21 ms·

A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

249 points by guerby 4y ago

guerby 4y ago
David Osmond (author of the simulation) interview on youtube channel "Engineering with Rosie": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgxOlPu9kiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgxOlPu9kiM Twitter : https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1562318623359713280 https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1562318623359713280 Also see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32567994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32567994
anovikov 4y ago
Great job! Did a similar study for Germany about 7 years ago based on their published 30-minute production and demand data and arrived to very similar conclusions. It's not as good as in Australia because both wind and solar in Germany is less reliable, also good enough.
WalterBright 4y ago
5 hours of grid-scale storage seems like a lot.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  On its own, it does seem like a lot. Thinking about the nature of renewables where I live, it seems so small as to be not worth mentioning; January will often have a week to several weeks of heavy cloud cover and little wind. A mere 5 hours of capacity is a pittance. Australia, on the other hand, could easily make more sense, as I imagine the outback to be sunnier year round and maybe windier.
  - plantain 4y ago
    Cloud doesn't mean solar stops working - the decrease is 30-60% depending on thickness, but there's still very meaningful generation.
    - mikeyouse 4y ago
      Especially depending on the season - clouds in the summer also typically correspond with a big drop in AC demand, reducing the amount of electricity required. That's why OPs modeling is so interesting, "real" daily data for an entire year is great for this type of planning.
    - throwawayyyyyy 4y ago
      the solar panel's I've used in off-grid applications put out 10% on cloudy days.
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      We get about nine and a half hours of sun in January, assuming no clouds. That leaves around 14-15 hours of no production, assuming there isn't sufficient wind (also often the case in January). Panels operating at 30% capacity for 9 hours cannot be offset by 5 hours worth of storage. It simply isn't enough storage, even if the panels were operating at 100% capacity. Adding more storage really isn't a great solution either; I'm guessing that you would be hard pressed to get 15 hours worth of storage out of 9 hours of sunlight when the hours of darkness start at 4:30 PM, especially if everyone moves to electrical cooking, water heating and clothes drying, which some states are starting to compel. So, the two obvious solutions remain- import stored energy from out of state, or using non-renewables as a base load a few months out of the year. We'll need to pay for burying tonnes of HVDC lines (stringing them up in tornado prone areas isn't a great call, imho) or the expense of more nuclear plants (unpopular and, currently at least, uneconomical) or pulling CO2 out of the air to offset natural gas (also expensive). HVDC lines seem the cheapest, though sourcing the energy will take years of production and inter-state agreements to get to the point where the south is producing (and storing!) enough to send the excess north.
      - plantain 4y ago
        You can also over-provision solar and wind to factors well above 100%, and still be more economical than burning fossil fuels.
        4y ago
  - qqqwerty 4y ago
    What percentage of the population lives in climates like yours? If I had to guess, maybe something like 10-20% of the worlds population? My gut tells me the vast majority of the worlds population lives in locations that are more similar to Australia's climate than in climates like yours. So we start there, and overtime things get cheaper, we find better solutions to long duration storage, and then we start tackling the harder climates/geographies.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      Many of the countries with climate similar to Australia do not have the purchasing power of most northern countries, so they're currently building new cold power at a rapid pace.
- bluefirebrand 4y ago
  It also doesn't sound like actually enough. They never have outages longer than 5 hours? And even with fully renewable sources they would never have periods longer than 5 hours without much generation?
  - plantain 4y ago
    Hence the overgeneration.
  - Ajedi32 4y ago
    Looks like they used Gas peaker plants (labeled "Other") to make up the difference during the times that was necessary.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- ParksNet 4y ago
  Not if we figure out vehicle-to-grid.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Developed countries have a couple of weeks worth of natural gas in strategic reserves. I don't see why we couldn't do that with gas made from CO2, water, and electricity. Or ammonia. Or maybe hydrogen.
- dashundchen 4y ago
  Is it really though? How many gigawatts of gas peaker plants and all the associated infrastructure sit around waiting for the tens or hundred hours they're needed? Turns out, it's a lot - and it costs the ratepayers: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/just-how-much-business-can-batteries-take-from-gas-peakers https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/just-how-much-b... > Wood Mackenzie calculates the average peaker plant capacity factor will sit between 5 and 6 percent over the next two decades. That amounts to a low number of hours for storage to replicate. In New York City, ratepayers are paying billions of dollars for polluting gas peakers that sit idle. https://www.cleanegroup.org/ceg-projects/phase-out-peakers/ https://www.cleanegroup.org/ceg-projects/phase-out-peakers/ * An estimated $4.5 billion in ratepayers funds have gone to support the continued operation of the city’s peaker plants – most of which operate no more than a few hundred hours each year. * Even though the power plants don’t run often, they can be significant contributors to local air pollution – accounting for more than 10 percent of nitrous oxide (NOx) emissions on high ozone days. Luckily we have the technology to both start replacing gas peakers with storage, and roll out demand response and load shedding to reduce peak demand. For example, my employer is a big power user. On a couple days in the summer during peak heat, the utility requests curtailment. The plant managers can respond by switching HVAC operation plans, shift some loads to the overnight - the utility saves money on peak generation, and the company saves a ton of demand charges. Win-win.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    This is going to come up a lot in future, so we should be careful to seperate two things: 1. Money spent on having generators on standby when they are used only 5% of the time 2. Money spent on fossil fuels for those plants when they actually run. 1 is money well spent, 2 is a problem to be solved but just carbon taxing it is probably enough to consider it solved. Luckily, the high cost of 1, makes it easier to justify adding batteries or a thousand other things that help to reduce 2. But you know people are going to point to the same peaker plants we've had for years and say "look how expensive renewables are!". Also, we've already built the gas plants. Which is probably a big chunk of the cost (they'll just be spreading that cost across the hours that they intend to run during their working life).
- bombcar 4y ago
  Based on some back-of-the envelope calculations, a single Powerwall would provide about 5-10 hours of "house run" for the average house, and residential use is about 1/3 of all electrical use. So a Powerwall on every house gets us a third of the way there. That seems entirely within possibility.
- plantain 4y ago
  The "Victorian Big Battery" cost about 100 million to build and provides 450MWh, so at those prices the 120GWh they calculate for 5 hours would cost about 25 billion. Not outrageous in the scale of nation building projects.
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    They won't use batteries for grid scale storage, that's a bit too expensive. They'll probably use hydro, some sort of heated mass or compressed air. Or gas, it's much better than coal at least.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      I think in this model it is actually batteries. They pair pretty economically with solar to smooth output on the daily cycle. They also include existing Hydro in their model, plus 'other' which is what mostly covers the storage on longer scales. But there's easy answers for the rest too. It's just not modelled in this very simple model because most of the heavy lifting is always going to be solar and wind and that's probably the point they're trying to make.
    - plantain 4y ago
      I think Australia will use mostly batteries, but we are building more hydro. I think hydro is miscast as being green though, when in reality it causes enormous ecological destruction. Hydro is also intermittent - it requires the right amount of rainfall, currently hydro in Australia is not able to reach full generation because it will flood downstream as it's been a wet year. Hydro is not that cheap (depending on the metric you need) - see an example[1] comparing Australian hydro to the aforementioned Victorian Big Battery. [1] https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/snowy-2-vs-battery-storage/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/snowy-2-vs-battery-stora...
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    For 25 billion, you could have two Olkiluoto-like nuclear blocks that actually produce energy and not just store it. For several decades. (Olkiluoto is considered notoriously over budget.)
passwordoops 4y ago
Interesting, but the title should mention it's localized to Australia so as to avoid arm waving from either side
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  California, on most days, is generating slightly less power from solar (~10GW) than all of Australia from coal (per https://electricitymap.org https://electricitymap.org). Texas has over 130GW of renewables in ERCOT’s interconnect queue. There are challenges to solve for, certainly, but broad strokes the decarbonization roadmap is well defined and within reach. Velocity is a function of capital and technology investment. Edit: @usefulcat https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/rampant-solars-100gw-texas-grid-queue-puts-wind-power-in-the-shade/2-1-1085068 https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/rampant-solar...
  - earthboundkid 4y ago
    Yeah. As a consumer, I put solar panels on my house in 2017. They generate about as much electricity as I consume. In theory, I will break even on the cost in another two years. Obviously, they're going to depreciate and break at some point, but the only reason ~every house doesn't have them is the price of installation. If everyone did this, you're talking about a world where we would still need non-renewables for load balancing, night time, cloudy days, etc., but we'd still have a huge reduction in carbon. The only thing stopping us from having near carbon free consumer electricity with current technology is the capital costs. So duh, the government should just loan the money to consumers and get it done. We can figure out load balancing etc. later once we pick all the low hanging fruit.
    - happyopossum 4y ago
      > the government should just loan the money to consumers and get it done. I'm not sure everyone wants to borrow money - there are a ton of financing options for solar right now, what makes you think adding yet another one would get everyone over that hump?
SoftTalker 4y ago
- whynotmaybe 4y ago
  Which part is magic in this situation?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
cm2187 4y ago
The averages don’t tell me much. We need to look at percentiles with intermittent sources of energy. 99% still means 3 full days of blackout every year. So it needs to be sufficient to cover an even higher percentile (in fact I don’t even think there is an acceptable number of hours of blackout in a year). I would be curious how they get to that with energies that pretty much go to zero the week there is no wind.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Fossil gas short term, green ammonia long term. With enormous amounts of clean energy and air source carbon capture, you can carbon budget for last resort combustion generation. You might have to burn something to keep the lights on, you’re just on the hook to pay Climeworks or someone else to pull that carbon back out of the atmosphere (which will be done with clean energy) and that cost is built in the per MWh spot price. https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon-energy-programme/green-ammonia/ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon-e...
- philipkglass 4y ago
  That's what is different about this new study. It uses real time supply/demand figures instead of annualized averages. It meets 98.8% of demand with renewables and fills in with fossil power the rest of the time. To quote from the article: Key results from the 52 weeks of simulations are summarised as follows: - Renewables met 98.8% of demand over the year, with the remaining 1.2% met by ‘Other’ (fossils) - ‘Other’ generation peaked at 6.59 GW on the night of July 12. Over the year its average capacity factor was 4.3%. - Hydro met 6.9% of demand. This was lower than my target of 7.5%, and also less than actual hydro generation of 8%. This means that dam storage levels in my simulation would have ended the year higher than they did in the real world. - 17% of the wind and solar generation was in excess of requirements and ended up being curtailed. - 11% of wind and solar generation went into storage. Storage discharge met 10% of demand. - 82% of demand was directly powered by wind and solar without having to pass through storage or be curtailed.
  - atoav 4y ago
    > 82% of demand was directly powered by wind and solar without having to pass through storage or be curtailed. This is amazing. As an EE I wonder about transportation losses, but wind and solar should be pretty easy to decentralize, so maybe this is a non-issue. Wind might be a little harder to decentralize, but I don't know how the regional differences are in Australia. I'd suspect the coasts (or even offshore) would be windiest, which is also where most people tend to live.
adrianN 4y ago
If you want to play around with a toy model of this problem, there is this website: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/
conjecTech 4y ago
One thing I would love to see addressed in these kinds of analyses: the efficacy of strategic placement of solar. Electrical demand tends to peak slightly after sundown for much of the year. However, the sun obviously doesn't set at the same time everywhere. Darwin's sunset is currently an hour and a half later than Sydney/Brisbane. Could building more equatorial/western solar installations together with transmission defer some of the need for storage, even with the same amount of solar deployed?
- fomine3 4y ago
  It's fortunate for solar that most populated cities in AU is located on east.
- wyager 4y ago
  Transmission losses would eat any benefit, unfortunately. Of course, the author didn't model this at all. This is the problem with 99% of "actually we could totally rip out our entire infrastructure right now" posts - it's usually justified with crappy modeling that falls apart under slightly more scrutinizing consideration. Solar-only with low storage overhead might become more viable if we get room-temperature superconductors or something.
  - theluketaylor 4y ago
    Losses wouldn’t be bad with HVDC, with the added benefit of HVDC ties not needing to be frequency synced across the entire grid, so you have some opportunity to increase resiliency. I don’t think it’s a one-sized fits all solution. There will be places where storage will make sense, and other where longer distance transmission makes sense. I think the reality is it will be a mix of both, along with a nice diverse mix of generation methods.
    - philipkglass 4y ago
      Australia seems especially well suited for long-distance transmission because development is so heavily weighted to the coasts; there's not a lot of existing built-up interior areas to route around. At 800 kilovolts HVDC line losses are only 5% per 2000 km: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC97720/ld-na-27527-en-n.pdf https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J... (See page 11)
biomcgary 4y ago
A relatively simple model that is still a reasonable ballpark. However, throughout the article I was wondering about the effect of transmission efficiencies across Australia. The author addresses transmission at the end by acknowledging that they didn't model it. Not sure how much it matters, but I suspect that lots of wires would be required.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Australia is currently reducing their transmission length (and risk of bushfires) by creating microgrids with solar and batteries for remote communities. The battery rollout modelled, would also be able to reduce transmission bottlenecks by distributing them geographically, something the Australian grid has been encouraging for a few years now.
- caf 4y ago
  Not sure how much it matters, but I suspect that lots of wires would be required. Sure - the model scales up existing wind and solar generation assets, so you would need transmission infrastructure to those same areas to scale up as well (and likely inter-region interconnectors to scale up as well).
theptip 4y ago
Great analysis. I’m not so familiar with the AU energy market, so I don’t know how much of an update this result is vs. a reasonable prior. The bigger simulation mentioned in the OP is the ISP: https://aemo.com.au/energy-systems/major-publications/integrated-system-plan-isp/2020-integrated-system-plan-isp https://aemo.com.au/energy-systems/major-publications/integr.... Anyone know what that plan proposes in terms of energy mix? > It is interesting to note that the ISP is predicting that approximately 9GW of peaking gas or liquids will need to be retained in the NEM’s generation mix out to 2050. This is more than the 6.6GW required so far in this study. Though the OP notes that ISP is doing demand modeling too, instead of simulating a new supply mix for the present demand & supply conditions.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  This is completely in line with reasonable priors: https://www.wartsila.com/energy/towards-100-renewable-energy/atlas-of-100-percent-renewable-energy#/country/AU-E https://www.wartsila.com/energy/towards-100-renewable-energy... It's more of a science/engineering communication effort, because there's a lot of unreasonable priors out there. edit: also the 6.6GW of 'other' the current model uses, is the current actual gas plant size, not an amount that they predict as optimal or desirable. Similar with the Hydro, they used the current capacity, even though some are being built right now.
  - caf 4y ago
    On my reading of it, "Other" is the gap between the other modelled sources and the actual demand.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      I may be mixing up his comment about limiting the Hydro to the current max output rate. But, I believe they chose the levels on solar and wind to aim for, precisely because they knew 'other' would come in around this level, because it would be a poor demonstration of the viability of renewables otherwise. But they were at the mercy of the unpredictable weather and demand, so couldn't control it exactly, just much better than many people would assume.
jakewins 4y ago
Models show this same result for most (all?) regions they have been applied to. Here is a survey paper going over the current state of research globally and what mixes different models arrive at for different regions: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
arcticbull 4y ago
The Ontario grid has been there for years. 92% zero-carbon. [1] [1] https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles-ontario.html https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/pr...
- dont__panic 4y ago
  Wow, that's a lot of hydro and nuclear power! Thanks for sharing. I wonder how the New England and upstate NY power grids compare, since they also have a lot of hydro and nuclear?
  - theluketaylor 4y ago
    New England and upstate NY don't generate nearly enough power for their own needs and buy excess power from Ontario and Quebec. Quebec in particular as Hydro Quebec has a terrifying amount of hydro generation and always has tons of excess. A big chunk of the clean energy in the northeast US comes from Canada. Super cool tool that shows the CO2 intensity of various grids and where power is flowing: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-NE-ISNE https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-NE-ISNE
    - dont__panic 4y ago
      Very cool site, thanks for linking. Does most of Quebec's hydro power come from dams on the St. Lawrence river? (this would make sense to me, considering the St. Lawrence is the outlet for the largest reservoir of fresh water in the entire world) Or is there another source I'm not thinking of?
      - theluketaylor 4y ago
        Tons of their dams are in northern Quebec in the middle of nowhere. People who have never been to the Canadian Shield have a tough time imagining just how many rivers and lakes there are. It’s basically endless.
Robotbeat 4y ago
Model.energy is a good website for modeling a 100% renewables grid.
mattnewton 4y ago
Meanwhile in the US, we have states allowing counties to ban solar and wind energy production specifically on privately owned and industrially zoned land. I hope Australia can push through the fossil fuel lobby as they start to fight harder. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/08/23/nine-ohio-counties-ban-wind-solar-projects-under-new-state-law/ https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/08/23/nine-ohio-counties...
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  It's odd that the party that claims to be in favor of a free market is passing laws that actively restrict the free market.
  - dymk 4y ago
    That's just the free market greasing the palms of politicians. A greasier solar lobby needs to come long and out-grease them, obviously.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    I don’t think they even claim to be free-marketers anymore. The nat-cons in particular are vocally anti-market.
  - mperham 4y ago
    They're only in favor of a "free" market that they control. Decentralization empowers everyone, not just plutocrats.
  - glial 4y ago
    As far as I can tell, claims of principle are meaningless with some folks. The only unifying idea is a thirst for power.
  - CodeWriter23 4y ago
    IMO the odd thing is people who believe the "Free Market" is or ever was real.
    - 4y ago
thayne 4y ago
"in Australia" is an important qualification here. Australia has a very high ratio of available solar and wind energy to population. Not that getting Australia fully on renewables wouldn't be exciting. But it is definitely an easier target than say the US.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Quite a lot of people live in Texas and California where renewables are already pretty advanced, plus there's nuclear in the north, and they have hydro and grid connections with Canada who have even more hydro and nuclear so the USA should be easier. The US intends to hit this target (i.e. 95% carbon-free generation) in 8 years I think, with 100% and wider electrification of current fossil fuel uses in 2035 and it didn't seem particularly a stretch even before the recent climate bill passed, so I'd guess they're well on target, not even sure a second Trump term as president could derail it now.
  - smm11 4y ago
    I read somewhere that it's the storage/distribution part that's hurting California. Can't go full-throttle without disaster. If the storage/distribution part was worked out, CA would be full renewable tomorrow.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      California has a massive battery/solar rollout pipeline, and again that's before the IRA stuff, which lets you get incentives for batteries that aren't part of a solar/wind project, which can be used to fix transmission issues as wel as just being storage, so they'll be fine.
    - anonporridge 4y ago
      Is California at the point now where more renewables are not just diminishing returns, but potentially negative returns due to inconsistent generation causing thrashing and large levels of curtailment required to stabilize the grid? They're definitely causing faster natural gas generator breakdown due to them having turning up and down more frequently, causing greater wear and tear. More batteries and demand response to stabilize the day to day grid and absorb the uncontrollable generation output is going to be increasingly necessary.
testfoobar 4y ago
How does this analysis map to an all-electric car future? People generally need their cars during the day and charge them at night.
- dymk 4y ago
  An all-electric car future involves charging stations at destinations as well at home, so cars can be charging during the day as well.
KingOfCoders 4y ago
If all cars in Germany would would be EV and could be used for storage, it would be 2 days of power consumption.
kkfx 4y ago
Those who made such "simulation" probably do have forgot or never learn a classic engineering practice (at least in Europe engineering) witch is named resilience. We need resilient systems as more resilient as bigger is the impact of their eventual failure. In other terms stating we can made a big and complex enough smart grid to run "almost" an renewable means spend an incredible amount of resource to build a hyper-fragile unmaintainable monster that can malfunction at best most of the time. Also the "little storage" they state is not little at all and most importantly it does NOT LAST LONGER. So far we have some long-lasting storage (pumped hydro) witch is very effective where you have enough mountains and basins, witch might be true for let's say Norway and to a little extent Swiss, but certainly not for let's say Germany. Compressed air storage seems to offer an option at a sufficient scale, but so far only some experimental plants exists and they have a significant amount of fragility and risks. Long story short: we haven't enough storage on scale to deploy almost only intermittent sources of power. BEVs can compensate an unstable grid for homes, but not for industry, hospitals, big infrastructures etc. Long story short those who claim such possibility follow this classic: https://www.commitstrip.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Strip-Appli-stop-Covid-650-final.jpg https://www.commitstrip.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Strip... sorry I do not have one in English but I think anyone can translate quick enough. A video equivalent is https://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg https://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg It's not much different than https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-report.pdf https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... something that MIGHT BE partially true, in pure math, but practically false. Fails to understand the real feasibility of such projects is probably the root cause of all managerial driven projects fails.
- trashtester 4y ago
  Norway has very little pumped hydro, even though they have 50% of all hydro in Europe. The flexibility is gained by just postponing consumption if demand is low or alternative supply is high. Of course, these days, there is rarely any surplus power being generated, so Norway is just exporting as much as they can spare (and then some).
cbhl 4y ago
Do we actually have effective strategies for dealing with significant over-generation? The author glosses over it as being necessary to get to 98% renewables throughout the year ("we'll just run our hydro dams in reverse"), but I'm under the impression that over-generation that is unhandled leads to grid instability/desync.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  I think wind and solar can simply be turned off if need be.
- cma 4y ago
  Maybe folding@home; desalination for farming; pumping and spraying water to re-glaciate areas in the winter.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Resistively heated thermal storage for any industrial plant that uses process heat.
- stevesimmons 4y ago
  Stop some of the wind generators. Disconnect some of the solar panels. Both are standard practice today.
- jnsaff2 4y ago
  PV can be throttled instantly to anything down to 0. Otherwise no offgrid setup would be feasible. You can mandate smart control signals to PV inverters or don't do anything and let the frequency go up so even inverters installed today will start cutting power as this is a requirement from grid code. Wind has a bigger lag (seconds) but it has brakes to save them in storms. So those are easy problems (technologically).
  - pydry 4y ago
    It's better to use price signals to ratchet demand up if you can. The UK already has a tariff that can warn you about upcoming periods of free power. Electric car users like it. They like it a lot.
colechristensen 4y ago
If you lower this to, say, 75%, a good analysis will show that a renewables grid with zero storage is possible around the world. Storage is only required for the last n% and n is much larger than most people realize. If we accept that the energy economy will shift with supply-and-demand based pricing, what can actually happen is having peak production oversupply which will find users with its lower prices enabling off-peak-production to be high enough to meet peak demand. (this is a kind of thing that maybe needs blog posts with graphs to make the most sense) We would be in a very much better place if we were near n and it's probably not worth worrying that much yet because n is also quite far away.
- skrause 4y ago
  That was Germany's plan. Go to at least 80% renewable and fill up the rest with natural gas power plants that can change the load quickly. Oops.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    Germany’s problem wasn’t the end goal but the path to it.
  - pydry 4y ago
    That was literally everybody's plan. The alternative was to continue using coal while ramping up renewables. For all the handwringing about the turned off nuclear plants they were getting old in the tooth and wouldnt have made a substantive difference to the current crisis. New plants would take 3x as long and cost 3x as much. France is in just as much shit as germany this winter coz their nuke plants are aging out. The realistic alternatives for germany avoiding a gas crisis were dont turn off coal plants "just in case a war with russia starts" or dont try to rile up russia.
    - caf 4y ago
      Or build LNG import terminals.
wiz21c 4y ago
120GWh of storage is needed (5hours). A MegaPack of Tesla has 3 MWh capacity, so we'd need the equivalent of 40000 of them... Ouch!
- Koemul 4y ago
  According to [1], there were about 20 million cars registered in Australia in 2021. If we turn them all electric, with an average battery size of 50KW/h, we'll get about 1TW/h of storage that can be charged during periods of overproduction and feed part of their capacity back to the grid when needed. Electric car sales are currently low in Australia, with ~2% of new cars sold in 2021. But they are growing exponentially: ~2000 electric vehicles were sold in 2018, ~7000 in 2019/2020 and ~20'000 in 2021. [2][3] [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/632547/australia-registered-vehicles/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/632547/australia-registe... [2] https://electricvehiclecouncil.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/EVC_annual_report_-V3-Aug-13th-1.pdf https://electricvehiclecouncil.com.au/wp-content/uploads/202... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/31/new-electric-vehicle-sales-triple-in-australia-with-tesla-outstripping-other-makers https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/31/new-elec...
beloch 4y ago
While 120 GWh of electricity storage may be remotely feasible to build now, I would not characterize it as "little" in any way, shape or form.
- Retric 4y ago
  It’s roughly 2 years worth of EV batteries sold in Australia right now. So, calling it little storage actually sounds reasonable.
edwiecron 4y ago
I believe that this model is built using Excel and VBScript. I would love to see the source code for this. These sorts of things should be shared before anyone starts basing policy on it. I want to know the inputs, the outputs, etc. I want a lot of people going though this, looking at the data.
- radium3d 4y ago
  As a homeowner (1750 sqft, 100% electric with one EV [no gas appliances or fireplace]) in a dry (9-10 inches of rain per year) climate with a small 8.4kW solar installation with one 13.4kW battery, I can tell you that if we had 5-10kW more battery storage our home would be 100% off grid. As it stands now we're 71% self-powered with a current energy offset of 106%.
voqv 4y ago
I'm very impressed to learn about Snowy 2.0. Of course, it's not a silver bullet - in a renewable world, storage will have to be fairly distributed across the grid to maintain frequency. For comparison, it seems Germany uses nearly 2x more electricity than Australia and currently has about 10x less pumped storage (including wip) than what Snowy 2.0 will have alone.
ciconia 4y ago
A few random thoughts: 1. There are symbiotic relationships between different sources of energy. In order to suck petrol out of the earth we need coal (used in steel manufacturing). In order to mine coal we need petrol (used by diggers and for transport). We still don't know how to manufacture solar panels and wind turbines without fossil fuels. The mining, steel forging and international transport of these products is still based on fossil fuels. 2. Electricity consumption represents only about 30% of total energy consumption. A lot of people seem to underestimate the difference in energy density between petrol and lithium batteries. This difference makes it highly unlikely that we'll move to electric ships and aircraft in the near future. 3. The mining activity associated with manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, smartphones and electric cars is highly demanding in energy, is highly polluting, and demands great quantities of fresh water as part of the process of refining the different metals. With the rise of electric cars, the continuing demand for smartphones mining is expected to demand even more energy and fresh water, and pollute even more our rivers and soils. This, in a period of constrained energy sources, droughts, and an already degraded environment. 4. Judging by the comments on here people demand an always-on supply of energy, be it electricity, petrol or gas, which is a privilege only some countries enjoy today, and is relatively recent in human history. I think the idea of intermittent energy supply is worth exploring, and might make it easier to achieve 100% renewable energy production, in conjunction with a lower energy consumption.
- intrepidhero 4y ago
  And random responses. 1. I don't know if the coal used to make steal can be replaced with synthetic sources but petrol (and diesel and oil) can absolutely be replaced with synthetic fuel powered by renewable energy and carbon capture. The tech is old and boring. What's needed are cheaper renewable sources and more expensive oil, both of which are happening right now. 2. You're absolutely right and there is some debate that battery production can ever scale to level needed. Fortunately some combination of batteries and synthetic fuel almost certainly can get us to 100%. 3. Spot on and highly concerning, particularly as demand for these things at low cost has driven mining operations to places with poor environmental protections. 4. Great point. Demand side management and spot pricing are already things and more wide spread implementations will definitely make renewables more economical. I personally will be super excited to see one of the companies pursuing synthetic fuels figure out how to take advantage of surplus generation to capture carbon and turn it into essentially high energy density storage.
ktzar 4y ago
I wonder how would the results vary if for every MW of renewables there was 100kWh of storage (using flywheels, lipo, thermal rock, gravity, etc...). I really believe a future with 100% renewables is very, very close. Will happen in the 2030s.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  That’s only 6 minutes of peak load worth of storage (assuming it’s rated on output kWh, perhaps only 5 minutes otherwise). If you have three different types of renewables, all equally sized, and uncorrelated, it’s 18/15 minutes against a single type of renewable being offline. That doesn’t seem like enough for a 100% renewables grid to be 3 9’s reliable.
  - fulafel 4y ago
    Demand can be regulated to meet supply using various ways (eg pricing, quotas, etc).
    - fallingknife 4y ago
      Pricing is a poor tool as the signal doesn't propagate quickly enough. Quotas just means blackouts, and that isn't ever going to fly politically.
      - fulafel 4y ago
        Disagreed on both: Demonstrably pricing already technically works in many hourly priced markets in face of difficult conditions - the swings are not that fast and the time quantum can technically be made much smaller still, there is no fundamental signal propagation speed bottleneck in sight. Quotas yield cutoffs only if you exceed your quota, so you would still get power constantly for light loads unless you err by blowing your quota. This is far better than getting blackouts.
      - pydry 4y ago
        Pricing doesnt propogate fast enough only if you assume that we cant predict the weather. It's already working in the UK - power company sends a message saying between 2am-4am power will be free.
andrew-ld 4y ago
ParksNet 4y ago
Its unclear if we even have the metal mining capacity (or the ores in the ground) to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc
- mactitan 4y ago
  A very compelling case and the material for 100% renewables is staggering. How this can be ignored is bewildering. A discussion at: https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/wuc4vg/assoc_prof_simon_michaux_the_quantity_of_metals/ https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/wuc4vg/assoc_prof... Simon Michaux presents the deck of data showing details of where his calculations are coming from that show even the first generation of renewables to replace fossil fuels is going to outstrip our capacity to source the minerals (lithium, copper, vanadium, manganese, cobalt, etc required for only the first generation of renewable energy) and the amount of energy to be replaced based on efficiencies is exorbitant. Summary: EROI going down, mineral requirements going way up spell issues moving forward.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Right from the introduction he assumes all EVs will be using Li ion which is already being phased out of everything but top performance luxury vehicles, then goes on to double count the storage asking where one could possibly find a few trillion Wh of batteries. Then blindly asserts that recycling will be impractical when recycling facilities already exist and are fighting over access to dead batteries. He then bemoans the lack of a better solution which, as the people who have been promoting renewables for half a century have been saying the entire time while the infrastructure was torn down, is trains and ebikes (or just bikes in most areas). Every single statement is fractally wrong and I'm only a paragraph in.
    - mactitan 4y ago
      I’m interested in the new phase out and the realistic time frame. It’s not this: https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/24/22898666/panasonic-4680-tesla-battery-mass-production-2023 https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/24/22898666/panasonic-4680-t... Currently recycling is very low. I think he’s focused on what’s likely in production for the near future and the real material problem of all infrastructure ( its massive)
iammjm 4y ago
each time somebody claims something is impossible, consider how much he is benefiting from the status quo
- trashtester 4y ago
  When somebody claims something is impossible, maybe the status quo will be maintained, or maybe some alternative plan will be started. On the other hand, if someone argues for doing something that they know is impossible, it may be an even stronger indication that they may benefit from the status quo. In such a situation, those who advocate for an alternative, proven but less sexy option may be those who really seek progress.
tomohawk 4y ago
Speaking as an electrical engineer with a grid tied PV system for many years, this claim is just bonkers. It's exactly this sort of magical thinking that we don't need more of. Electric utility is a deadly serious business. The cost of getting a massive transition like this wrong is going to be measured not just economically, but in people's lives.
Manuel_D 4y ago
> My simulation used the 24GW/120GWh of assumed storage and existing hydro to firm up the wind and solar and match demand. 120 GWh is not what most would describe as "little storage". The largest hydroelectric storage facilities in existence are in the single digit or low double digit GWh. And this is for a country with a relatively small population. > Both the hydro and storage were assumed highly flexible. Note that I did not use the actual hydro generation data. I completely changed the dispatch of hydro so that it had minimal generation on days when it wasn’t needed, and elevated levels whenever there was a day with significant shortfalls of wind and solar relative to demand. This is also a big simplification. While dams can just totally shut off the flow of water downstream, this has big ecological impact and also impacts availability of water in population centers that draw from the river. Most dams always release a minimum amount of water to ensure the river never runs dry. Much of his simulation has dams bottling up water for long stretches of time.
- caf 4y ago
  120 GWh is not what most would describe as "little storage". The largest hydroelectric storage facilities in existence are in the single digit or low double digit GWh. And this is for a country with a relatively small population. The current pipeline of utility battery storage projects in Australia is estimated to be 26GW ( https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/11/03/australias-battery-pipeline-charges-to-over-26-gw-says-new-research/ https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/11/03/australias-... ). Storage ratios of announced projects seem to range from 2 to 4, so that would be storage in the range of 52GWh - 104GWh - not quite up to the assumed mix in the model but not too far short either. This is also a big simplification. While dams can just totally shut off the flow of water downstream, this has big ecological impact and also impacts availability of water in population centers that draw from the river. Most dams always release a minimum amount of water to ensure the river never runs dry. Much of his simulation has dams bottling up water for long stretches of time. Did you miss the part where he imposed minimums on the hydro generation in order to keep it within historical limits: However, to maintain consistency with historical generation, hydro generation was also subject to the following constraints: * Hydro generation was kept between 200 MW and 6,000 MW * Weekly hydro generation was kept above 168 GWh * Annual hydro generation was targeted at between 6% and 9% of demand, though ideally closer to 15,000 GWh, or about 7.5% of demand. I do however agree the hydro part is a little too oversimplified (going by what is in the article). A lot of Tasmania's hydro is run-of-river; the dam-based hydro systems can be very limited by weather-based issues (both too little rain, which hasn't been concern in the previous year due to a persistent La Nina, and too much, which limits how much can be discharged when downstream pondages are too full).
Incipient 4y ago
The missing piece for me in any renewable puzzle is evidence. At a grid level (either state or national) has anyone actually figured out how much storage we need? Based on say a P90 worst case, what % of power is down, for how long, and how much storage do we need to manage that? Or any such similar study. Traditional power gen is much easier. Plonk it down and essentially it works (with various stabilisation mechanisms in place). Renewables however take a lot more planning.
- Incipient 4y ago
  If anyone does end up checking this. I'm pro-renewables. I'm genuinely interested in to get info on this. I've searched and can't find squat.
imadierich 4y ago

249 points by guerby 4y ago

David Osmond (author of the simulation) interview on youtube channel "Engineering with Rosie": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgxOlPu9kiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgxOlPu9kiM Twitter : https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1562318623359713280 https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8/status/1562318623359713280 Also see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32567994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32567994

anovikov 4y ago

Great job! Did a similar study for Germany about 7 years ago based on their published 30-minute production and demand data and arrived to very similar conclusions. It's not as good as in Australia because both wind and solar in Germany is less reliable, also good enough.

WalterBright 4y ago

5 hours of grid-scale storage seems like a lot.

zdragnar 4y ago
On its own, it does seem like a lot. Thinking about the nature of renewables where I live, it seems so small as to be not worth mentioning; January will often have a week to several weeks of heavy cloud cover and little wind. A mere 5 hours of capacity is a pittance. Australia, on the other hand, could easily make more sense, as I imagine the outback to be sunnier year round and maybe windier.
- plantain 4y ago
  Cloud doesn't mean solar stops working - the decrease is 30-60% depending on thickness, but there's still very meaningful generation.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    Especially depending on the season - clouds in the summer also typically correspond with a big drop in AC demand, reducing the amount of electricity required. That's why OPs modeling is so interesting, "real" daily data for an entire year is great for this type of planning.
  - throwawayyyyyy 4y ago
    the solar panel's I've used in off-grid applications put out 10% on cloudy days.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    We get about nine and a half hours of sun in January, assuming no clouds. That leaves around 14-15 hours of no production, assuming there isn't sufficient wind (also often the case in January). Panels operating at 30% capacity for 9 hours cannot be offset by 5 hours worth of storage. It simply isn't enough storage, even if the panels were operating at 100% capacity. Adding more storage really isn't a great solution either; I'm guessing that you would be hard pressed to get 15 hours worth of storage out of 9 hours of sunlight when the hours of darkness start at 4:30 PM, especially if everyone moves to electrical cooking, water heating and clothes drying, which some states are starting to compel. So, the two obvious solutions remain- import stored energy from out of state, or using non-renewables as a base load a few months out of the year. We'll need to pay for burying tonnes of HVDC lines (stringing them up in tornado prone areas isn't a great call, imho) or the expense of more nuclear plants (unpopular and, currently at least, uneconomical) or pulling CO2 out of the air to offset natural gas (also expensive). HVDC lines seem the cheapest, though sourcing the energy will take years of production and inter-state agreements to get to the point where the south is producing (and storing!) enough to send the excess north.
    - plantain 4y ago
      You can also over-provision solar and wind to factors well above 100%, and still be more economical than burning fossil fuels.
      - 4y ago
- qqqwerty 4y ago
  What percentage of the population lives in climates like yours? If I had to guess, maybe something like 10-20% of the worlds population? My gut tells me the vast majority of the worlds population lives in locations that are more similar to Australia's climate than in climates like yours. So we start there, and overtime things get cheaper, we find better solutions to long duration storage, and then we start tackling the harder climates/geographies.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    Many of the countries with climate similar to Australia do not have the purchasing power of most northern countries, so they're currently building new cold power at a rapid pace.
bluefirebrand 4y ago
It also doesn't sound like actually enough. They never have outages longer than 5 hours? And even with fully renewable sources they would never have periods longer than 5 hours without much generation?
- plantain 4y ago
  Hence the overgeneration.
- Ajedi32 4y ago
  Looks like they used Gas peaker plants (labeled "Other") to make up the difference during the times that was necessary.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ParksNet 4y ago
Not if we figure out vehicle-to-grid.
adrianN 4y ago
Developed countries have a couple of weeks worth of natural gas in strategic reserves. I don't see why we couldn't do that with gas made from CO2, water, and electricity. Or ammonia. Or maybe hydrogen.
dashundchen 4y ago
Is it really though? How many gigawatts of gas peaker plants and all the associated infrastructure sit around waiting for the tens or hundred hours they're needed? Turns out, it's a lot - and it costs the ratepayers: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/just-how-much-business-can-batteries-take-from-gas-peakers https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/just-how-much-b... > Wood Mackenzie calculates the average peaker plant capacity factor will sit between 5 and 6 percent over the next two decades. That amounts to a low number of hours for storage to replicate. In New York City, ratepayers are paying billions of dollars for polluting gas peakers that sit idle. https://www.cleanegroup.org/ceg-projects/phase-out-peakers/ https://www.cleanegroup.org/ceg-projects/phase-out-peakers/ * An estimated $4.5 billion in ratepayers funds have gone to support the continued operation of the city’s peaker plants – most of which operate no more than a few hundred hours each year. * Even though the power plants don’t run often, they can be significant contributors to local air pollution – accounting for more than 10 percent of nitrous oxide (NOx) emissions on high ozone days. Luckily we have the technology to both start replacing gas peakers with storage, and roll out demand response and load shedding to reduce peak demand. For example, my employer is a big power user. On a couple days in the summer during peak heat, the utility requests curtailment. The plant managers can respond by switching HVAC operation plans, shift some loads to the overnight - the utility saves money on peak generation, and the company saves a ton of demand charges. Win-win.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  This is going to come up a lot in future, so we should be careful to seperate two things: 1. Money spent on having generators on standby when they are used only 5% of the time 2. Money spent on fossil fuels for those plants when they actually run. 1 is money well spent, 2 is a problem to be solved but just carbon taxing it is probably enough to consider it solved. Luckily, the high cost of 1, makes it easier to justify adding batteries or a thousand other things that help to reduce 2. But you know people are going to point to the same peaker plants we've had for years and say "look how expensive renewables are!". Also, we've already built the gas plants. Which is probably a big chunk of the cost (they'll just be spreading that cost across the hours that they intend to run during their working life).
bombcar 4y ago
Based on some back-of-the envelope calculations, a single Powerwall would provide about 5-10 hours of "house run" for the average house, and residential use is about 1/3 of all electrical use. So a Powerwall on every house gets us a third of the way there. That seems entirely within possibility.
plantain 4y ago
The "Victorian Big Battery" cost about 100 million to build and provides 450MWh, so at those prices the 120GWh they calculate for 5 hours would cost about 25 billion. Not outrageous in the scale of nation building projects.
- cinntaile 4y ago
  They won't use batteries for grid scale storage, that's a bit too expensive. They'll probably use hydro, some sort of heated mass or compressed air. Or gas, it's much better than coal at least.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I think in this model it is actually batteries. They pair pretty economically with solar to smooth output on the daily cycle. They also include existing Hydro in their model, plus 'other' which is what mostly covers the storage on longer scales. But there's easy answers for the rest too. It's just not modelled in this very simple model because most of the heavy lifting is always going to be solar and wind and that's probably the point they're trying to make.
  - plantain 4y ago
    I think Australia will use mostly batteries, but we are building more hydro. I think hydro is miscast as being green though, when in reality it causes enormous ecological destruction. Hydro is also intermittent - it requires the right amount of rainfall, currently hydro in Australia is not able to reach full generation because it will flood downstream as it's been a wet year. Hydro is not that cheap (depending on the metric you need) - see an example[1] comparing Australian hydro to the aforementioned Victorian Big Battery. [1] https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/snowy-2-vs-battery-storage/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/snowy-2-vs-battery-stora...
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  For 25 billion, you could have two Olkiluoto-like nuclear blocks that actually produce energy and not just store it. For several decades. (Olkiluoto is considered notoriously over budget.)

passwordoops 4y ago

Interesting, but the title should mention it's localized to Australia so as to avoid arm waving from either side

toomuchtodo 4y ago
California, on most days, is generating slightly less power from solar (~10GW) than all of Australia from coal (per https://electricitymap.org https://electricitymap.org). Texas has over 130GW of renewables in ERCOT’s interconnect queue. There are challenges to solve for, certainly, but broad strokes the decarbonization roadmap is well defined and within reach. Velocity is a function of capital and technology investment. Edit: @usefulcat https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/rampant-solars-100gw-texas-grid-queue-puts-wind-power-in-the-shade/2-1-1085068 https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/rampant-solar...
- earthboundkid 4y ago
  Yeah. As a consumer, I put solar panels on my house in 2017. They generate about as much electricity as I consume. In theory, I will break even on the cost in another two years. Obviously, they're going to depreciate and break at some point, but the only reason ~every house doesn't have them is the price of installation. If everyone did this, you're talking about a world where we would still need non-renewables for load balancing, night time, cloudy days, etc., but we'd still have a huge reduction in carbon. The only thing stopping us from having near carbon free consumer electricity with current technology is the capital costs. So duh, the government should just loan the money to consumers and get it done. We can figure out load balancing etc. later once we pick all the low hanging fruit.
  - happyopossum 4y ago
    > the government should just loan the money to consumers and get it done. I'm not sure everyone wants to borrow money - there are a ton of financing options for solar right now, what makes you think adding yet another one would get everyone over that hump?

SoftTalker 4y ago

whynotmaybe 4y ago
Which part is magic in this situation?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

cm2187 4y ago

The averages don’t tell me much. We need to look at percentiles with intermittent sources of energy. 99% still means 3 full days of blackout every year. So it needs to be sufficient to cover an even higher percentile (in fact I don’t even think there is an acceptable number of hours of blackout in a year). I would be curious how they get to that with energies that pretty much go to zero the week there is no wind.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Fossil gas short term, green ammonia long term. With enormous amounts of clean energy and air source carbon capture, you can carbon budget for last resort combustion generation. You might have to burn something to keep the lights on, you’re just on the hook to pay Climeworks or someone else to pull that carbon back out of the atmosphere (which will be done with clean energy) and that cost is built in the per MWh spot price. https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon-energy-programme/green-ammonia/ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon-e...
philipkglass 4y ago
That's what is different about this new study. It uses real time supply/demand figures instead of annualized averages. It meets 98.8% of demand with renewables and fills in with fossil power the rest of the time. To quote from the article: Key results from the 52 weeks of simulations are summarised as follows: - Renewables met 98.8% of demand over the year, with the remaining 1.2% met by ‘Other’ (fossils) - ‘Other’ generation peaked at 6.59 GW on the night of July 12. Over the year its average capacity factor was 4.3%. - Hydro met 6.9% of demand. This was lower than my target of 7.5%, and also less than actual hydro generation of 8%. This means that dam storage levels in my simulation would have ended the year higher than they did in the real world. - 17% of the wind and solar generation was in excess of requirements and ended up being curtailed. - 11% of wind and solar generation went into storage. Storage discharge met 10% of demand. - 82% of demand was directly powered by wind and solar without having to pass through storage or be curtailed.
- atoav 4y ago
  > 82% of demand was directly powered by wind and solar without having to pass through storage or be curtailed. This is amazing. As an EE I wonder about transportation losses, but wind and solar should be pretty easy to decentralize, so maybe this is a non-issue. Wind might be a little harder to decentralize, but I don't know how the regional differences are in Australia. I'd suspect the coasts (or even offshore) would be windiest, which is also where most people tend to live.

adrianN 4y ago

If you want to play around with a toy model of this problem, there is this website: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/

conjecTech 4y ago

One thing I would love to see addressed in these kinds of analyses: the efficacy of strategic placement of solar. Electrical demand tends to peak slightly after sundown for much of the year. However, the sun obviously doesn't set at the same time everywhere. Darwin's sunset is currently an hour and a half later than Sydney/Brisbane. Could building more equatorial/western solar installations together with transmission defer some of the need for storage, even with the same amount of solar deployed?

fomine3 4y ago
It's fortunate for solar that most populated cities in AU is located on east.
wyager 4y ago
Transmission losses would eat any benefit, unfortunately. Of course, the author didn't model this at all. This is the problem with 99% of "actually we could totally rip out our entire infrastructure right now" posts - it's usually justified with crappy modeling that falls apart under slightly more scrutinizing consideration. Solar-only with low storage overhead might become more viable if we get room-temperature superconductors or something.
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  Losses wouldn’t be bad with HVDC, with the added benefit of HVDC ties not needing to be frequency synced across the entire grid, so you have some opportunity to increase resiliency. I don’t think it’s a one-sized fits all solution. There will be places where storage will make sense, and other where longer distance transmission makes sense. I think the reality is it will be a mix of both, along with a nice diverse mix of generation methods.
  - philipkglass 4y ago
    Australia seems especially well suited for long-distance transmission because development is so heavily weighted to the coasts; there's not a lot of existing built-up interior areas to route around. At 800 kilovolts HVDC line losses are only 5% per 2000 km: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC97720/ld-na-27527-en-n.pdf https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J... (See page 11)

biomcgary 4y ago

A relatively simple model that is still a reasonable ballpark. However, throughout the article I was wondering about the effect of transmission efficiencies across Australia. The author addresses transmission at the end by acknowledging that they didn't model it. Not sure how much it matters, but I suspect that lots of wires would be required.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Australia is currently reducing their transmission length (and risk of bushfires) by creating microgrids with solar and batteries for remote communities. The battery rollout modelled, would also be able to reduce transmission bottlenecks by distributing them geographically, something the Australian grid has been encouraging for a few years now.
caf 4y ago
Not sure how much it matters, but I suspect that lots of wires would be required. Sure - the model scales up existing wind and solar generation assets, so you would need transmission infrastructure to those same areas to scale up as well (and likely inter-region interconnectors to scale up as well).

theptip 4y ago

Great analysis. I’m not so familiar with the AU energy market, so I don’t know how much of an update this result is vs. a reasonable prior. The bigger simulation mentioned in the OP is the ISP: https://aemo.com.au/energy-systems/major-publications/integrated-system-plan-isp/2020-integrated-system-plan-isp https://aemo.com.au/energy-systems/major-publications/integr.... Anyone know what that plan proposes in terms of energy mix? > It is interesting to note that the ISP is predicting that approximately 9GW of peaking gas or liquids will need to be retained in the NEM’s generation mix out to 2050. This is more than the 6.6GW required so far in this study. Though the OP notes that ISP is doing demand modeling too, instead of simulating a new supply mix for the present demand & supply conditions.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
This is completely in line with reasonable priors: https://www.wartsila.com/energy/towards-100-renewable-energy/atlas-of-100-percent-renewable-energy#/country/AU-E https://www.wartsila.com/energy/towards-100-renewable-energy... It's more of a science/engineering communication effort, because there's a lot of unreasonable priors out there. edit: also the 6.6GW of 'other' the current model uses, is the current actual gas plant size, not an amount that they predict as optimal or desirable. Similar with the Hydro, they used the current capacity, even though some are being built right now.
- caf 4y ago
  On my reading of it, "Other" is the gap between the other modelled sources and the actual demand.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I may be mixing up his comment about limiting the Hydro to the current max output rate. But, I believe they chose the levels on solar and wind to aim for, precisely because they knew 'other' would come in around this level, because it would be a poor demonstration of the viability of renewables otherwise. But they were at the mercy of the unpredictable weather and demand, so couldn't control it exactly, just much better than many people would assume.

jakewins 4y ago

Models show this same result for most (all?) regions they have been applied to. Here is a survey paper going over the current state of research globally and what mixes different models arrive at for different regions: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910

arcticbull 4y ago

The Ontario grid has been there for years. 92% zero-carbon. [1] [1] https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles-ontario.html https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/pr...

dont__panic 4y ago
Wow, that's a lot of hydro and nuclear power! Thanks for sharing. I wonder how the New England and upstate NY power grids compare, since they also have a lot of hydro and nuclear?
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  New England and upstate NY don't generate nearly enough power for their own needs and buy excess power from Ontario and Quebec. Quebec in particular as Hydro Quebec has a terrifying amount of hydro generation and always has tons of excess. A big chunk of the clean energy in the northeast US comes from Canada. Super cool tool that shows the CO2 intensity of various grids and where power is flowing: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-NE-ISNE https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-NE-ISNE
  - dont__panic 4y ago
    Very cool site, thanks for linking. Does most of Quebec's hydro power come from dams on the St. Lawrence river? (this would make sense to me, considering the St. Lawrence is the outlet for the largest reservoir of fresh water in the entire world) Or is there another source I'm not thinking of?
    - theluketaylor 4y ago
      Tons of their dams are in northern Quebec in the middle of nowhere. People who have never been to the Canadian Shield have a tough time imagining just how many rivers and lakes there are. It’s basically endless.

Robotbeat 4y ago

Model.energy is a good website for modeling a 100% renewables grid.

mattnewton 4y ago

Meanwhile in the US, we have states allowing counties to ban solar and wind energy production specifically on privately owned and industrially zoned land. I hope Australia can push through the fossil fuel lobby as they start to fight harder. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/08/23/nine-ohio-counties-ban-wind-solar-projects-under-new-state-law/ https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/08/23/nine-ohio-counties...

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
It's odd that the party that claims to be in favor of a free market is passing laws that actively restrict the free market.
- dymk 4y ago
  That's just the free market greasing the palms of politicians. A greasier solar lobby needs to come long and out-grease them, obviously.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  I don’t think they even claim to be free-marketers anymore. The nat-cons in particular are vocally anti-market.
- mperham 4y ago
  They're only in favor of a "free" market that they control. Decentralization empowers everyone, not just plutocrats.
- glial 4y ago
  As far as I can tell, claims of principle are meaningless with some folks. The only unifying idea is a thirst for power.
- CodeWriter23 4y ago
  IMO the odd thing is people who believe the "Free Market" is or ever was real.
  - 4y ago

thayne 4y ago

"in Australia" is an important qualification here. Australia has a very high ratio of available solar and wind energy to population. Not that getting Australia fully on renewables wouldn't be exciting. But it is definitely an easier target than say the US.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Quite a lot of people live in Texas and California where renewables are already pretty advanced, plus there's nuclear in the north, and they have hydro and grid connections with Canada who have even more hydro and nuclear so the USA should be easier. The US intends to hit this target (i.e. 95% carbon-free generation) in 8 years I think, with 100% and wider electrification of current fossil fuel uses in 2035 and it didn't seem particularly a stretch even before the recent climate bill passed, so I'd guess they're well on target, not even sure a second Trump term as president could derail it now.
- smm11 4y ago
  I read somewhere that it's the storage/distribution part that's hurting California. Can't go full-throttle without disaster. If the storage/distribution part was worked out, CA would be full renewable tomorrow.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    California has a massive battery/solar rollout pipeline, and again that's before the IRA stuff, which lets you get incentives for batteries that aren't part of a solar/wind project, which can be used to fix transmission issues as wel as just being storage, so they'll be fine.
  - anonporridge 4y ago
    Is California at the point now where more renewables are not just diminishing returns, but potentially negative returns due to inconsistent generation causing thrashing and large levels of curtailment required to stabilize the grid? They're definitely causing faster natural gas generator breakdown due to them having turning up and down more frequently, causing greater wear and tear. More batteries and demand response to stabilize the day to day grid and absorb the uncontrollable generation output is going to be increasingly necessary.

testfoobar 4y ago

How does this analysis map to an all-electric car future? People generally need their cars during the day and charge them at night.

dymk 4y ago
An all-electric car future involves charging stations at destinations as well at home, so cars can be charging during the day as well.

KingOfCoders 4y ago

If all cars in Germany would would be EV and could be used for storage, it would be 2 days of power consumption.

kkfx 4y ago

Those who made such "simulation" probably do have forgot or never learn a classic engineering practice (at least in Europe engineering) witch is named resilience. We need resilient systems as more resilient as bigger is the impact of their eventual failure. In other terms stating we can made a big and complex enough smart grid to run "almost" an renewable means spend an incredible amount of resource to build a hyper-fragile unmaintainable monster that can malfunction at best most of the time. Also the "little storage" they state is not little at all and most importantly it does NOT LAST LONGER. So far we have some long-lasting storage (pumped hydro) witch is very effective where you have enough mountains and basins, witch might be true for let's say Norway and to a little extent Swiss, but certainly not for let's say Germany. Compressed air storage seems to offer an option at a sufficient scale, but so far only some experimental plants exists and they have a significant amount of fragility and risks. Long story short: we haven't enough storage on scale to deploy almost only intermittent sources of power. BEVs can compensate an unstable grid for homes, but not for industry, hospitals, big infrastructures etc. Long story short those who claim such possibility follow this classic: https://www.commitstrip.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Strip-Appli-stop-Covid-650-final.jpg https://www.commitstrip.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Strip... sorry I do not have one in English but I think anyone can translate quick enough. A video equivalent is https://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg https://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg It's not much different than https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-report.pdf https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... something that MIGHT BE partially true, in pure math, but practically false. Fails to understand the real feasibility of such projects is probably the root cause of all managerial driven projects fails.

trashtester 4y ago
Norway has very little pumped hydro, even though they have 50% of all hydro in Europe. The flexibility is gained by just postponing consumption if demand is low or alternative supply is high. Of course, these days, there is rarely any surplus power being generated, so Norway is just exporting as much as they can spare (and then some).

cbhl 4y ago

Do we actually have effective strategies for dealing with significant over-generation? The author glosses over it as being necessary to get to 98% renewables throughout the year ("we'll just run our hydro dams in reverse"), but I'm under the impression that over-generation that is unhandled leads to grid instability/desync.

nicoburns 4y ago
I think wind and solar can simply be turned off if need be.
cma 4y ago
Maybe folding@home; desalination for farming; pumping and spraying water to re-glaciate areas in the winter.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Resistively heated thermal storage for any industrial plant that uses process heat.
stevesimmons 4y ago
Stop some of the wind generators. Disconnect some of the solar panels. Both are standard practice today.
jnsaff2 4y ago
PV can be throttled instantly to anything down to 0. Otherwise no offgrid setup would be feasible. You can mandate smart control signals to PV inverters or don't do anything and let the frequency go up so even inverters installed today will start cutting power as this is a requirement from grid code. Wind has a bigger lag (seconds) but it has brakes to save them in storms. So those are easy problems (technologically).
- pydry 4y ago
  It's better to use price signals to ratchet demand up if you can. The UK already has a tariff that can warn you about upcoming periods of free power. Electric car users like it. They like it a lot.

colechristensen 4y ago

If you lower this to, say, 75%, a good analysis will show that a renewables grid with zero storage is possible around the world. Storage is only required for the last n% and n is much larger than most people realize. If we accept that the energy economy will shift with supply-and-demand based pricing, what can actually happen is having peak production oversupply which will find users with its lower prices enabling off-peak-production to be high enough to meet peak demand. (this is a kind of thing that maybe needs blog posts with graphs to make the most sense) We would be in a very much better place if we were near n and it's probably not worth worrying that much yet because n is also quite far away.

skrause 4y ago
That was Germany's plan. Go to at least 80% renewable and fill up the rest with natural gas power plants that can change the load quickly. Oops.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  Germany’s problem wasn’t the end goal but the path to it.
- pydry 4y ago
  That was literally everybody's plan. The alternative was to continue using coal while ramping up renewables. For all the handwringing about the turned off nuclear plants they were getting old in the tooth and wouldnt have made a substantive difference to the current crisis. New plants would take 3x as long and cost 3x as much. France is in just as much shit as germany this winter coz their nuke plants are aging out. The realistic alternatives for germany avoiding a gas crisis were dont turn off coal plants "just in case a war with russia starts" or dont try to rile up russia.
  - caf 4y ago
    Or build LNG import terminals.

wiz21c 4y ago

120GWh of storage is needed (5hours). A MegaPack of Tesla has 3 MWh capacity, so we'd need the equivalent of 40000 of them... Ouch!

Koemul 4y ago
According to [1], there were about 20 million cars registered in Australia in 2021. If we turn them all electric, with an average battery size of 50KW/h, we'll get about 1TW/h of storage that can be charged during periods of overproduction and feed part of their capacity back to the grid when needed. Electric car sales are currently low in Australia, with ~2% of new cars sold in 2021. But they are growing exponentially: ~2000 electric vehicles were sold in 2018, ~7000 in 2019/2020 and ~20'000 in 2021. [2][3] [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/632547/australia-registered-vehicles/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/632547/australia-registe... [2] https://electricvehiclecouncil.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/EVC_annual_report_-V3-Aug-13th-1.pdf https://electricvehiclecouncil.com.au/wp-content/uploads/202... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/31/new-electric-vehicle-sales-triple-in-australia-with-tesla-outstripping-other-makers https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/31/new-elec...

beloch 4y ago

While 120 GWh of electricity storage may be remotely feasible to build now, I would not characterize it as "little" in any way, shape or form.

Retric 4y ago
It’s roughly 2 years worth of EV batteries sold in Australia right now. So, calling it little storage actually sounds reasonable.

edwiecron 4y ago

I believe that this model is built using Excel and VBScript. I would love to see the source code for this. These sorts of things should be shared before anyone starts basing policy on it. I want to know the inputs, the outputs, etc. I want a lot of people going though this, looking at the data.

radium3d 4y ago
As a homeowner (1750 sqft, 100% electric with one EV [no gas appliances or fireplace]) in a dry (9-10 inches of rain per year) climate with a small 8.4kW solar installation with one 13.4kW battery, I can tell you that if we had 5-10kW more battery storage our home would be 100% off grid. As it stands now we're 71% self-powered with a current energy offset of 106%.

voqv 4y ago

I'm very impressed to learn about Snowy 2.0. Of course, it's not a silver bullet - in a renewable world, storage will have to be fairly distributed across the grid to maintain frequency. For comparison, it seems Germany uses nearly 2x more electricity than Australia and currently has about 10x less pumped storage (including wip) than what Snowy 2.0 will have alone.

ciconia 4y ago

A few random thoughts: 1. There are symbiotic relationships between different sources of energy. In order to suck petrol out of the earth we need coal (used in steel manufacturing). In order to mine coal we need petrol (used by diggers and for transport). We still don't know how to manufacture solar panels and wind turbines without fossil fuels. The mining, steel forging and international transport of these products is still based on fossil fuels. 2. Electricity consumption represents only about 30% of total energy consumption. A lot of people seem to underestimate the difference in energy density between petrol and lithium batteries. This difference makes it highly unlikely that we'll move to electric ships and aircraft in the near future. 3. The mining activity associated with manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, smartphones and electric cars is highly demanding in energy, is highly polluting, and demands great quantities of fresh water as part of the process of refining the different metals. With the rise of electric cars, the continuing demand for smartphones mining is expected to demand even more energy and fresh water, and pollute even more our rivers and soils. This, in a period of constrained energy sources, droughts, and an already degraded environment. 4. Judging by the comments on here people demand an always-on supply of energy, be it electricity, petrol or gas, which is a privilege only some countries enjoy today, and is relatively recent in human history. I think the idea of intermittent energy supply is worth exploring, and might make it easier to achieve 100% renewable energy production, in conjunction with a lower energy consumption.

intrepidhero 4y ago
And random responses. 1. I don't know if the coal used to make steal can be replaced with synthetic sources but petrol (and diesel and oil) can absolutely be replaced with synthetic fuel powered by renewable energy and carbon capture. The tech is old and boring. What's needed are cheaper renewable sources and more expensive oil, both of which are happening right now. 2. You're absolutely right and there is some debate that battery production can ever scale to level needed. Fortunately some combination of batteries and synthetic fuel almost certainly can get us to 100%. 3. Spot on and highly concerning, particularly as demand for these things at low cost has driven mining operations to places with poor environmental protections. 4. Great point. Demand side management and spot pricing are already things and more wide spread implementations will definitely make renewables more economical. I personally will be super excited to see one of the companies pursuing synthetic fuels figure out how to take advantage of surplus generation to capture carbon and turn it into essentially high energy density storage.

ktzar 4y ago

I wonder how would the results vary if for every MW of renewables there was 100kWh of storage (using flywheels, lipo, thermal rock, gravity, etc...). I really believe a future with 100% renewables is very, very close. Will happen in the 2030s.

sokoloff 4y ago
That’s only 6 minutes of peak load worth of storage (assuming it’s rated on output kWh, perhaps only 5 minutes otherwise). If you have three different types of renewables, all equally sized, and uncorrelated, it’s 18/15 minutes against a single type of renewable being offline. That doesn’t seem like enough for a 100% renewables grid to be 3 9’s reliable.
- fulafel 4y ago
  Demand can be regulated to meet supply using various ways (eg pricing, quotas, etc).
  - fallingknife 4y ago
    Pricing is a poor tool as the signal doesn't propagate quickly enough. Quotas just means blackouts, and that isn't ever going to fly politically.
    - fulafel 4y ago
      Disagreed on both: Demonstrably pricing already technically works in many hourly priced markets in face of difficult conditions - the swings are not that fast and the time quantum can technically be made much smaller still, there is no fundamental signal propagation speed bottleneck in sight. Quotas yield cutoffs only if you exceed your quota, so you would still get power constantly for light loads unless you err by blowing your quota. This is far better than getting blackouts.
    - pydry 4y ago
      Pricing doesnt propogate fast enough only if you assume that we cant predict the weather. It's already working in the UK - power company sends a message saying between 2am-4am power will be free.

andrew-ld 4y ago

ParksNet 4y ago

Its unclear if we even have the metal mining capacity (or the ores in the ground) to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc

mactitan 4y ago
A very compelling case and the material for 100% renewables is staggering. How this can be ignored is bewildering. A discussion at: https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/wuc4vg/assoc_prof_simon_michaux_the_quantity_of_metals/ https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/wuc4vg/assoc_prof... Simon Michaux presents the deck of data showing details of where his calculations are coming from that show even the first generation of renewables to replace fossil fuels is going to outstrip our capacity to source the minerals (lithium, copper, vanadium, manganese, cobalt, etc required for only the first generation of renewable energy) and the amount of energy to be replaced based on efficiencies is exorbitant. Summary: EROI going down, mineral requirements going way up spell issues moving forward.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Right from the introduction he assumes all EVs will be using Li ion which is already being phased out of everything but top performance luxury vehicles, then goes on to double count the storage asking where one could possibly find a few trillion Wh of batteries. Then blindly asserts that recycling will be impractical when recycling facilities already exist and are fighting over access to dead batteries. He then bemoans the lack of a better solution which, as the people who have been promoting renewables for half a century have been saying the entire time while the infrastructure was torn down, is trains and ebikes (or just bikes in most areas). Every single statement is fractally wrong and I'm only a paragraph in.
  - mactitan 4y ago
    I’m interested in the new phase out and the realistic time frame. It’s not this: https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/24/22898666/panasonic-4680-tesla-battery-mass-production-2023 https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/24/22898666/panasonic-4680-t... Currently recycling is very low. I think he’s focused on what’s likely in production for the near future and the real material problem of all infrastructure ( its massive)

iammjm 4y ago

each time somebody claims something is impossible, consider how much he is benefiting from the status quo

trashtester 4y ago
When somebody claims something is impossible, maybe the status quo will be maintained, or maybe some alternative plan will be started. On the other hand, if someone argues for doing something that they know is impossible, it may be an even stronger indication that they may benefit from the status quo. In such a situation, those who advocate for an alternative, proven but less sexy option may be those who really seek progress.

tomohawk 4y ago

Speaking as an electrical engineer with a grid tied PV system for many years, this claim is just bonkers. It's exactly this sort of magical thinking that we don't need more of. Electric utility is a deadly serious business. The cost of getting a massive transition like this wrong is going to be measured not just economically, but in people's lives.

Manuel_D 4y ago

> My simulation used the 24GW/120GWh of assumed storage and existing hydro to firm up the wind and solar and match demand. 120 GWh is not what most would describe as "little storage". The largest hydroelectric storage facilities in existence are in the single digit or low double digit GWh. And this is for a country with a relatively small population. > Both the hydro and storage were assumed highly flexible. Note that I did not use the actual hydro generation data. I completely changed the dispatch of hydro so that it had minimal generation on days when it wasn’t needed, and elevated levels whenever there was a day with significant shortfalls of wind and solar relative to demand. This is also a big simplification. While dams can just totally shut off the flow of water downstream, this has big ecological impact and also impacts availability of water in population centers that draw from the river. Most dams always release a minimum amount of water to ensure the river never runs dry. Much of his simulation has dams bottling up water for long stretches of time.

caf 4y ago
120 GWh is not what most would describe as "little storage". The largest hydroelectric storage facilities in existence are in the single digit or low double digit GWh. And this is for a country with a relatively small population. The current pipeline of utility battery storage projects in Australia is estimated to be 26GW ( https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/11/03/australias-battery-pipeline-charges-to-over-26-gw-says-new-research/ https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/11/03/australias-... ). Storage ratios of announced projects seem to range from 2 to 4, so that would be storage in the range of 52GWh - 104GWh - not quite up to the assumed mix in the model but not too far short either. This is also a big simplification. While dams can just totally shut off the flow of water downstream, this has big ecological impact and also impacts availability of water in population centers that draw from the river. Most dams always release a minimum amount of water to ensure the river never runs dry. Much of his simulation has dams bottling up water for long stretches of time. Did you miss the part where he imposed minimums on the hydro generation in order to keep it within historical limits: However, to maintain consistency with historical generation, hydro generation was also subject to the following constraints: * Hydro generation was kept between 200 MW and 6,000 MW * Weekly hydro generation was kept above 168 GWh * Annual hydro generation was targeted at between 6% and 9% of demand, though ideally closer to 15,000 GWh, or about 7.5% of demand. I do however agree the hydro part is a little too oversimplified (going by what is in the article). A lot of Tasmania's hydro is run-of-river; the dam-based hydro systems can be very limited by weather-based issues (both too little rain, which hasn't been concern in the previous year due to a persistent La Nina, and too much, which limits how much can be discharged when downstream pondages are too full).

Incipient 4y ago

The missing piece for me in any renewable puzzle is evidence. At a grid level (either state or national) has anyone actually figured out how much storage we need? Based on say a P90 worst case, what % of power is down, for how long, and how much storage do we need to manage that? Or any such similar study. Traditional power gen is much easier. Plonk it down and essentially it works (with various stabilisation mechanisms in place). Renewables however take a lot more planning.

Incipient 4y ago
If anyone does end up checking this. I'm pro-renewables. I'm genuinely interested in to get info on this. I've searched and can't find squat.

imadierich 4y ago