fully injected back into the economy, the value of the recovered material could exceed USD 15 billion by 2050.” edit: here's a 2017 in depth EU sponsored study EU Commission: JRC Science for Policy Report – Materials Impact on the EU’s Competitiveness of the Renewable Energy, Storage and E-mobility Sectors – wind power, solar photovoltaic and battery technologies See section 6.1 "Recycling of materials from wind turbines, solar panels and batteries" https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC108356/jrc108356_report_competitiveness_online.pdf https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J...
- jakewins 6y ago
  Agree, lots of unknowns ahead. My response was simply to the comment above asking for citations whether it is even technically possible to run the grid at such high penetration. Someone made the point that it's a rather daunting materials design challenge to make PV panels: They must withstand 30 years of water, heat, salt and UV light with no degradation, and then trivially separate into their constituent components at recycling time. We are definitely gearing up to create an enormous recycling headache 30 years from now.

pjc50 6y ago

You could look for you own graphs? I don't think it's in dispute that the power output of wind and solar varies, and that its output is somewhat stochastic. And that there's a market for extremely intermittent capacity. https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/balancing-mechanism-price-jumps-to-highest-level-since-2001-hitting-4-000-mwh https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/balancing-mechanism-pric... : UK is currently paying quite a lot ot the few marginal producers ("peaker plants"). Peaker plants are a big business: https://www.energyassets.co.uk/about-us/news/article/peaking-plants-generate-growth-eau/ https://www.energyassets.co.uk/about-us/news/article/peaking... Yes, as you overbuild renewable capacity the number of such occasions goes down. This is why is said that it's hard to reach 100%, but it's not impossible.

aksss 6y ago

Germany’s renewables power factor is ~20%. There’s a significant gap in supply made up by coal. In shutting down a sizable portion of their nuclear capacity, I believe 2020 hit record levels of fossil fuel consumption. https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/germanys-energiewende-20-years-later https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/germanys-energie...