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Indeed, it is an annoying argument that boils down to "What will we do!? Current supply doesn't meet future demand!" >That being said I am really glad to see
by colechristensen 2y ago
Indeed, it is an annoying argument that boils down to
"What will we do!? Current supply doesn't meet future demand!"
>That being said I am really glad to see more grid buildup! Especially as more renewables hit the grid. While locally intermittent, on the scale of the entire country they're fairly reliable and predictable.
Here's what's coming that makes people uncomfortable and they don't expect or understand:
Oversupply.
Seasonally, during good weather, during certain times of day, there's just going to be more electricity produced by solar/wind than anybody needs. You don't need to store it or use every bit of it, the grid is going to say no and because they're just solar panels, they are perfectly fine. Solar electricity is so cheap that it just doesn't matter. What customers will end up paying for is capacity instead of usage. Maybe there will be instantaneous pricing that will drop to zero-ish intermittently and consumers and industry will find ways of profiting from that.
But a whole lot of "problems" people complain about with solar are very much reduced if you just have "too many" solar panels. And they're cheap so who cares?
Like what would California do with way too much solar power? Boil water in the cheapest possible infrastructure for desalination, an enormous still. Very energy inefficient, but who cares if you just have the amps to spare?
There are a lot of industrial processes where energy efficiency is a problem and so simple processes are replaced by more efficient complex ones... but if you have free energy building out that simple infrastructure to only run when energy is cheap suddenly makes a lot more sense.
- SoftTalker 2y agoI’d think direct thermal solar would be cheaper for boiling water. Feed the steam to electric generators; the condensate is then your desalinated water.
- colechristensen 2y agoYou are missing the point. I’m talking about sinks for surplus electricity, and doing it cheaply with dead simple distillation setups. You’re talking about generating more electricity when it is needed least.
- jujube3 2y agoThe "annoying" thing that the naysayers are pointing out is that we are not building enough power generation to support universally switching to electric vehicles. Unfortunately this "annoyance" happens to be true. Also, California struggles to get new desalination plants through environmental approval. And most industrial processes need continuous power, not just power whenever the weather looks good.
- doublepg23 2y agoSpeaking to people in the industry I get a vibe that there’s permits and regulations that are severely bottlenecking new green energy deployments https://finance-commerce.com/2024/03/report-inefficient-permitting-delays-clean-energy-projects/ https://finance-commerce.com/2024/03/report-inefficient-perm...
- colechristensen 2y agoEh. Solar installs are growing faster than electric car purchases. (roughly 30% YoY vs 20%) People just make up statistics in their head supporting their position. Go look for the statistics for vehicle purchases and PV installs. PV installs are outpacing anyone's previous estimation by a significant margin.
- jujube3 2y agoI have solar panels myself. But let's be honest about what the technology can and cannot do. Solar only makes energy while the sun is shining. Most people want to charge their electric cars at night, unless their employer has a charging station ready for them to use at work. (Many employers have a small number of charging stations for this purpose, but none of them that I'm aware of have enough charging stations for everyone.)
- doctorhandshake 2y agoBatteries also are on the learning curve. https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline
- doublepg23 2y agoIsn’t something like Bitcoin mining a good candidate for an oversupply of energy?
- dylan604 2y agoDid you forget /s at the end of that?
- colechristensen 2y agoNot particularly, the mining hardware depreciates fast, essentially being quite expensive to leave idle waiting for low energy prices, and the whole thing is kind of a gamble.