9 ms·

There will be times when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Storage can come to the rescue if this is a few hours, but over much longer time perio

There will be times when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Storage can come to the rescue if this is a few hours, but over much longer time periods will be a problem. It's rare, but not unheard of. Gas will be part of the solution for many years to come.

fasa99 2y ago
Yes. On the super long term - wind doesn't blow, sun doesn't shine, oil doesn't flow, coal doesn't mine. Then the feasibility of nucular is a no brainer. That's all that's left besides renewables, nucular fishin. And when we run of of nucular fishin, and that day will come too... Fusion will be all that's left of the non-renewables. And it will be used surely, provided it's a net-positive delta energy.
Retric 2y ago
> over much longer time periods It’s not clear there would be much longer time periods. Build enough low carbon generation to guarantee a surplus every day and you have a surplus every day. Anyone claiming we need days worth of storage is inherently making an argument that days worth of storage is cheaper than simply building more generation and generation is really cheap while batteries aren’t.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  We can get hard numbers on the storage required using this simulation/optimization site: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ I often point to this, but it's such a fun and useful site I'll do it again. What you get is typically (it depends on where you are) producing steady output from solar + wind requires some hours of batteries (typically much less than a day) and usually a fairly large backup of hydrogen (particularly far from the equator). The hydrogen gets burned in combined cycle plants with a mediocre round trip efficiency; most of the stored energy goes through batteries and back again at high round trip efficiency. So, yes, one does need days worth of storage, but it's not batteries, it's a rainy day hydrogen account where storage capacity is very cheap.
- nox101 2y ago
  According to several studies you need up to 2 weeks of storage, not just 24hrs, because checking on the long term, every decade or 2 you get 2 weeks of clouds or 2 weeks of no wind, etc....
  - Retric 2y ago
    > 2 weeks of clouds or 2 weeks of no wind AND not OR. To actually need 2 weeks of storage you would need both 0 output in solar for 2 weeks and 0 wind for two weeks and 0 output from hydro. That doesn’t happen. You still get solar power on cloudy days, it just takes more panels to generate some specific level of power. The goal is to minimize X$ for generation + Y$ for storage while guaranteeing sufficient supply. Any study approaching things from any other set of assumptions is going to give you nonsensical answers.
    - tonyarkles 2y ago
      So I'm living up north here where from Nov 15 to Jan 26 we get less than 9 hours of daylight per day and the sun is at a low angle above the horizon. We won't be generating anywhere near nameplate capacity even if the sky is clear due to the ubiquity. Add clouds and the short day... and it's really rough for a few months. Sometimes it's windy when it's dark and cold, and sometimes it just stays cloudy and calm for a while. To make it through the winter here you're going to need to either build out massive amounts of storage or dramatically over-provision the wind and solar and deal with curtailing it in the summer.
      - rgmerk 2y ago
        Corollary: energy is going to much more expensive the further you get away from the equator (in the absence of very predictable winds/lots of hydro/cheap geothermal).
        tonyarkles 2y ago
        Yup… we’re probably building nuke plants. We are also building wind and solar. And some new natural gas plants. We don’t really have a whole lot left to tap for hydro, don’t really have good geography for pumped hydro storage, and while there is a pilot project on the go to try to generate electricity from mediocre geothermal we definitely don’t have good geothermal potential either. But… we sure grow a lot of food! And are starting to look at shuttering the coal plants.
diordiderot 2y ago
Transmission loses are 3% per 1000km so moving electricity from morroco to the UK would result in ~6% loss in electricity. Saying > There will be times when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine Is just FUD. The wind is blowing and the sun is shining in many places within 2000km no matter where you live
- howerj 2y ago
  I find that fact that the UK would depend on another country for power generation in a serious way really really dumb. There is no other way of putting it. If we did that we might as well sell off our armed forces and declare global peace unilaterally, that is how naive that option is. It would make the UK, or any country that did that, incredibly vulnerable. We cannot ever lose power.
  - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
    Just wait until you find out how much oil and gas the UK imports.
    - Qwertious 2y ago
      Pretty sure UK needs to import uranium, too.
      - cmenge 2y ago
        That's a false argument. Uranium gives you power for years, and can be sourced from multiple sellers. That is very different from a line that the other side or a third party can simply cut. Point in case: NordStream pipelines that supplied Germany.
    - howerj 2y ago
      I already know this, it doesn't change anything. Who is able to blockade the UK's access to oil, gas or uranium, all of which are much easier to stockpile than electricity? The only one with that capability is the USA. Who is able to attack a HVDC line? Anyone with a fifth rate navy.
audunw 2y ago
> Gas will be part of the solution for many years to come. True. But if we’re talking about rare - maybe once a year or two - dunkelflaute, then the gas power plants aren’t actually going to consume much gas at all. And thus the CO2 emissions will become negligible. Those gas power plants already exist in most industrial countries. They’ll have made their return on investment so using them for backup will be fairly cheap. Especially in the coming age of robots/ drones for inspection work. To get to zero emission we can just use biogas or hydrogen. If the consumption is low this will be sustainable and financially viable since the fuel cost will be a very small part of the total operating costs, and making the hydrogen will be very cheap since there will be an abundance of days with excess electricity. So I don’t see that we will actually have a problem w.r.t. energy storage. Battery storage for short term has already outpaced pumped hydro. The transition to EVs already imply battery production capacity on a scale to handle energy balancing for hours or even days. Trash burning power plants is a good solution for seasonal demand. Yeah, reuse and recycle first. But eventually when materials degrade we should burn it to avoid landfills.
- 7thaccount 2y ago
  The industry is starting to say that hydrogen is not going to happen. It's expensive to make even with hydrolysis, explosive, and extremely leaky. That makes transportation and storage really difficult. Also, I think it contributes to warming when enough leaks.
  - tuatoru 2y ago
    Hydrogen as fuel won't work, yes; but generating it and immediately making hydrocarbons or ammonia or other chemical feedstocks with it is perfectly feasible. It's already being done. Just not with electrolysis.

fasa99 2y ago

Yes. On the super long term - wind doesn't blow, sun doesn't shine, oil doesn't flow, coal doesn't mine. Then the feasibility of nucular is a no brainer. That's all that's left besides renewables, nucular fishin. And when we run of of nucular fishin, and that day will come too... Fusion will be all that's left of the non-renewables. And it will be used surely, provided it's a net-positive delta energy.

Retric 2y ago

> over much longer time periods It’s not clear there would be much longer time periods. Build enough low carbon generation to guarantee a surplus every day and you have a surplus every day. Anyone claiming we need days worth of storage is inherently making an argument that days worth of storage is cheaper than simply building more generation and generation is really cheap while batteries aren’t.

pfdietz 2y ago
We can get hard numbers on the storage required using this simulation/optimization site: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ I often point to this, but it's such a fun and useful site I'll do it again. What you get is typically (it depends on where you are) producing steady output from solar + wind requires some hours of batteries (typically much less than a day) and usually a fairly large backup of hydrogen (particularly far from the equator). The hydrogen gets burned in combined cycle plants with a mediocre round trip efficiency; most of the stored energy goes through batteries and back again at high round trip efficiency. So, yes, one does need days worth of storage, but it's not batteries, it's a rainy day hydrogen account where storage capacity is very cheap.
nox101 2y ago
According to several studies you need up to 2 weeks of storage, not just 24hrs, because checking on the long term, every decade or 2 you get 2 weeks of clouds or 2 weeks of no wind, etc....
- Retric 2y ago
  > 2 weeks of clouds or 2 weeks of no wind AND not OR. To actually need 2 weeks of storage you would need both 0 output in solar for 2 weeks and 0 wind for two weeks and 0 output from hydro. That doesn’t happen. You still get solar power on cloudy days, it just takes more panels to generate some specific level of power. The goal is to minimize X$ for generation + Y$ for storage while guaranteeing sufficient supply. Any study approaching things from any other set of assumptions is going to give you nonsensical answers.
  - tonyarkles 2y ago
    So I'm living up north here where from Nov 15 to Jan 26 we get less than 9 hours of daylight per day and the sun is at a low angle above the horizon. We won't be generating anywhere near nameplate capacity even if the sky is clear due to the ubiquity. Add clouds and the short day... and it's really rough for a few months. Sometimes it's windy when it's dark and cold, and sometimes it just stays cloudy and calm for a while. To make it through the winter here you're going to need to either build out massive amounts of storage or dramatically over-provision the wind and solar and deal with curtailing it in the summer.
    - rgmerk 2y ago
      Corollary: energy is going to much more expensive the further you get away from the equator (in the absence of very predictable winds/lots of hydro/cheap geothermal).
      - tonyarkles 2y ago
        Yup… we’re probably building nuke plants. We are also building wind and solar. And some new natural gas plants. We don’t really have a whole lot left to tap for hydro, don’t really have good geography for pumped hydro storage, and while there is a pilot project on the go to try to generate electricity from mediocre geothermal we definitely don’t have good geothermal potential either. But… we sure grow a lot of food! And are starting to look at shuttering the coal plants.

diordiderot 2y ago

Transmission loses are 3% per 1000km so moving electricity from morroco to the UK would result in ~6% loss in electricity. Saying > There will be times when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine Is just FUD. The wind is blowing and the sun is shining in many places within 2000km no matter where you live

howerj 2y ago
I find that fact that the UK would depend on another country for power generation in a serious way really really dumb. There is no other way of putting it. If we did that we might as well sell off our armed forces and declare global peace unilaterally, that is how naive that option is. It would make the UK, or any country that did that, incredibly vulnerable. We cannot ever lose power.
- TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
  Just wait until you find out how much oil and gas the UK imports.
  - Qwertious 2y ago
    Pretty sure UK needs to import uranium, too.
    - cmenge 2y ago
      That's a false argument. Uranium gives you power for years, and can be sourced from multiple sellers. That is very different from a line that the other side or a third party can simply cut. Point in case: NordStream pipelines that supplied Germany.
  - howerj 2y ago
    I already know this, it doesn't change anything. Who is able to blockade the UK's access to oil, gas or uranium, all of which are much easier to stockpile than electricity? The only one with that capability is the USA. Who is able to attack a HVDC line? Anyone with a fifth rate navy.

audunw 2y ago

> Gas will be part of the solution for many years to come. True. But if we’re talking about rare - maybe once a year or two - dunkelflaute, then the gas power plants aren’t actually going to consume much gas at all. And thus the CO2 emissions will become negligible. Those gas power plants already exist in most industrial countries. They’ll have made their return on investment so using them for backup will be fairly cheap. Especially in the coming age of robots/ drones for inspection work. To get to zero emission we can just use biogas or hydrogen. If the consumption is low this will be sustainable and financially viable since the fuel cost will be a very small part of the total operating costs, and making the hydrogen will be very cheap since there will be an abundance of days with excess electricity. So I don’t see that we will actually have a problem w.r.t. energy storage. Battery storage for short term has already outpaced pumped hydro. The transition to EVs already imply battery production capacity on a scale to handle energy balancing for hours or even days. Trash burning power plants is a good solution for seasonal demand. Yeah, reuse and recycle first. But eventually when materials degrade we should burn it to avoid landfills.

7thaccount 2y ago
The industry is starting to say that hydrogen is not going to happen. It's expensive to make even with hydrolysis, explosive, and extremely leaky. That makes transportation and storage really difficult. Also, I think it contributes to warming when enough leaks.
- tuatoru 2y ago
  Hydrogen as fuel won't work, yes; but generating it and immediately making hydrocarbons or ammonia or other chemical feedstocks with it is perfectly feasible. It's already being done. Just not with electrolysis.