4 ms·

Increasingly, nations are analyzing their grid requirements and concluding that 100% renewables is feasible, the baseload concept ends up being a constraining r

by dv_dt 6y ago

Increasingly, nations are analyzing their grid requirements and concluding that 100% renewables is feasible, the baseload concept ends up being a constraining requirement that nuclear plants levy upon the rest of a future grid design.

infamouscow 6y ago
Are any of those nations comparable in both population and land mass to the US?
- dv_dt 6y ago
  As the Texas power outage demonstrated, the US grid is not monolithic. Having more interconnected regional grids actually makes it easier to get individual regions to high renewable percentages while allowing the market to continue to mature lower cost storage. Storage is slightly behind the solar manufacturing S-curve in terms of dropping costs, but once a number of EV supply plants start ramping up, I think that cost optimization will strongly drop storage costs.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Is there a reason to believe that a solution that works on the scale of a reasonably sized country suddenly stops working on the scale of a tight federation of states or comparable size?
belorn 6y ago
Here in Sweden we have a date when nuclear plants will be gone. We got a date for when internal combustion engines will be gone from the roads. We have a plan for when the sum of green exports of energy will exceed that of total consumption of energy. We do not have a date for when fossil fuels will be removed from the energy grid. No date, no plan, no strategy, nothing. What we do have is three distinct plans in order to address the stability problem from renewables. 1: Continuing subsidize fossil fuel plants to operate in ready mode for when demands exceeds that of renewables. Oil for now, natural gas in the future. 2: Expand the ability to buy fossil fueled energy from nearby countries for which we sell our green energy. One can pretend that the import of dirty energy does not exist if the total amount of green export over a year is higher than the import. 3: Future technology that does not exist yet and tend to change from year to year based on what currently sounds like interesting-but-decades-from-being-invested-in tech. This year it is wind to hydrogen in dedicated ocean windfarms with massive pipelines of hydrogen, burned in retrofitted natural gas power plants. It has the upside that more natural gas power plants (and pipelines for natural gas) can be built in the pretense that at some later date we can use that wind produced hydrogen if it ever get built. The result is investments and subsidies goes to mix of renewables and fossil fuels, which is a far cry from 100% renewables.
- dv_dt 6y ago
  https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/CountriesWWS.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/Coun... I am reminded of the quote attributed to Arthur C Clarke. If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong. There are scientists and engineers who say getting to a 100% renewable grid is possible.
  - coolspot 6y ago
    Theoretically, yes. With enough batteries and 2x-3x power production over demand you can have 100% renewable grid. It might require to cut amazon forest and cover it with solar panels, but possible, yes.
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      One does not need 2-3x average power production over average demand. With some combination of transmission, batteries, and (importantly) hydrogen storage, the overcapacity and curtailment needed can be quite modest.
  - belorn 6y ago
    Is it possible to create enough gas powered power plants and hydrogen storage facilities to have 100% of a nations capacity running for several weeks during the winter? Yes. Can it all be generated from ocean based windfarms with pipelines? Yes. Will it be cheap? No. Just the production side, the cost in a 2019 study put the numbers around $7-9 per kg of hydrogen. This does not take into the account the cost of the pipeline, the storage facility, or the gas powered power plant. Remember that return of investment only occurs when demands actually exceeds that of cheaper renewable production, unless government steps in and adds subsidies like it does today with oil. Is massive amounts of hydrogen a cheaper and safer alternative to nuclear? Given the lack of commercial built and operated hydrogen wind farms I suspect the answer is no on the commercial side. On the safety side it would be interesting to hear about operating large liquid hydrogen pipelines and storage facilities.

by dv_dt 6y ago

infamouscow 6y ago

Are any of those nations comparable in both population and land mass to the US?

dv_dt 6y ago
As the Texas power outage demonstrated, the US grid is not monolithic. Having more interconnected regional grids actually makes it easier to get individual regions to high renewable percentages while allowing the market to continue to mature lower cost storage. Storage is slightly behind the solar manufacturing S-curve in terms of dropping costs, but once a number of EV supply plants start ramping up, I think that cost optimization will strongly drop storage costs.
adrianN 6y ago
Is there a reason to believe that a solution that works on the scale of a reasonably sized country suddenly stops working on the scale of a tight federation of states or comparable size?

belorn 6y ago

Here in Sweden we have a date when nuclear plants will be gone. We got a date for when internal combustion engines will be gone from the roads. We have a plan for when the sum of green exports of energy will exceed that of total consumption of energy. We do not have a date for when fossil fuels will be removed from the energy grid. No date, no plan, no strategy, nothing. What we do have is three distinct plans in order to address the stability problem from renewables. 1: Continuing subsidize fossil fuel plants to operate in ready mode for when demands exceeds that of renewables. Oil for now, natural gas in the future. 2: Expand the ability to buy fossil fueled energy from nearby countries for which we sell our green energy. One can pretend that the import of dirty energy does not exist if the total amount of green export over a year is higher than the import. 3: Future technology that does not exist yet and tend to change from year to year based on what currently sounds like interesting-but-decades-from-being-invested-in tech. This year it is wind to hydrogen in dedicated ocean windfarms with massive pipelines of hydrogen, burned in retrofitted natural gas power plants. It has the upside that more natural gas power plants (and pipelines for natural gas) can be built in the pretense that at some later date we can use that wind produced hydrogen if it ever get built. The result is investments and subsidies goes to mix of renewables and fossil fuels, which is a far cry from 100% renewables.

dv_dt 6y ago
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/CountriesWWS.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/Coun... I am reminded of the quote attributed to Arthur C Clarke. If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong. There are scientists and engineers who say getting to a 100% renewable grid is possible.
- coolspot 6y ago
  Theoretically, yes. With enough batteries and 2x-3x power production over demand you can have 100% renewable grid. It might require to cut amazon forest and cover it with solar panels, but possible, yes.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    One does not need 2-3x average power production over average demand. With some combination of transmission, batteries, and (importantly) hydrogen storage, the overcapacity and curtailment needed can be quite modest.
- belorn 6y ago
  Is it possible to create enough gas powered power plants and hydrogen storage facilities to have 100% of a nations capacity running for several weeks during the winter? Yes. Can it all be generated from ocean based windfarms with pipelines? Yes. Will it be cheap? No. Just the production side, the cost in a 2019 study put the numbers around $7-9 per kg of hydrogen. This does not take into the account the cost of the pipeline, the storage facility, or the gas powered power plant. Remember that return of investment only occurs when demands actually exceeds that of cheaper renewable production, unless government steps in and adds subsidies like it does today with oil. Is massive amounts of hydrogen a cheaper and safer alternative to nuclear? Given the lack of commercial built and operated hydrogen wind farms I suspect the answer is no on the commercial side. On the safety side it would be interesting to hear about operating large liquid hydrogen pipelines and storage facilities.