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The alt energy transition needs some SERIOUSLY LARGE scale. I wish I had a super-caps lock for that. The fact that a custom transport plane and dedicated landi
by AtlasBarfed 3y ago
The alt energy transition needs some SERIOUSLY LARGE scale. I wish I had a super-caps lock for that.
The fact that a custom transport plane and dedicated landing strip for massive wind farms is economically feasible should give you a hint as to what is at stake.
For review, both wind and solar, allegedly with storage bundled in and without subsidies, is cheaper than the next cheapest (and fossil fuel based) generation method: natural gas turbine, per LCOE numbers from Lazard LAST YEAR.
Natural gas turbine is basically topped out in terms of efficiency and cost, I believe they have already exceeded Carnot efficiency with downstream exhaust heat capture and other maximization techniques. They can't go lower. Wind? Likely has a decade of gradual cost improvement. Solar? Successful integration of perovskites might drop prices 50% or more in the next decade, plus usual economy of scale improvement.
The economics are basically settled. The details are massive scale, load leveling, grid adaptation.
- schoen 3y agoDoesn't the Carnot engine capture the absolute thermodynamic optimum for extracting usable energy from a hot object? How do you beat it?
- _ph_ 3y agoWell, yes. If you have a combustion engine or a turbine, Carnot tells you exactly the maximal efficiency you could achieve. But the exhaust still can be used for residental heating. So while the generator doesn't get any more efficient at producing electricity, you can use the heat which drives up the overall gain of operating the generator.