6 ms·

Instead of proposing cross-continent distribution lines, just build more small regional renewable sources... unlike nuclear, their costs keep going down. Smalle

by dv_dt 3y ago

Instead of proposing cross-continent distribution lines, just build more small regional renewable sources... unlike nuclear, their costs keep going down. Smaller renewable solar and wind sources with battery storage are perfectly fine, and the correlation in heat with sun works to reduce the need for storage capacity. Capacity factor does not address reliability or emergency planning...

Manuel_D 3y ago
> Smaller renewable solar and wind sources with battery storage are perfectly fine, and the correlation in heat with sun works to reduce the need for storage capacity. Again, peak electricity demand does not happen at noon. It happens at around 9pm, when the sun either has set or is about to set. Unfortunately, solar's production does not match demand patterns. > Instead of proposing cross-continent distribution lines, just build more small regional renewable sources... Again, all the renewable sources in the same region are subject to the same weather patterns and and day/night cycles. Sure multiple solar farms gives you redundancy against some sort of mechanical failure that causes one specific solar farm to go down. But the most common failure mode in intermittent sources is cloud cover or lower-than-expected wind speeds. A backup solar plant a mile away isn't going to give you redundancy against weather patterns. This is why a lot of plans for renewable grids are contingent on thousands of miles of HVDC lines to move energy across continents. > Capacity factor does not address reliability or emergency planning... Capacity factor describes the uptime of a power plant. Nuclear power has the highest uptime. The point is it's less likely to go down than all alternatives.
- dv_dt 3y ago
  Cloud cover doesn't stop all production, it just reduces it. Just build more solar and more storage and it will still be a fraction of the cost of nuclear. I could answer point by point but all of your "failures" are artificially constrained.
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    Cloud cover reduces solar production by 10-25%. If you need 10x overproduction, plus storage it's not cheaper than nuclear. That's not even counting factors like axial tilt (during winter the Earth is rotated away form the sun, reducing incoming light per M^2 of land), and the transmission infrastructure required to accommodate the decentralized nature of solar and wind [1] (which nuclear conveniently avoids since it's much more energy dense). These aren't artificially constrained issues. These are real practical barriers. Why haven't countries the world over completely to renewables if it's cheaper? Because corporations want to screw up the environment because... they're moustache-twirling evil people or something? But the reality is that intermittent sources still have significant barriers to implementation that won't go away without massive, orders-of-magnitude improvements in storage performance. Renewables are good to deploy in an opportunistic fashion, supplementing dispatchable sources during periods of production and then turning the gas back on when they're not producing. But actually producing a primarily renewable grid becomes vastly more challenging due to the intermittency. 1. https://www.vox.com/videos/22685707/climate-change-clean-energy-high-voltage-transmission-lines https://www.vox.com/videos/22685707/climate-change-clean-ene...
    - dv_dt 3y ago
      Fossil fuel companies are those mustache-twirling profit optimization villains, and there is demonstrated evidence that they have run a decades long campaign against any form of energy that is not fossil fuel... 10-25% short fall doesn't require 10x over capacity, it requires a mix of overcapacity + storage + energy conservation measures.
      - Manuel_D 3y ago
        The energy storage at relevant scale is nowhere near feasible as other comment chains explain. "Energy conservation" is just an admission that these sources can't generate enough energy.
        dv_dt 3y ago
        Other comment chains have explained the storage scale you claim is needed, isn't a great estimate. Energy conservation is probably a better payback than either nuclear or renewables and better resilience for people infrastructure. For example, better insulation reduces energy costs in both cold winters and heat waves, and reduces the impact if there are grid/source failures by any technology. It also doesn't have a big crossover on the logistics tail of either nuclear or renewables, and so is a great thing to do in parallel to address climate change in general. "Conservation is an admission of failure" is a purely ridiculous position.

by dv_dt 3y ago

Manuel_D 3y ago

> Smaller renewable solar and wind sources with battery storage are perfectly fine, and the correlation in heat with sun works to reduce the need for storage capacity. Again, peak electricity demand does not happen at noon. It happens at around 9pm, when the sun either has set or is about to set. Unfortunately, solar's production does not match demand patterns. > Instead of proposing cross-continent distribution lines, just build more small regional renewable sources... Again, all the renewable sources in the same region are subject to the same weather patterns and and day/night cycles. Sure multiple solar farms gives you redundancy against some sort of mechanical failure that causes one specific solar farm to go down. But the most common failure mode in intermittent sources is cloud cover or lower-than-expected wind speeds. A backup solar plant a mile away isn't going to give you redundancy against weather patterns. This is why a lot of plans for renewable grids are contingent on thousands of miles of HVDC lines to move energy across continents. > Capacity factor does not address reliability or emergency planning... Capacity factor describes the uptime of a power plant. Nuclear power has the highest uptime. The point is it's less likely to go down than all alternatives.

dv_dt 3y ago
Cloud cover doesn't stop all production, it just reduces it. Just build more solar and more storage and it will still be a fraction of the cost of nuclear. I could answer point by point but all of your "failures" are artificially constrained.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  Cloud cover reduces solar production by 10-25%. If you need 10x overproduction, plus storage it's not cheaper than nuclear. That's not even counting factors like axial tilt (during winter the Earth is rotated away form the sun, reducing incoming light per M^2 of land), and the transmission infrastructure required to accommodate the decentralized nature of solar and wind [1] (which nuclear conveniently avoids since it's much more energy dense). These aren't artificially constrained issues. These are real practical barriers. Why haven't countries the world over completely to renewables if it's cheaper? Because corporations want to screw up the environment because... they're moustache-twirling evil people or something? But the reality is that intermittent sources still have significant barriers to implementation that won't go away without massive, orders-of-magnitude improvements in storage performance. Renewables are good to deploy in an opportunistic fashion, supplementing dispatchable sources during periods of production and then turning the gas back on when they're not producing. But actually producing a primarily renewable grid becomes vastly more challenging due to the intermittency. 1. https://www.vox.com/videos/22685707/climate-change-clean-energy-high-voltage-transmission-lines https://www.vox.com/videos/22685707/climate-change-clean-ene...
  - dv_dt 3y ago
    Fossil fuel companies are those mustache-twirling profit optimization villains, and there is demonstrated evidence that they have run a decades long campaign against any form of energy that is not fossil fuel... 10-25% short fall doesn't require 10x over capacity, it requires a mix of overcapacity + storage + energy conservation measures.
    - Manuel_D 3y ago
      The energy storage at relevant scale is nowhere near feasible as other comment chains explain. "Energy conservation" is just an admission that these sources can't generate enough energy.
      - dv_dt 3y ago
        Other comment chains have explained the storage scale you claim is needed, isn't a great estimate. Energy conservation is probably a better payback than either nuclear or renewables and better resilience for people infrastructure. For example, better insulation reduces energy costs in both cold winters and heat waves, and reduces the impact if there are grid/source failures by any technology. It also doesn't have a big crossover on the logistics tail of either nuclear or renewables, and so is a great thing to do in parallel to address climate change in general. "Conservation is an admission of failure" is a purely ridiculous position.