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This is great, but keep in mind firming cost of renewables is quite expensive and not carbon friendly.
by merpnderp 3y ago
This is great, but keep in mind firming cost of renewables is quite expensive and not carbon friendly.
- shadowgovt 3y agoWhat is "firming cost of renewables?"
- acidburnNSA 3y agoProviding reliable power when it's dark and/or still.
- shortcake27 3y agoWhat’s your definition of carbon friendly? Wind turbines generate an equivalent of 5-26 grams of CO2 per kWh over their operating lifespan. Is it zero? No. But it’s significantly better than coal powerplants which generate 437-758 grams of CO2 per kWh.
- ricardo81 3y agohttps://www.statista.com/statistics/493797/estimated-levelized-cost-of-energy-generation-in-the-us-by-technology/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/493797/estimated-leveliz... - Estimated unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States in 2021, by technology (in U.S. dollars per megawatt hour) The thing is, wind/solar costs have been decreasing and also have a predictable ongoing cost. Fossil fuel prices are volatile.
- sxcurry 3y agoCould you show some facts please? Everything I’ve seen shows the cost of solar especially to be much lower than carbon based generation.
- WheatMillington 3y agoThe word "firming" is important. Wind and solar cannot produce base load electricity.
- VintageCool 3y agoThe firming cost of renewables is paid running grid-scale batteries or by running a natural gas power plant during the hours in which renewables are unavailable, right? The natural gas power plants don't need to be built, because that is the marginal electricity provider that exists already and is being replaced by renewables. Meanwhile, grid-scale batteries are the fastest growing electricity provider on the grid because it turns out that they are cheaper to run than natural gas peakers.
- danans 3y ago> Meanwhile, grid-scale batteries are the fastest growing electricity provider on the grid because it turns out that they are cheaper to run than natural gas peakers. Only for the very short term firming today, i.e. for frequency regulation. For days-weeks storage you need much lower cost/kWh of storage. There are contender technologies but nothing at scale deployed as far as I know (other than pumped hydro, which is geographically limited).
- pydry 3y agoPumped hydro studies find 10x as many sites as required to fully decarbonize using solar + wind worldwide. There isnt that much of a shortage of up. This is also before accounting for all the other ways power could be stored batteries, demand shaping and storing syngas.
- danans 3y ago> Pumped hydro studies find 10x as many sites as required to fully decarbonize using solar + wind worldwide. But what percentage are close enough to existing transmission? Perhaps some, but I suspect many suitable locations will be remote enough that new transmission needs to be built. It might make economic sense to do so in some circumstances, but not in others. In contrast, grid scale chemical storage (flow batteries, metal-air, etc) could be easily placed at existing fossil fuel plants and use the existing grid interconnects.
- VintageCool 3y ago
- nl 3y agoThis is why we need long distance transmission (which is surprisingly cheap and has been broadly deployed in eg China)