6 ms·

How exactly will you be 100% renewable during a cloudy and windless period with solar and wind?

by oifjsidjf 4y ago

ncmncm 4y ago
- Georgelemental 4y ago
  The comment you are replying to was not "trolling"; it raised a legitimate, technical objection to a policy in a manner that invites constructive responses (for example, "with storage technology" is a common response I see).
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      Then it'd be good to mention what this storage mechanism is, and examples of existing commercial deployments said storage mechanism and their cost history. It's odd to see someone insist that the solution is so obvious that anyone who doesn't recognize it is trolling, yet they neglect to mention what that solution is.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
    - Georgelemental 4y ago
      Storage is a common answer, but it has problems of its own. Presumably the OP considers these problems fatal; if you disagree, say so and explain why.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        OP could explain why they imagine fatal problems. Would, if they were not just trolling.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Intermittency is one of the most difficult parts of building a majority renewable grid. Dismissing the biggest challenge in building a renewable grid as trolling is not a good look.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      > because simple technical measures mitigate it. And what simple technical measure mitigates it in a cost effective manner? Hydroelectricity is one, but it's geographically dependent. Sweden already has about 30% of it's electricity coming from dams, but it still needs to built more nuclear plants to fulfill it's demand. And most countries have even less hydroelectric generation than Sweden. Besides hydroelectricity, there's batteries which are not able to be built at scale. Then there's experimental solutions like compressed air, chemical storage, or giant flywheels. But none of those have been deployed commercially and thus there's no real-world cost history. Proclaiming that the solution is simple, yet neglecting to actually specify it is not an effective way to make the case for storage. If you want to make the case for a plan to provision storage, make it and we can discuss that. But apparently, the solution is apparently so simple it defies explanation. How convenient! Well in that case: we don't need fission, renewables, or storage. I know of a fusion breakthrough that will make electricity to cheap to meter! And it's so obvious I don't need to explain how it works, and anyone who doubts me is a troll.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
elihu 4y ago
Pumped hydro storage, batteries, and/or long-distance grid interconnection. It's not often overcast in the Sahara, as far as I know, and solar power imported from far to the east and west can mitigate the day/night cycle problem. It's reasonable to keep ICE power plants around as an emergency backup; if you have to use them for a week in January or when infrastructure breaks for whatever reason it's not the end of the world. Ideally things would run smoothly enough that they'd never be used.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Transmitting energy over long distances is way more difficult than you make it out to be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o
  - elihu 4y ago
    It'd be expensive, but it's technically feasible. I'd also expect there's economies of scale involved; building a cable with twice the capacity doesn't cost twice as much; you might even just use the same cable and run it at a higher voltage.
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      Expensive but technically feasible, plus making Europe at the mercy of unstable regimes across the Mediterranean. That worked just fine with natural gas imports from Russia right?
      - elihu 4y ago
        At least Morocco/Algeria/Libya/Egypt/Tunisia don't have nuclear weapons or large conventional militaries and aren't generally much of a threat to anyone but themselves and sometimes their immediate neighbors. There is a political risk that the governments of those countries change and they seize the energy-producing assets and sell surplus power to someone other than Europe. Perhaps a mutually-beneficial arrangement would be the best way to reduce the risk of it falling apart; for instance, if Morocco has the solar panels and Switzerland has the pumped-hydro storage facility to buffer out day/night cycles, both sides can trade power to their mutual benefit. Without both parts of the whole system, the other half is less useful.
froh 4y ago
Dunkelflaute is 0.5% - 1.5% of the year and most of the events last shorter than 24h https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute in my book 98.5% easily fits the bill of "close to 100%" so the answer is exactly what we do today: have a reserve capacity. part of that may even be traditional peaker power plants that remain turned off most of the year just like today. I'd be curious about climate data on the distribution of Dunkelflaute duration, by region.
- golem14 4y ago
  I believe the difference is that during a Dunkelflaute, peaker plants might have to generate a large amount of or the majority of electricity, whereas today, peaker plants are build to only generate relatively small amount of power at the margin. So, we'd have to build a large number of peaker plants, which are really expensive in that they have to amortize their costs over a small amount of uptime.
  - froh 4y ago
    short term weather forecasts are amazingly accurate. this allows us to deliberately "extend" the "range" of buffer storage. and even today in some situations some energy intense heavy industries have to pause production for a few hours if there is a lack of energy supply. It's a political problem, not a technical one, and we do not, absolutely not have to build up new parallel peaker capacity. we can simply keep select plants alive.
    - golem14 4y ago
      Figuring out how much extra capacity is needed still needs to be done. Simply stating that no new peaker plants are needed "because storage capacity will be there" is a bit too simplistic. I'd be glad if that's the case, but I'm not convinced it's actually true.
      - froh 4y ago
        right we have 7 years to figure this out for 80% renewables and 17 years to figure it out for close to 100% it took 1 year to build and start operation of giga Shanghai, and not much longer for giga Berlin. it's a political challenge, not a technical one.

How exactly will you be 100% renewable during a cloudy and windless period with solar and wind?

ncmncm 4y ago

Georgelemental 4y ago
The comment you are replying to was not "trolling"; it raised a legitimate, technical objection to a policy in a manner that invites constructive responses (for example, "with storage technology" is a common response I see).
- ncmncm 4y ago
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    Then it'd be good to mention what this storage mechanism is, and examples of existing commercial deployments said storage mechanism and their cost history. It's odd to see someone insist that the solution is so obvious that anyone who doesn't recognize it is trolling, yet they neglect to mention what that solution is.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
  - Georgelemental 4y ago
    Storage is a common answer, but it has problems of its own. Presumably the OP considers these problems fatal; if you disagree, say so and explain why.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      OP could explain why they imagine fatal problems. Would, if they were not just trolling.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Manuel_D 4y ago
Intermittency is one of the most difficult parts of building a majority renewable grid. Dismissing the biggest challenge in building a renewable grid as trolling is not a good look.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    > because simple technical measures mitigate it. And what simple technical measure mitigates it in a cost effective manner? Hydroelectricity is one, but it's geographically dependent. Sweden already has about 30% of it's electricity coming from dams, but it still needs to built more nuclear plants to fulfill it's demand. And most countries have even less hydroelectric generation than Sweden. Besides hydroelectricity, there's batteries which are not able to be built at scale. Then there's experimental solutions like compressed air, chemical storage, or giant flywheels. But none of those have been deployed commercially and thus there's no real-world cost history. Proclaiming that the solution is simple, yet neglecting to actually specify it is not an effective way to make the case for storage. If you want to make the case for a plan to provision storage, make it and we can discuss that. But apparently, the solution is apparently so simple it defies explanation. How convenient! Well in that case: we don't need fission, renewables, or storage. I know of a fusion breakthrough that will make electricity to cheap to meter! And it's so obvious I don't need to explain how it works, and anyone who doubts me is a troll.
    - ncmncm 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

elihu 4y ago

Pumped hydro storage, batteries, and/or long-distance grid interconnection. It's not often overcast in the Sahara, as far as I know, and solar power imported from far to the east and west can mitigate the day/night cycle problem. It's reasonable to keep ICE power plants around as an emergency backup; if you have to use them for a week in January or when infrastructure breaks for whatever reason it's not the end of the world. Ideally things would run smoothly enough that they'd never be used.

Manuel_D 4y ago
Transmitting energy over long distances is way more difficult than you make it out to be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o
- elihu 4y ago
  It'd be expensive, but it's technically feasible. I'd also expect there's economies of scale involved; building a cable with twice the capacity doesn't cost twice as much; you might even just use the same cable and run it at a higher voltage.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    Expensive but technically feasible, plus making Europe at the mercy of unstable regimes across the Mediterranean. That worked just fine with natural gas imports from Russia right?
    - elihu 4y ago
      At least Morocco/Algeria/Libya/Egypt/Tunisia don't have nuclear weapons or large conventional militaries and aren't generally much of a threat to anyone but themselves and sometimes their immediate neighbors. There is a political risk that the governments of those countries change and they seize the energy-producing assets and sell surplus power to someone other than Europe. Perhaps a mutually-beneficial arrangement would be the best way to reduce the risk of it falling apart; for instance, if Morocco has the solar panels and Switzerland has the pumped-hydro storage facility to buffer out day/night cycles, both sides can trade power to their mutual benefit. Without both parts of the whole system, the other half is less useful.

froh 4y ago

Dunkelflaute is 0.5% - 1.5% of the year and most of the events last shorter than 24h https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute in my book 98.5% easily fits the bill of "close to 100%" so the answer is exactly what we do today: have a reserve capacity. part of that may even be traditional peaker power plants that remain turned off most of the year just like today. I'd be curious about climate data on the distribution of Dunkelflaute duration, by region.

golem14 4y ago
I believe the difference is that during a Dunkelflaute, peaker plants might have to generate a large amount of or the majority of electricity, whereas today, peaker plants are build to only generate relatively small amount of power at the margin. So, we'd have to build a large number of peaker plants, which are really expensive in that they have to amortize their costs over a small amount of uptime.
- froh 4y ago
  short term weather forecasts are amazingly accurate. this allows us to deliberately "extend" the "range" of buffer storage. and even today in some situations some energy intense heavy industries have to pause production for a few hours if there is a lack of energy supply. It's a political problem, not a technical one, and we do not, absolutely not have to build up new parallel peaker capacity. we can simply keep select plants alive.
  - golem14 4y ago
    Figuring out how much extra capacity is needed still needs to be done. Simply stating that no new peaker plants are needed "because storage capacity will be there" is a bit too simplistic. I'd be glad if that's the case, but I'm not convinced it's actually true.
    - froh 4y ago
      right we have 7 years to figure this out for 80% renewables and 17 years to figure it out for close to 100% it took 1 year to build and start operation of giga Shanghai, and not much longer for giga Berlin. it's a political challenge, not a technical one.