> We do not, in fact, need to build storage now.
No, we do. Well, perhaps saying storage isn't quite accurate. What we need is reliable power, because solar is not.
Perhaps you have not seen the charts I posted from my 13 kW array showing what we produced in the last three months compared to the same period last year?
Here:
https://imgur.com/bo0s7b0 https://imgur.com/bo0s7b0
This was caused by rain and weather. The very direct implication of this is that solar power requires an external reliable power source. Without it you could have entire cities go dark.
And so, the question is: If solar cannot work without an additional power source capable of delivering 100% of the required power for prolonged periods of time, why are we insisting on building two power systems, one solar and one using a different technology?
> There is no point in even talking about building nukes. Nukes are dead, dead, dead. Not because of regulation, or hippies, but because no one with the money would waste it building one.
Forget I said nuclear then. Solar at scale cannot happen without having a reliable power source available to support it. If we want to stick with clean sources, the only real options are wind and hydro. Nuclear, I would highlight, is cleaner than burning stuff to make energy. Yet, again, let's not discuss nuclear for the moment.
Because of the characteristics of solar you have to two at least two things:
- You have to grossly over-build by ten times or more
- You have to have a backup power source that can
deliver 100% of the required peak power for minutes,
hours, days and even weeks.
The grossly overbuild part is very easy math to understand. Let's take the simplest of them all: No sun at night. This means --in very rough strokes-- that if you want to store the equivalent amount of energy for night-time use, you have to double the system. One half of the array supports daytime use while the other half charges 100% efficient storage (not a reality) for use at night.
That's not the end though. In a practical reality (feeding a neighborhood, town, city) you need constant power. In a perfect day (no clouds, rain, etc.) the output of a solar array looks like an inverted parabola. Here's a chart from my system.
https://i.imgur.com/aNnbmDp.png https://i.imgur.com/aNnbmDp.png
In order to deliver the same amount of energy as a constant-power system of the same peak power output, you need to build a solar array 1.5 larger than this. That's because the integral of the area under the inverted parabola is 2/3 the area of the enclosing rectangle. Simple math.
Now we are to having to build a system of 2 x 1.5 = 3 times larger.
The you have bad days, like this one:
https://i.imgur.com/breTHQd.png https://i.imgur.com/breTHQd.png
This happens more often than most people might imagine. The cause, in this case, clouds. Not ugly dark clouds, beautiful white clouds during an beautiful blue-sky day. When it comes to solar, clouds are evil.
I won't continue with the math. I'll just say that, when you consider all the issues with solar (including seasonal output, negative power coefficient and dirt) you can easily see that if you want 1 GW of output you better consider building a 10 GW array, or more. And this requires massive amounts of storage, otherwise you have no power at night or during some of the issues I presented above. As the other charts show, the last few months taught me a lot about what can happen.
Going back to having to build a 100% reliable power system that can supply 100% of the power needs to support unreliable solar. At some point you have to ask yourself. If you are going to build a full duplicate power system, just to have solar, does it really make sense?
This is where reality smacks you in the face again. Sure, there are places in the world where one could use hydro and wind. That isn't going to solve the problem though. You can't use these technologies everywhere. Wind also has its problems.
This is why I tend to reach for nuclear. I can't think of any other technology that can provide 100% power availability at nearly 100% of the time. The other requirement is that we have to be able to start building it now, not in ten years (see above). In the US, it could take well over 25 years to build any type of reliable-power generation plant. We just don't have the ability to move quickly any more. Which means that there's a practical limit function to how far we could take solar, because it isn't reliable and it requires 100% backup.
Not a simple topic. I obviously believer in solar enough to have spent my own money and built a nice 13 kW system. I will be expanding it to 20 kW this year. I might consider going to 30 kW next year. Why? I can't charge enough batteries for the system to deliver power reliable enough to support electric vehicles. This is another reality. Most of my neighbors have small 3 to 5 kW systems. They are all screwed. I talk to them all the time. Some regret having solar because it is costing them more per month (due to leasing and the rising cost of power) than when they put these inadequate systems in. Some were told they could charge electric cars with solar, which was 100% false.
I love solar. I believe in it. I simply prefer to talk about it in real terms and not in a fantasy world where the technology is perfect, reliable and has no issues.
> For every deliverable GW of of solar you have have a GW of backup
That is utterly silly. Think.
You need only just enough backup generation capacity to fill a shortfall. In contrast, you overbuild solar and wind so you can charge up your storage while also satisfying peak load even under reduced yield.
You will never, ever charge storage from your backup generator: that would be beyond idiotic. So you need only a very strictly limited backup capacity, no matter how much renewable generation you have overbuilt. You will overbuild, because it is by far the cheapest way to get power, and you can sell the extra.
Wind and solar are variable, but not random: you know well ahead of time what they will produce, and whether and when your storage will run low. So, you can schedule a fuel delivery or a slice of transmission line capacity. You might charge storage from the transmission line if you are not producing enough excess, which will be cheaper than ordering in liquid fuel.
Your figures on transmission lines are badly dated. UK is building a transmission line to a solar farm in Africa, which is rather more than 300km away. (Siting a solar farm in the desert is also idiotic, but people who control money love the idea, so here we are.) China wants to build one to Chile, their antipodes; they figure on 50% loss, which is fine.
We will need a lot of power generation and transmission. Renewable generation is cheap and still getting cheaper fast. So it is obvious what to do: build that. Keep building that.
Diverting capital to nukes (or geo) would radically cut generation capacity. More expensive means, exactly, fewer watts per dollar. Fortunately nobody with money is dumb enough to buy a nuke, even with DoE doing their level best to sucker somebody on board.
If we are very, very lucky, civilization will not collapse before enough is built out.
>> For every deliverable GW of of solar you have have a GW of backup
> That is utterly silly. Think
Here's a concept: How about we have a conversation without insults?
Explain this to me then:
Let's say you have a 1 MW array in, say, Los Angeles. Let's assume not a cloud in the sky most of the year. Not true. Let's go there anyway.
We then get pounded with rains and have black clouds and dark skies for a couple of months (pretty much the kind of thing that happened in December/January).
Power output goes down from one million Watts peak to 75000 Watts peak for days and days.
How much backup --in any form, any technology-- would you propose to have in order to ensure the town, homes, people, hospitals, traffic lights, etc. relying on this 1 MW of power does not go dark during those two months.
Pick any technology. I don't care what it is. What I want from you is: We need x Watts of power as backup to survive this period. Power, not energy. There's a huge difference.
Since you think my statement is silly, I am assuming you think you can supply this town with a lot less than the 1 MW they lost during this blackout. How?
You seem to miss what "overbuild" means.
Nobody is relying on 1000 kW from that array. If it is a 3x overbuild, then they are counting on only 300 kW from it, with any extra going to charge storage or put on a transmission line to sell. Their shortfall under stormclouds is then 300-75=225 kW. After their storage has been depleted, if power from elsewhere is already spoken for, that is how much they will draw from their backup generator. At night, when the array produces zero, demand is lower, but anyway their backup generator can take the whole 300 kW load when necessary.
But it is not often necessary. Often they can fill the shortfall from storage or from a transmission line with power from elsewhere, maybe wind, or maybe even from the next town's storage if they predict they won't need it right away. The town will deliver excess stored energy they have on the same terms.
After developing some experience, and prices for panels have plummeted further, maybe the town builds out another 2x. Then they generate 125 kW under storm conditions, and the shortfall is only 175 kW. The rest of the time they can charge their storage faster and then sell more to the grid.
How much to spend overbuilding generation vs. how much on growing storage capacity is a complicated calculation. Both are capex for equipment that cuts hard-to-predict costs. Building more later gets you lower prices, but only starts saving you money after it's built.
Of course in practice all the solar and wind farms push to the grid at the bid price, and the town draws power from the grid at the asking price. Storage and gas generators push power to the grid when bid price exceeds their profit threshold. Storage draws from the grid to charge when the asking price is low enough, which is never when the gas generator is pushing. Nukes never see the bid price exceed their cost, but must take what is offered or shut down; all not heavily subsidized via tax will shut down.
Anything you write that is not silly, I promise not to call silly.
Very convenient way to reduce the number by 66% so your argument has an opportunity to survive.
If you NEED 1 MW, you also NEED 1 MW for backup from a different source. It can be solar or wind 300 miles away, where, perhaps, the weather is different. Yet, you still need 100% backup.
You are all so focused on having a verbally violent argument that you cannot help but deflect with tangential issues and fail any attempt to try to understand and be understood.
There, I just gave you the perfect refutation to my suggestion of using nuclear for backup. Use solar or wind from a few hundred miles away. Perfectly doable? In principle, yes. It requires analysis but it does sound plausible.
I'll give you another refutation to challenge a claim that nuclear power is the solution: While the technology has gotten better and we can build better reactors, hell will freeze over before we build a few more reactors in the US, much less hundreds. A case of "Yeah, that's great. You just can't build them. Ever".
There, that's how you try to have a conversation with someone if you care to actually have one from a basis of respect and the potential of mutual edification. I am so sick of people who use online conversations as free-for-all confrontational battlegrounds. Nobody learns anything other than who might be the biggest jerk or who subscribes to the same mob.
This "conversation" is over.
> Your figures on transmission lines are badly dated. UK is building a transmission line to a solar farm in Africa.
Perhaps I have not made it clear enough that I am dealing in reality rather than things that do not exist? This cable and project are not real yet. They have yet to build the very factory that will manufacture this cable.
Also, I am talking about land-based power. The US infrastructure. Europe is screwed in so many forms that they have to resort to such things.
This cable is horrifically dangerous in so many ways. Talk about boiling the ocean! 10 GW will do that. I wonder how that accident will compare to an oil spill?
From a strategic perspective, bringing in 8% of your nation's power needs from a place like Morocco via an underwater cable does not sound like a great geopolitical strategy. Unless we want to imagine something like a large or regional war can never happen...
Then again, the UK might have few choices. I don't think they can do solar at this scale in-country. I would think they can do a massive amount of offshore wind. This is puzzling to me. I don't understand a strategy that creates such a dependency. Look at what happened to Germany and others with Russia. I don't get it.
An underwater cable pushing that kind of voltage and power for such a long distance is likely an ecological disaster waiting to happen. I'm sure they have safeguards...just like offshore oil rigs.
You want to 'deal in reality'? Do you really doubt UK's transmission line will work? Maybe look into existing HVDC lines already in service, then.
UK's folly in relying on Morocco for power is way off topic. UK certainly is not limited to relying on power from Morocco. They could put up solar fencing in their abundant pasture, sharing with livestock that will keep down weeds. But UK is not known for excellent governance, lately.
> Talk about boiling the ocean! 10 GW will do that.
10GW, ignoring the ability to shed energy over time, would take ~16 million years to boil the ocean.
> Talk about boiling the ocean! 10 GW will do that. I wonder how that accident will compare to an oil spill?
Yet another demonstration of a complete inability to perform basic arithmetic or critical reasoning. If for some reason it were to break and put all the energy into the ocean, and then for some reason the operators decided to put $100k of energy into the ocean each hour rather than turning it off. Then it would be about 20% more than browns ferry dumps into wheeler lake under normal operation.
> Here's the kicker: I haven't even introduced the reality that 100% conversion to electric powered vehicles will require the US to double it's power generation capacity. This is monumental. Conceptually, it means we have to fully duplicate our existing generation and transmission infrastructure. Frankly, I don't know how we make that happen. Please don't say solar. Once again, nuclear keeps coming back as a source that is impossible to ignore. We need so much power to support electric vehicles that we would need to build 1200 new 1 GW class nuclear power plants. This is impossible. Clearly a hybrid system will be required. Again, no, solar can't do it. It can be a part of it, but it just can't rise up to the occasion.
This is an unfathomably stupid take.
If every truck including all the small ones were a tesla semi, and every car, pickup or motorbike were a ford lightning, then this is an average load of around 200-300GW. 150-200GW is more realistic. Simply plugging in most cars most of the time and using grid aware charging would solve this, but if that's really unfathomable you can just duplicate whatever portion of the battery is used each day (<10% on average, less on some cars, more on others) and leave some of it at the charger and some at the solar array or wind turbine.
Daily gasoline demand is fairly consistent and quite elastic, it drops about 20% in winter and has minor spikes on holidays. Price signals can and regularly do control for this, but overbuilding 20% or simply taking advantage of many of the air conditioners or heaters being off is more than sufficient.
This will lower transmission strain rather than raise it, as it allows all the energy to be transferred during off peak and allows peak smoothing.
Long haul trucking will likely opt to schedule charging in blocks rather than have two redundant batteries for each truck. This is fairly easy to do as they know where they are going. Running chargers at 3MW per bay without storage wouldn't work anyway and no large multi bay truck chargers are planned without colocated storage or generation.
You're right that 1.2TW of nameplate generation would solve this easily but it is 1.2TW of solar built at <30c/W over the next 10 years, not 1.2TW of nuclear built for an average cost of $20/W (including all the failures that still need to be paid for) and rising. 500GW solar and 300GW wind would probably also be plenty.