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"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

by 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.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      No, because there never is such an issue. Renewables can turn themselves off and on so fast that this won't ever be a problem. The current Australian model we're discussing has about 15% 'overgeneration' because that's economically efficient, there's no problems caused by that.
      - eldaisfish 4y ago
        What you have in mind requires someone to do the coordination. that is currently the system operator and they operate at a data rate measured in minutes or 4 s for the fastest changes (e.g. PJM). Meanwhile, solar output can go from 100% to 10% in three seconds. How is this not a problem?
        ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        The problem anonporridge was talking about was the 10% of solar meeting the current demand and then suddenly going to 100% in three seconds, so there's 'too much' power on the grid i.e. overprovision breaking things. Which it doesn't. While your example is solar at 100% exactly meeting demand, and then dropping to 10% in 3 seconds, and the fix for that is: overprovision (and some other stuff). They do need to have decent predictions of demand and supply, like this graph that shows the 1-hour ahead and 24-hour ahead predictions: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx To get the whole grid working together, but we already have that, and renewables and batteries help in various ways.
        philipkglass 4y ago
        PJM has "Regulation D" signals for sub-second response from energy storage resources (which are mostly batteries in practice): https://www.pjm.com/~/media/committees-groups/task-forces/rmistf/postings/regulation-market-whitepaper.ashx https://www.pjm.com/~/media/committees-groups/task-forces/rm... An energy storage regulating resource, such as a battery or flywheel, cannot burn fuels to produce electricity, but instead charge and discharge energy from the bulk electric system itself through a power inverter. Energy storage devices can match a desired output within 200 milliseconds of receiving the regulating signal; therefore these resources do not need to model any dynamics, ramp limitations, or dead-bands. Australia is also using batteries in a similar way: "South Australian Battery Responded in Just 140 Milliseconds After A Coal-Fired Power Plant Failed" https://www.sciencealert.com/elon-musk-s-south-australian-battery-responded-in-just-140-milliseconds-after-a-coal-fired-power-plant-failed https://www.sciencealert.com/elon-musk-s-south-australian-ba...
- hammock 4y ago
  > even before the recent climate bill passed What is in the bill that is investment in renewables? My understanding is that there aren’t so much subsidies to generators-suppliers, but rather rebates and savings for homeowners and consumers.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Lots of little things, but a big one is that I think you can generate Green Hydrogen with Renewables and get tax credits on both (though I did read some conflicting stuff on that, think it still makes sense if you don't get the credit on the renewables, but if you do then it's another big push). https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/us-inflation-reduction-act-set-to-make-climate-history/ https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/us-inflation-reduction-...
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    Fairly big incentives, including, for the first time, battery investments.
  - rdevsrex 4y ago
    This podcast goes in depth on what's in the bill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrfRbr_xbOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrfRbr_xbOE
  - jaltekruse 4y ago
    Getting people to use more efficient appliances and insulating their homes should help reach these targets. We don't need to generate today levels of energy if we can drop usage by some percentage and just generate all of that with renewables. That being said, the bill is also pushing for heat pumps to replace natural gas burning furnaces, so I'm guessing the net impact will be we need today levels of electricity generation, or maybe even a little more once we look at electrifying things that currently don't interact with the grid and consume fossil fuels directly. And actually as I even type this, I'm remembering that electrifying cars is a big part of this that will definitely drive up electricity need way more than efficiency gains suppress demands for some use. Hopefully we can get to some of the more transformative ideas suggested about improving city planning and density together with investments in public transit so we don't end up producing way too many batteries simply to preserve a car centric transportation system. I do think even just incentivizing consumers to buy electric everything will have a strong movement to drive more electricity generation, and renewables are the cheapest or very cost competitive options for new power generation installations. I think there are some funds in the new bill for encouraging sunsetting fossil fuel based plants early, but we likely need more of that down the line.
- rednerrus 4y ago
  62% of the power in Oregon comes from renewables, mostly renewables that are available 24/7.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Yeah, but that renewable hydro is unlikely to grow much in the USA, while wind and solar will be growing exponentially. Hydro is cool, and works well with solar/wind/nuclear to help match supply and demand, but ... If you look at global renewable output, the big chunk of hydro production that's been flat for decades, somewhat obscures the recent sudden rise of solar and wind.
    - Retric 4y ago
      Swapping hydro from 24/7 power to a backup for wind and solar goes a long way to eliminate the need for storage. We don’t need more total kWh per year of hydro we need to be able to more flexibility get those kWh.
      - throwaway894345 4y ago
        I’m not sure that’s true. Electricity generation is pretty regional, so it’s not like we can use a region’s hydro capacity to store energy for other regions. It can store energy for the region that already has hydro, but that region already has hydro so it probably needs less storage in the first place?
        ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        New York just approved $5 billion to import Canadian Hydro. This is already done on various smaller scales in the US and across the globe. People in Norway are being riled up by their right wing parties because they are selling hydro electricity (and gas) at a high profit to the rest of Europe via connections because of the Russian situation, and there's nothing the right-wing hates more than market-based price signals that suggest you should maybe use less fossil fuels and be more efficient.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  For the cost of 5kW nameplate of new western nuclear (>$10/W) you can get, right now, at retail, as an individual: 50kW nameplate of solar, and 8kW nameplate of wind, and 75kWh of storage and a 5kW generator (which will almost never need turning on) and a biogas digester. And it will produce enough excess power to replace itself (with a cheaper version) or just triple the batteries if you can get 2-3c/kWh for the surplus well before the reactor is built Mentioning nuclear as an option is about as sensible as a generator bicycle.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I wouldn't advocate for new nuclear (for the same reason the creator of this model gives, it just isn't cost effective) but existing nuclear in stable, northern regions that also have hydro is definately a positive if you're aiming to get to carbon-free power faster. If you don't have the much hydro then it can fight with solar/wind for usage of that dispatchable resource, and if you don't have the nuclear you can build solar/wind for less so there's no reason to start.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Agreed. Keep the current nuclear on as long as it's safe and doesn't cost more than eg. a new green ammonia build.
  - evancox100 4y ago
    So you can buffer the wind/solar output for just 78 minutes? Doesn’t sound like a complete solution. Edit: I guess per the paper it really depends on the specific details of generation/load timing. Could be workable for a certain region but not for another.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      The demonstration is 5kW year round with insignificant consumption of fossil fuels everywhere with a climate about as good as Toronto or better, not having somewhere to put all the sunlight. Mid-winter in high latitude you get as little as 2hrs of sunlight/day (or 0 in the arctic, but hardly anyone lives there). If you live in the tropics, 10kW is probably fine. Also if you feel the need to use it up, electrolyzers are cheap and hydrogen is worth money. You can also store a great deal of energy in a few tonnes of NaOH and avoid using precious winter electricity for heating. You can also reshuffle the wind, solar and battery for your local climate, or wait a year or three for sodium batteries to halve the price.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  The problem is that electrification of fossil fuel applications is going to significantly increase the demand on our grid. So it’s not enough to get to parity in renewables, but we have to go far beyond our current capacity in order to accommodate a world in which almost every car is electric (whether electric hybrid or green hydrogen) and almost every home uses electric rather than natural gas for heating (not to mention all of the industrial applications that will need electrification).
  - epistasis 4y ago
    It's going to increase the amount of energy flowing through the grid, but there's plenty of excess grid capacity to accommodate that. The grid is a technological marvel, but one weakness about it is that it has never included storage except small amount of hydro (which I've heard some claim is because nuclear needed it so that the reactor could stay always on, but I have my doubts on that origin story) Without storage, every grid component must be sized to maximum expected through put, which can be many many times as large as average throughput. The grid is also the most expensive part of delivering energy, more expensive than generation. This means that storage, and a lot of electrification means storage, whether that's charging the battery on a car, or heating a hot water tank, or cooling/heating a building which can be used as several degrees of thermal storage, is going to drastically reduce the potential peak load as a ratio to average load. Electrification has enormous potential to reduce grid cost, and overall energy cost, IMHO.
    - connicpu 4y ago
      Even without any other sources of power, storage already makes sense for hydro since ideally you'd like to store excess water that comes during above average rainy seasons so that you have more power to use during a drought, but allowing your nuclear base load to stay running even when the rest of the grid demands less does seem like another useful benefit
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      That's an interesting point I hadn't considered before. That said, I would think the net effect is still increased demand on the grid. If everyone buys an EV, I can't imagine that constitutes a net reduction in demand on the grid even if everyone charges off-peak (unless utilities can pull storage from those car batteries during peak hours, and I doubt car owners will want that kind of wear on their batteries). Do you know of any publications which try to estimate the effect of electrification on capacity?
- sremani 4y ago
  >> 95% carbon-free generation I am still not clearly getting the picture here - what exactly this means. US has about 30% electricity generated by Coal and I do not see that go away in next 20 years let alone 8. What am I missing here? As of today, US energy portfolio is around 83% fossil. The best case scenario for 2040 is something like 50%, that includes we get Nuclear fusion, massive battery storage, material science breakthroughs that will put a dent on steel and cement consumption.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    All the big developed nations have committed to phase out coal by 2030, the USA skipped it because of politics, but if you read any of the coverage of that they usually say that it would happen with or without a government commitment e.g. Why the U.S. Didn’t Join 40 Other Countries in Pledge to End Coal subtitle: Economics is already playing a large role in curtailing American coal power https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-u-s-didnt-join-40-other-countries-in-pledge-to-end-coal/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-u-s-didnt...
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    - makomk 4y ago
      The trouble is, the economics only worked out that way because natural gas was cheap - it's not anymore, and countries have been rolling back their coal shutdowns as a result. There's a good chance it never will be again. The same people who were campaigning for that managed to convince pretty much all developed nations other than the US to end new natural gas investment and extraction, and without the supply there prices won't go down and it won't be feasible to use as a coal replacement. This will probably also cut into the switch to renewables because all of the alternatives to natural gas, like coal, play much less well with them.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > 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 This seems ambitious. Source?
  - jlmorton 4y ago
    Getting to 100% carbon-free generation is a goal of the President's Long Term Strategy [1]: > DECARBONIZE ELECTRICITY. Electricity delivers > diverse services to all sectors of the American > economy. The transition to a clean electricity > system has been accelerating in recent years— > driven by plummeting costs for solar and wind > technologies, federal and subnational policies, > and consumer demand. Building on this success, > the United States has set a goal of 100% clean > electricity by 2035, a crucial foundation for net-zero > emissions no later than 2050. Other releases have set a goal of 2030 [2]: > 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity (CFE) by 2030, at least half of which will be locally supplied clean energy to meet 24/7 demand; I don't agree with the rosy outlook of the previous commenter, though. Things are looking up, but I think it would be quite a stretch to hit this goal. [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/US-Long-Term-Strategy.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/US-Lon... [2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/12/08/fact-sheet-president-biden-signs-executive-order-catalyzing-americas-clean-energy-economy-through-federal-sustainability/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      I think the latter is talking about procurement of energy by the government, not generation. Which obviously helps and is something the government has more control over, but is a slightly different thing. The 100% by 2035 is fairly widely communicated, but there's definately a document that talks about aiming for 95% in 2030 and then focusing on electrification of other sectors as the diminishing returns start to hit. Can't find it at the moment, too many other announcents with very similar google search terms. edit: I can only find sligthly older commitments to 80% clean energy by 2030. Which I guess is close enough, as the targets keep ratcheting as it becomes more obviously a good idea.
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  Everybody leaves out Iowa when mentioning wind energy! Iowa and Oklahoma are both larger into wind that California. https://windexchange.energy.gov/files/slideshows/wind-energy-benefits/index.html#/9 https://windexchange.energy.gov/files/slideshows/wind-energy...
- thayne 4y ago
  The US is a lot more than just California and Texas. Where I live isn't anywhere close to being fully renewable. And home solar is much less economical than it is in California or Texas, largely due to having less sunlight.
  - laurencerowe 4y ago
    Artisanal scale rooftop solar is only economical in Califoria due to feed in tariff subsidies. We could build out utility scale solar of the same capacity for the cost of the subsidy to rooftop solar.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Feed in tariff subsidies are a good policy instrument. Lots of green tech needed initial subsidies to get started because we currently subsidize fossil fuels and removing those subsidies was politically harder than adding subsidies. California also very sensibly, introduced net-zero house regulations that mean most new houses will have solar, making it a great deal less artisinal and just another thing you need to build a house. And rooftop (and generally bulding integrated) solar is in general a good thing. Transmission has a cost and as solar and battery prices plummet, transmission loses the economic battle more and more often when you do the sums. Grids are looking at Non-Wire Alternatives aka Non-Tranmission Alternatives for lots of situations where upgrading or building transmission is the easiest place to minimise costs.
      - laurencerowe 4y ago
        Solar feed in tariffs made a lot of sense initially when they helped bootstrap the market for solar panels but now panels have gotten so cheap the costs of rooftop solar are dominated by installation costs we really should reconsider where we allocate our money to achieve the highest reduction in in emissions. I have more sympathy for the regulations requiring solar on new buildings since it is far cheaper to install while the roof is being built than to retrofit later. But as a renter who pays for these subsidies through my electricity bill and cannot benefit from them I want to see the maximum amount of renewable generation built out for the cost added to my bill. Utility scale solar works out 1/3rd the price of residential, or roughly the cost of the residential subsidy alone. Distribution accounts for only 5% or so of the cost of electricity. It is far more cost effective to build utility scale solar in the desert than on individual roofs.
thrown_22 4y ago
Australian energy prices doubled in the last 6 months. I'm not sure who would ever use the Australian market as a model, other than "under no circumstances follow suit".
- qqqwerty 4y ago
  Energy prices everywhere are up. That is what happens when the global economy is bouncing back from a pandemic and one of the biggest energy suppliers in the world decides to embark on the first major land war in Europe in over 70 years.
  - nomel 4y ago
    With the energy industry making record profits [1], my naive self has extreme trouble believing that's the whole story. https://energycommerce.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/pallone-demands-answers-from-oil-companies-on-record-breaking-profits-amid https://energycommerce.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/pal...
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Why do you think that people who sell a commodity that has increased demand wouldn't make more money? There's no need for a conspiracy. The people who make money from the gas extracted and exported from Australia will profit at the expense of the average Australian who pays more for the gas extracted from under their own soil. You could vote to have them distribute the windfall profits to the people, if they didn't have such a stranglehold on your politicians. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/australias-east-coast-may-face-gas-shortfall-next-year-watchdog-warns-2022-07-31/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/australias-east-coas... This is the same as many historical famines, where people starved to death while the crops grown in the same country were exported and sold overseas because rich, non-starving people can pay more than poor starving farmers. Banning or limiting exports might have helped in a roundabout way, but just not intentionally letting poor people starve to death would have been a simpler policy to implement.
dougmwne 4y ago
The US also has plentiful natural resources vs. population size. It seems that Europe would be the least naturally blessed considering high per capita energy use and less solar resources. China has a high population to support, but also owns all that renewables manuring capacity. Other countries do not have such large and energy intense populations.
- fomine3 4y ago
  I feel Europe situation is by far better than here in Japan. Here, land is small, 75% of land is mountains (so hard to bring wind parts), suitable sea (shallower) for cheaper offshore wind is rare than it looks, much area heavily snows, grid is smaller and divided for 50/60Hz, and almost zero natural resources exists. Even if HVDC connection to foreign grid is possible solution, closer bigger lands (China and Russia) are obviously no one want to rely on. Hydro is a thing thanks to mountains but building new is unpopular to protect naturals. Geothermal is a thing and should be encouraged more, but it seems that it's not enough. Perhaps South Korea is in similar situation but they are still fine to operate nuclear plants.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Floating solar (inland) and floating wind (at sea) are the answer. But Japan actually has a unique advantage in aiming for net-zero in that they have a culture of renewing buildings on short timescales and cenralised property ownership. They can reduce electricity demand and GHG emissions faster in the next decade by building better homes and offices than in rolling out renewables, though they can do both at the same time, and sticking building integrated PV on the new buildings is probably worth doing as well.
    - fomine3 4y ago
      PV is one of the easiest renewable to install here so it's now heavily being installed now, but it's one of the most unstable energy source so can't be relied so much for a primary option. I'd like to see floating wind development but it seems that its development is now in progress. There's also typhoon and tsunami. I agree that buildings improvement is also important that is not much advanced.
pfdietz 4y ago
It's not significantly easier than the US, which also has an embarrassingly large surplus of land for solar and wind.
- caf 4y ago
  The US also has their population spread out a bit more (and therefore their load centres closer to potential generation sites) - Australia actually has a higher urban population % than the USA.
0xy 4y ago
It's not even true "in Australia", given the South Australian government, famously pro-Tesla and pro-renewables, has been ramping up the production of NEW gas peaking plants and the refurbishment of old ones. Australia is doubling down on gas. 100% renewables is the fever pipe dream of a delusional environmentalist who ignores gas in the renewables equation (renewables and gas go together hand-in-hand, because batteries aren't up to the job of smoothing supply across demand).
- caf 4y ago
  The South Australian government has changed hands twice since the Tesla big battery. Electranet, the South Australian transmission operator, commissioned four new synchronous condensors in 2021 in order to reduce the minimum number of gas turbines that must operate.

by thayne 4y ago

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.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    No, because there never is such an issue. Renewables can turn themselves off and on so fast that this won't ever be a problem. The current Australian model we're discussing has about 15% 'overgeneration' because that's economically efficient, there's no problems caused by that.
    - eldaisfish 4y ago
      What you have in mind requires someone to do the coordination. that is currently the system operator and they operate at a data rate measured in minutes or 4 s for the fastest changes (e.g. PJM). Meanwhile, solar output can go from 100% to 10% in three seconds. How is this not a problem?
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        The problem anonporridge was talking about was the 10% of solar meeting the current demand and then suddenly going to 100% in three seconds, so there's 'too much' power on the grid i.e. overprovision breaking things. Which it doesn't. While your example is solar at 100% exactly meeting demand, and then dropping to 10% in 3 seconds, and the fix for that is: overprovision (and some other stuff). They do need to have decent predictions of demand and supply, like this graph that shows the 1-hour ahead and 24-hour ahead predictions: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx To get the whole grid working together, but we already have that, and renewables and batteries help in various ways.
      - philipkglass 4y ago
        PJM has "Regulation D" signals for sub-second response from energy storage resources (which are mostly batteries in practice): https://www.pjm.com/~/media/committees-groups/task-forces/rmistf/postings/regulation-market-whitepaper.ashx https://www.pjm.com/~/media/committees-groups/task-forces/rm... An energy storage regulating resource, such as a battery or flywheel, cannot burn fuels to produce electricity, but instead charge and discharge energy from the bulk electric system itself through a power inverter. Energy storage devices can match a desired output within 200 milliseconds of receiving the regulating signal; therefore these resources do not need to model any dynamics, ramp limitations, or dead-bands. Australia is also using batteries in a similar way: "South Australian Battery Responded in Just 140 Milliseconds After A Coal-Fired Power Plant Failed" https://www.sciencealert.com/elon-musk-s-south-australian-battery-responded-in-just-140-milliseconds-after-a-coal-fired-power-plant-failed https://www.sciencealert.com/elon-musk-s-south-australian-ba...
hammock 4y ago
> even before the recent climate bill passed What is in the bill that is investment in renewables? My understanding is that there aren’t so much subsidies to generators-suppliers, but rather rebates and savings for homeowners and consumers.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Lots of little things, but a big one is that I think you can generate Green Hydrogen with Renewables and get tax credits on both (though I did read some conflicting stuff on that, think it still makes sense if you don't get the credit on the renewables, but if you do then it's another big push). https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/us-inflation-reduction-act-set-to-make-climate-history/ https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/us-inflation-reduction-...
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Fairly big incentives, including, for the first time, battery investments.
- rdevsrex 4y ago
  This podcast goes in depth on what's in the bill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrfRbr_xbOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrfRbr_xbOE
- jaltekruse 4y ago
  Getting people to use more efficient appliances and insulating their homes should help reach these targets. We don't need to generate today levels of energy if we can drop usage by some percentage and just generate all of that with renewables. That being said, the bill is also pushing for heat pumps to replace natural gas burning furnaces, so I'm guessing the net impact will be we need today levels of electricity generation, or maybe even a little more once we look at electrifying things that currently don't interact with the grid and consume fossil fuels directly. And actually as I even type this, I'm remembering that electrifying cars is a big part of this that will definitely drive up electricity need way more than efficiency gains suppress demands for some use. Hopefully we can get to some of the more transformative ideas suggested about improving city planning and density together with investments in public transit so we don't end up producing way too many batteries simply to preserve a car centric transportation system. I do think even just incentivizing consumers to buy electric everything will have a strong movement to drive more electricity generation, and renewables are the cheapest or very cost competitive options for new power generation installations. I think there are some funds in the new bill for encouraging sunsetting fossil fuel based plants early, but we likely need more of that down the line.
rednerrus 4y ago
62% of the power in Oregon comes from renewables, mostly renewables that are available 24/7.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Yeah, but that renewable hydro is unlikely to grow much in the USA, while wind and solar will be growing exponentially. Hydro is cool, and works well with solar/wind/nuclear to help match supply and demand, but ... If you look at global renewable output, the big chunk of hydro production that's been flat for decades, somewhat obscures the recent sudden rise of solar and wind.
  - Retric 4y ago
    Swapping hydro from 24/7 power to a backup for wind and solar goes a long way to eliminate the need for storage. We don’t need more total kWh per year of hydro we need to be able to more flexibility get those kWh.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      I’m not sure that’s true. Electricity generation is pretty regional, so it’s not like we can use a region’s hydro capacity to store energy for other regions. It can store energy for the region that already has hydro, but that region already has hydro so it probably needs less storage in the first place?
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        New York just approved $5 billion to import Canadian Hydro. This is already done on various smaller scales in the US and across the globe. People in Norway are being riled up by their right wing parties because they are selling hydro electricity (and gas) at a high profit to the rest of Europe via connections because of the Russian situation, and there's nothing the right-wing hates more than market-based price signals that suggest you should maybe use less fossil fuels and be more efficient.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
For the cost of 5kW nameplate of new western nuclear (>$10/W) you can get, right now, at retail, as an individual: 50kW nameplate of solar, and 8kW nameplate of wind, and 75kWh of storage and a 5kW generator (which will almost never need turning on) and a biogas digester. And it will produce enough excess power to replace itself (with a cheaper version) or just triple the batteries if you can get 2-3c/kWh for the surplus well before the reactor is built Mentioning nuclear as an option is about as sensible as a generator bicycle.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  I wouldn't advocate for new nuclear (for the same reason the creator of this model gives, it just isn't cost effective) but existing nuclear in stable, northern regions that also have hydro is definately a positive if you're aiming to get to carbon-free power faster. If you don't have the much hydro then it can fight with solar/wind for usage of that dispatchable resource, and if you don't have the nuclear you can build solar/wind for less so there's no reason to start.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Agreed. Keep the current nuclear on as long as it's safe and doesn't cost more than eg. a new green ammonia build.
- evancox100 4y ago
  So you can buffer the wind/solar output for just 78 minutes? Doesn’t sound like a complete solution. Edit: I guess per the paper it really depends on the specific details of generation/load timing. Could be workable for a certain region but not for another.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    The demonstration is 5kW year round with insignificant consumption of fossil fuels everywhere with a climate about as good as Toronto or better, not having somewhere to put all the sunlight. Mid-winter in high latitude you get as little as 2hrs of sunlight/day (or 0 in the arctic, but hardly anyone lives there). If you live in the tropics, 10kW is probably fine. Also if you feel the need to use it up, electrolyzers are cheap and hydrogen is worth money. You can also store a great deal of energy in a few tonnes of NaOH and avoid using precious winter electricity for heating. You can also reshuffle the wind, solar and battery for your local climate, or wait a year or three for sodium batteries to halve the price.
throwaway894345 4y ago
The problem is that electrification of fossil fuel applications is going to significantly increase the demand on our grid. So it’s not enough to get to parity in renewables, but we have to go far beyond our current capacity in order to accommodate a world in which almost every car is electric (whether electric hybrid or green hydrogen) and almost every home uses electric rather than natural gas for heating (not to mention all of the industrial applications that will need electrification).
- epistasis 4y ago
  It's going to increase the amount of energy flowing through the grid, but there's plenty of excess grid capacity to accommodate that. The grid is a technological marvel, but one weakness about it is that it has never included storage except small amount of hydro (which I've heard some claim is because nuclear needed it so that the reactor could stay always on, but I have my doubts on that origin story) Without storage, every grid component must be sized to maximum expected through put, which can be many many times as large as average throughput. The grid is also the most expensive part of delivering energy, more expensive than generation. This means that storage, and a lot of electrification means storage, whether that's charging the battery on a car, or heating a hot water tank, or cooling/heating a building which can be used as several degrees of thermal storage, is going to drastically reduce the potential peak load as a ratio to average load. Electrification has enormous potential to reduce grid cost, and overall energy cost, IMHO.
  - connicpu 4y ago
    Even without any other sources of power, storage already makes sense for hydro since ideally you'd like to store excess water that comes during above average rainy seasons so that you have more power to use during a drought, but allowing your nuclear base load to stay running even when the rest of the grid demands less does seem like another useful benefit
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    That's an interesting point I hadn't considered before. That said, I would think the net effect is still increased demand on the grid. If everyone buys an EV, I can't imagine that constitutes a net reduction in demand on the grid even if everyone charges off-peak (unless utilities can pull storage from those car batteries during peak hours, and I doubt car owners will want that kind of wear on their batteries). Do you know of any publications which try to estimate the effect of electrification on capacity?
sremani 4y ago
>> 95% carbon-free generation I am still not clearly getting the picture here - what exactly this means. US has about 30% electricity generated by Coal and I do not see that go away in next 20 years let alone 8. What am I missing here? As of today, US energy portfolio is around 83% fossil. The best case scenario for 2040 is something like 50%, that includes we get Nuclear fusion, massive battery storage, material science breakthroughs that will put a dent on steel and cement consumption.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  All the big developed nations have committed to phase out coal by 2030, the USA skipped it because of politics, but if you read any of the coverage of that they usually say that it would happen with or without a government commitment e.g. Why the U.S. Didn’t Join 40 Other Countries in Pledge to End Coal subtitle: Economics is already playing a large role in curtailing American coal power https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-u-s-didnt-join-40-other-countries-in-pledge-to-end-coal/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-u-s-didnt...
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  - makomk 4y ago
    The trouble is, the economics only worked out that way because natural gas was cheap - it's not anymore, and countries have been rolling back their coal shutdowns as a result. There's a good chance it never will be again. The same people who were campaigning for that managed to convince pretty much all developed nations other than the US to end new natural gas investment and extraction, and without the supply there prices won't go down and it won't be feasible to use as a coal replacement. This will probably also cut into the switch to renewables because all of the alternatives to natural gas, like coal, play much less well with them.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> 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 This seems ambitious. Source?
- jlmorton 4y ago
  Getting to 100% carbon-free generation is a goal of the President's Long Term Strategy [1]: > DECARBONIZE ELECTRICITY. Electricity delivers > diverse services to all sectors of the American > economy. The transition to a clean electricity > system has been accelerating in recent years— > driven by plummeting costs for solar and wind > technologies, federal and subnational policies, > and consumer demand. Building on this success, > the United States has set a goal of 100% clean > electricity by 2035, a crucial foundation for net-zero > emissions no later than 2050. Other releases have set a goal of 2030 [2]: > 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity (CFE) by 2030, at least half of which will be locally supplied clean energy to meet 24/7 demand; I don't agree with the rosy outlook of the previous commenter, though. Things are looking up, but I think it would be quite a stretch to hit this goal. [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/US-Long-Term-Strategy.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/US-Lon... [2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/12/08/fact-sheet-president-biden-signs-executive-order-catalyzing-americas-clean-energy-economy-through-federal-sustainability/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I think the latter is talking about procurement of energy by the government, not generation. Which obviously helps and is something the government has more control over, but is a slightly different thing. The 100% by 2035 is fairly widely communicated, but there's definately a document that talks about aiming for 95% in 2030 and then focusing on electrification of other sectors as the diminishing returns start to hit. Can't find it at the moment, too many other announcents with very similar google search terms. edit: I can only find sligthly older commitments to 80% clean energy by 2030. Which I guess is close enough, as the targets keep ratcheting as it becomes more obviously a good idea.
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Everybody leaves out Iowa when mentioning wind energy! Iowa and Oklahoma are both larger into wind that California. https://windexchange.energy.gov/files/slideshows/wind-energy-benefits/index.html#/9 https://windexchange.energy.gov/files/slideshows/wind-energy...
thayne 4y ago
The US is a lot more than just California and Texas. Where I live isn't anywhere close to being fully renewable. And home solar is much less economical than it is in California or Texas, largely due to having less sunlight.
- laurencerowe 4y ago
  Artisanal scale rooftop solar is only economical in Califoria due to feed in tariff subsidies. We could build out utility scale solar of the same capacity for the cost of the subsidy to rooftop solar.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Feed in tariff subsidies are a good policy instrument. Lots of green tech needed initial subsidies to get started because we currently subsidize fossil fuels and removing those subsidies was politically harder than adding subsidies. California also very sensibly, introduced net-zero house regulations that mean most new houses will have solar, making it a great deal less artisinal and just another thing you need to build a house. And rooftop (and generally bulding integrated) solar is in general a good thing. Transmission has a cost and as solar and battery prices plummet, transmission loses the economic battle more and more often when you do the sums. Grids are looking at Non-Wire Alternatives aka Non-Tranmission Alternatives for lots of situations where upgrading or building transmission is the easiest place to minimise costs.
    - laurencerowe 4y ago
      Solar feed in tariffs made a lot of sense initially when they helped bootstrap the market for solar panels but now panels have gotten so cheap the costs of rooftop solar are dominated by installation costs we really should reconsider where we allocate our money to achieve the highest reduction in in emissions. I have more sympathy for the regulations requiring solar on new buildings since it is far cheaper to install while the roof is being built than to retrofit later. But as a renter who pays for these subsidies through my electricity bill and cannot benefit from them I want to see the maximum amount of renewable generation built out for the cost added to my bill. Utility scale solar works out 1/3rd the price of residential, or roughly the cost of the residential subsidy alone. Distribution accounts for only 5% or so of the cost of electricity. It is far more cost effective to build utility scale solar in the desert than on individual roofs.

thrown_22 4y ago

Australian energy prices doubled in the last 6 months. I'm not sure who would ever use the Australian market as a model, other than "under no circumstances follow suit".

qqqwerty 4y ago
Energy prices everywhere are up. That is what happens when the global economy is bouncing back from a pandemic and one of the biggest energy suppliers in the world decides to embark on the first major land war in Europe in over 70 years.
- nomel 4y ago
  With the energy industry making record profits [1], my naive self has extreme trouble believing that's the whole story. https://energycommerce.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/pallone-demands-answers-from-oil-companies-on-record-breaking-profits-amid https://energycommerce.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/pal...
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Why do you think that people who sell a commodity that has increased demand wouldn't make more money? There's no need for a conspiracy. The people who make money from the gas extracted and exported from Australia will profit at the expense of the average Australian who pays more for the gas extracted from under their own soil. You could vote to have them distribute the windfall profits to the people, if they didn't have such a stranglehold on your politicians. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/australias-east-coast-may-face-gas-shortfall-next-year-watchdog-warns-2022-07-31/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/australias-east-coas... This is the same as many historical famines, where people starved to death while the crops grown in the same country were exported and sold overseas because rich, non-starving people can pay more than poor starving farmers. Banning or limiting exports might have helped in a roundabout way, but just not intentionally letting poor people starve to death would have been a simpler policy to implement.

dougmwne 4y ago

The US also has plentiful natural resources vs. population size. It seems that Europe would be the least naturally blessed considering high per capita energy use and less solar resources. China has a high population to support, but also owns all that renewables manuring capacity. Other countries do not have such large and energy intense populations.

fomine3 4y ago
I feel Europe situation is by far better than here in Japan. Here, land is small, 75% of land is mountains (so hard to bring wind parts), suitable sea (shallower) for cheaper offshore wind is rare than it looks, much area heavily snows, grid is smaller and divided for 50/60Hz, and almost zero natural resources exists. Even if HVDC connection to foreign grid is possible solution, closer bigger lands (China and Russia) are obviously no one want to rely on. Hydro is a thing thanks to mountains but building new is unpopular to protect naturals. Geothermal is a thing and should be encouraged more, but it seems that it's not enough. Perhaps South Korea is in similar situation but they are still fine to operate nuclear plants.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Floating solar (inland) and floating wind (at sea) are the answer. But Japan actually has a unique advantage in aiming for net-zero in that they have a culture of renewing buildings on short timescales and cenralised property ownership. They can reduce electricity demand and GHG emissions faster in the next decade by building better homes and offices than in rolling out renewables, though they can do both at the same time, and sticking building integrated PV on the new buildings is probably worth doing as well.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    PV is one of the easiest renewable to install here so it's now heavily being installed now, but it's one of the most unstable energy source so can't be relied so much for a primary option. I'd like to see floating wind development but it seems that its development is now in progress. There's also typhoon and tsunami. I agree that buildings improvement is also important that is not much advanced.

pfdietz 4y ago

It's not significantly easier than the US, which also has an embarrassingly large surplus of land for solar and wind.

caf 4y ago
The US also has their population spread out a bit more (and therefore their load centres closer to potential generation sites) - Australia actually has a higher urban population % than the USA.

0xy 4y ago

It's not even true "in Australia", given the South Australian government, famously pro-Tesla and pro-renewables, has been ramping up the production of NEW gas peaking plants and the refurbishment of old ones. Australia is doubling down on gas. 100% renewables is the fever pipe dream of a delusional environmentalist who ignores gas in the renewables equation (renewables and gas go together hand-in-hand, because batteries aren't up to the job of smoothing supply across demand).

caf 4y ago
The South Australian government has changed hands twice since the Tesla big battery. Electranet, the South Australian transmission operator, commissioned four new synchronous condensors in 2021 in order to reduce the minimum number of gas turbines that must operate.