3 ms·

This wind-and-solar religious argument isn't necessary and I'm guessing it's based in European poltics. I'm OK with wind and solar but not at the scale where it

by pookha 3y ago

This wind-and-solar religious argument isn't necessary and I'm guessing it's based in European poltics. I'm OK with wind and solar but not at the scale where it's the only option... And that's because it doesn't work at scale... As Germany found out you can't meet peek demand with just wind and solar: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-failure-on-the-road-to-a-renewable-future-a-1266586.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-failure-... They have "dark doldrums" and have to revert to natural gas and diesel power plants (which is why BP and American energy companies push wind and solar). On top of that you can't just cover the entire countryside in massive wind turbines or solar panels. You've got protected species and you've got NIMBY. Why push the endless political pissing matches when you could easily develop nuclear power too? Do both. Let nuclear power handle the doldrums.

myrmidon 3y ago
The article you linked is full of opinionated pessimistic whining, but since its over 3 years old its easy to compare its negative outlook on renewable focused policy with actual results: According to https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm, current german electricity mix is ~50% renewable since beginning of the year. Used to be 35% in 2018. So the "unreachable" target of 80% in 2050 seems completely trivial; just keep doing things at a similar rate and that target is in reach within a single decade (!!). Intermittency of renewable sources is a problem that has multiple perfectly viable solutions, namely overprovisioning, storage, grid connectivity and peaker plants. Finding the most cost effective mix of those (and adjusting it over time as technology evolves) is a problem that the free market is perfectly equipped to solve. Area consumption is not a big issue, neither for solar nor for wind, because roofs and agriculture (and the off-shore option in the case of wind). Nuclear power is a bad mix with renewables because it's already too expensive and building it for peak loads makes that drastically worse since it's all fixed cost basically. Gas powered plants are super attractive with renewables because of the very same dynamics (cheap installation costs and variable costs that largely depend on actual utilization). In the extremely unlikely case that battery technology fails completely it would always be possible to use hydrogen as energy storage in combination with refitted gas peaker plants. But that scenario appears unlikely to me. Also note that renewables have already overtaken nuclear power in the US, too; given recent experiences with the nuclear industry it seems EXTREMELY unlikely to me that this trend would ever reverse.
- _hypx 3y ago
  > In the extremely unlikely case that battery technology fails completely it would always be possible to use hydrogen as energy storage in combination with refitted gas peaker plants. But that scenario appears unlikely to me. That is not "extremely unlikely" it is 100%ly inevitable. Luckily hydrogen as energy storage is already happening now.
  - myrmidon 3y ago
    How is battery tech failure inevitable? Batteries that buffer about a week of household electricity (100kwh) are already affordable enough to be installed in cars, and the whole sector is still improving rapidly.
    - _hypx 3y ago
      You will inevitably need storage capacity of weeks or even months. Especially with regards to seasonal energy shifts (e.g. solar power generated in the summer but used for heating in the winter). There is no prospect of batteries pulling that off. You will need hydrogen for that. Batteries will ultimately just end up being for daily buffers of energy, and probably nothing beyond that once you realize the necessity of hydrogen.
      - myrmidon 3y ago
        This does not seem so obvious to me. Scenarios where we solve intermittency by improved grid connectivity and overprovisioning with only minimal storage seem quite plausible; transporting gigawatts of power over thousands of kilometers is a solved problem after all. (I think the main problem is purely political in that nations don't want to depend on others for energy, and outside of a few exceptions that would probably be necessary if storage was to be minimized).
        _hypx 3y ago
        Grid connectivity is not magic. It will cost trillions to pull off and it still doesn't solve the problem of intermittency beyond daily fluctuations. Overprovisioning is just wasting energy. It also guarantees a free source of energy for whatever can utilizing it, which will also certainly be hydrogen production since it is effectively unlimited in its ability to scale up. The political problem is also not something you can dismiss. It will kill off most of the plans for global connectivity. And in fact this is a good thing as dependency on another country for energy is a bad idea (see Europe's dependency on Russia energy). So in the end, you really can't get away from hydrogen. It is simply too good of an idea and the alternatives are either impossible or totally unacceptable.

by pookha 3y ago

myrmidon 3y ago

The article you linked is full of opinionated pessimistic whining, but since its over 3 years old its easy to compare its negative outlook on renewable focused policy with actual results: According to https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm https://energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm, current german electricity mix is ~50% renewable since beginning of the year. Used to be 35% in 2018. So the "unreachable" target of 80% in 2050 seems completely trivial; just keep doing things at a similar rate and that target is in reach within a single decade (!!). Intermittency of renewable sources is a problem that has multiple perfectly viable solutions, namely overprovisioning, storage, grid connectivity and peaker plants. Finding the most cost effective mix of those (and adjusting it over time as technology evolves) is a problem that the free market is perfectly equipped to solve. Area consumption is not a big issue, neither for solar nor for wind, because roofs and agriculture (and the off-shore option in the case of wind). Nuclear power is a bad mix with renewables because it's already too expensive and building it for peak loads makes that drastically worse since it's all fixed cost basically. Gas powered plants are super attractive with renewables because of the very same dynamics (cheap installation costs and variable costs that largely depend on actual utilization). In the extremely unlikely case that battery technology fails completely it would always be possible to use hydrogen as energy storage in combination with refitted gas peaker plants. But that scenario appears unlikely to me. Also note that renewables have already overtaken nuclear power in the US, too; given recent experiences with the nuclear industry it seems EXTREMELY unlikely to me that this trend would ever reverse.

_hypx 3y ago
> In the extremely unlikely case that battery technology fails completely it would always be possible to use hydrogen as energy storage in combination with refitted gas peaker plants. But that scenario appears unlikely to me. That is not "extremely unlikely" it is 100%ly inevitable. Luckily hydrogen as energy storage is already happening now.
- myrmidon 3y ago
  How is battery tech failure inevitable? Batteries that buffer about a week of household electricity (100kwh) are already affordable enough to be installed in cars, and the whole sector is still improving rapidly.
  - _hypx 3y ago
    You will inevitably need storage capacity of weeks or even months. Especially with regards to seasonal energy shifts (e.g. solar power generated in the summer but used for heating in the winter). There is no prospect of batteries pulling that off. You will need hydrogen for that. Batteries will ultimately just end up being for daily buffers of energy, and probably nothing beyond that once you realize the necessity of hydrogen.
    - myrmidon 3y ago
      This does not seem so obvious to me. Scenarios where we solve intermittency by improved grid connectivity and overprovisioning with only minimal storage seem quite plausible; transporting gigawatts of power over thousands of kilometers is a solved problem after all. (I think the main problem is purely political in that nations don't want to depend on others for energy, and outside of a few exceptions that would probably be necessary if storage was to be minimized).
      - _hypx 3y ago
        Grid connectivity is not magic. It will cost trillions to pull off and it still doesn't solve the problem of intermittency beyond daily fluctuations. Overprovisioning is just wasting energy. It also guarantees a free source of energy for whatever can utilizing it, which will also certainly be hydrogen production since it is effectively unlimited in its ability to scale up. The political problem is also not something you can dismiss. It will kill off most of the plans for global connectivity. And in fact this is a good thing as dependency on another country for energy is a bad idea (see Europe's dependency on Russia energy). So in the end, you really can't get away from hydrogen. It is simply too good of an idea and the alternatives are either impossible or totally unacceptable.