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This article doesn't mention some serious problems that affect power grids reliant on renewable energies: 1 - The grids becomes vulnerable to the weather. Ther

by cfsc 11y ago

This article doesn't mention some serious problems that affect power grids reliant on renewable energies: 1 - The grids becomes vulnerable to the weather. There's no solar energy at night and it's greatly reduced in cloudy days. Wind power is unpredictable and closely matches the output of hydraulic power, so that the two sources can't complement each other. You can check Brazil in recent history to check the effects of droughts in the power grid. In the end there is a need of conventional power plants always ready to backup the grid when the renewable energy is not available. 2 - The majority of losses of the power distribution network are on the last mile, when the voltage is lower and the current is higher. If every house and electric car become consumers and providers to the grid, most power movements occur in the low voltage networks. There's also the issue of batteries storing energy for later consumption. Lithium batteries have a 80%-90% efficiency storing energy. 3 - Since we are talking of the environment, rare earth metals have a very pollutant and energy intensive extraction process which in most cases is not accounted in the environmental cost of solar panels. Replacing the majority of energy production by renewable energies will result in an net efficiency loss. I would rather support a balanced production with nuclear (fusion?) power plants providing the fixed needs of the grid and renewable energies making up the rest.

bane 11y ago
I think we'll see a companion industry for base-load energy storage following pretty fast. Musk's companies are already in on some of this, but I think it will take more forms than just electro-chemical batteries: for example, kinetic or thermal systems can be scaled up quite large and can provide fairly steady base-load ready power. If this fails, we'll probably still see energy storage taking off in the consumer space as devices are built to simply assume intermittent power...everything will basically have an UPS that will just carry it through to the next time the power is on. We see this already in many places with low development, mobile phones are the preferred access to the internet, personal home generators are common, people keep banks of car batteries around and charged so they can watch the TV or keep the fridge up and running. If we knew our current base-load systems were going away in 50 years, humanity could engineer solution to keep modernity around.
- AngrySkillzz 11y ago
  Seriously though, I don't understand how our entire grid has made it this far with no storage. All the electricity used in the US is produced at basically the same instant. Flywheel storage systems would be a great idea to supplement renewable energy, or even to supplement our current electricity generation technologies. Peaking plants are crazy expensive and most of the time base load pretty greatly exceeds actual usage; it would be great to be able to store some of that energy and use it instead of a peaker.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    There are three ways to handle the difference between relatively fixed base load power generation and highly variable grid usage. First, you can add variable load power generation facilities, that are less efficient overall, but can change output levels more quickly. Second, you can add an energy storage and return capacity to the grid. For this, you need a reversible process and good efficiency. Third, you can add variable usage. "Smart grid" appliances, particularly air conditioners, are good for this. But an energy-intensive industrial process co-located with the power plant, that could be scaled up or down automatically, would be better. The fact that most solutions to the problem of handling variable load when it is most efficient to have near-constant production are of the first variety is easily explained by the economic factors. A power generating company understands power generation better than any other industry, therefore has a bias towards solving its power generation problems with different kinds of power generation. It is only relatively recently that computing made it possible for automated usage negotiations could take place between producer and consumer on a scale that would be significant. And we still don't quite have batteries good enough to make peak-leveling storage practical or cost-effective. Pumped hydro is about the only game in town, and that depends heavily on appropriate terrain.
  - barney54 11y ago
    The fact that peakers are more cost efficient than flywheels or other storage tells you how expensive storage is. Plus it tells you that our electricity grids have been very robust to not need storage.
oldpond 11y ago
>I would rather support a balanced production with nuclear (fusion?) power plants providing the fixed needs of the grid and renewable energies making up the rest. I agree on the fusion part. The NIF has been strangely silent about their project for the last year or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility
- Phlarp 11y ago
  NIF is always strangely silent, because they don't exist to drive progress towards fusion based electrical power generation, they exist to validate and test miniaturized nuclear weapon designs.
  - oldpond 11y ago
    I don't know about that, but I was watching their ignition tests succeed one after another, and then they stopped. If they did succeed they would want to run it for awhile before announcing it. <tinfoil hat off>
elektromekatron 11y ago
Saying that you would prefer fusion is lovely, but it is not currently on the table.
- athenot 11y ago
  Fusion is still in development, but the goal is definitely for it to become a major player. http://www.iter.org/mach http://www.iter.org/mach
  - elektromekatron 11y ago
    Fusion is basic science research. In a few decades it may become engineering. Making solar and storage cheaper is already engineering. I do expect fusion to out-compete solar and storage eventually, but probably not in the next 50 years unless one of the fringe groups does something amazing.
    - rplst8 11y ago
      I'd argue that making solar and storage cheaper is not engineering. Currently, their efficiency and capacity do not warrant widespread use. More research should be done before money is wasted deploying half-baked technology. You can try to engineer cost savings and efficiency out of the current solutions, but using all that brain power on something that might yield single digit percent gains is a massive waste of talent IMO. The minds that are working on those problems would be much better utilized working on solar and storage research as well as more long term solutions like nuclear fusion (NIF, ITEF).
      - elektromekatron 11y ago
        I'd argue that making solar and storage cheaper is not engineering. You could, but I don't think it makes a lot of sense as an argument.
      - rplst8 11y ago
        Not sure why I got down voted on this. Without the government subsidies, the market for current gen PVs and batteries would be infinitesimally small. Wouldn't it be better to spend those subsidies on research for better PVs and batteries?
dougmany 11y ago
I am curious about your third point. From my understanding solar panels are 99% sand. I searched around a little and all I could find is that the thin film type need Tellurium. The rarity of Tellurium is comparable to that of platinum. The standard crystalline type do not. Maybe someone else can expand on this.
- pjc50 11y ago
  They don't need a lot of Tellurium, and that's only for the "thin film" cadmium-telluride ones. Most are mono- or poly-crystalline. There's quite a few nasty intermediate chemicals: http://www.solarindustrymag.com/issues/SI1309/FEAT_05_Hazardous_Materials_Used_In_Silicon_PV_Cell_Production_A_Primer.html http://www.solarindustrymag.com/issues/SI1309/FEAT_05_Hazard... - but the responsible manufacturer will recycle them on-site. "Rare earth" supply concerns usually means neodymium for magnets. In any case, most of them could be extracted from aluminium mine tailings ("red mud") at moderate expense.
- ChrisGranger 11y ago
  He might be referring to gallium arsenide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium_arsenide#Solar_cells_and_detectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium_arsenide#Solar_cells_a...
grecy 11y ago
I don't disagree with your points, though here are a few counter-points: 1. Nuclear is vulnerable to the weather too. [1] I can't find a link right now, but I'm quite certain a number of plants in the southern US have been off for a long time due to lack of cooling water. 2. Once each house is producing approximate what it's using, there will be very little movement of power over the grid, so it makes no difference that it's low voltage, high current. 3. Agree 100% - we need to invent better solar panels and more wind. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/health/20iht-nuke.1.5788480.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/health/20iht-nuke.1.578848...
- elektromekatron 11y ago
  France had to shut down several reactors in the 2003 heatwave due to the river water getting too hot and had to try and cool some of them by spraying water on them from the outside. http://www.rense.com/general40/reactors.htm http://www.rense.com/general40/reactors.htm http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/aug/12/france.nuclear http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/aug/12/france.nuclear
- Ygg2 11y ago
  > Nuclear is vulnerable to the weather too. Technically true. Practically, not as much. Solar/Wind power is several magnitutdes more vulnerable to weather than nuclear. There is a huge difference that you're out of power because a heatwave is hitting your country, and that you're out of power because it's been raining all day or there wasn't enough wind.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    How long does a rainy day last? How long is climate change such that California is seeing going to last? It is insane to consider nuclear a safer choice than solar and wind. I will concede solar and wind aren't firm resources, but that is quickly changing with utility scale battery storage and distributed rooftop generation.
    - electricblue 11y ago
comrade1 11y ago
Something I don't understand about fusion, doesn't it also produce radioactive waste? Does the containment system get irradiated with high-energy neutrons? Ok, I looked it up myself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Waste_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Waste_management It does produce nuclear waste, but with a short half life. The waste is more radioactive than fission waste, but will be pretty much gone in 500 years. Since it does produce radioactive waste, could fusion also make large areas of the earth uninhabitable like fission when there's an accident? I used to prefer fission and fusion research but seeing what happened in chernobyl and fukushima I had seconds thoughts, and now seeing how well renewables are doing I don't care for fission and fusion any longer. Funny story, in Switzerland they release water from mountain reservoirs during the day to produce electricity and sell the surplus to France and Germany at a high price, and then at night they buy nuclear-produced electricity from France at a fraction of the cost and pump the water back up into the mountains to repeat the process the next day.
- antimagic 11y ago
  Fusion accidents are much less likely - they need to be constantly supplied with new fuel for the reaction to continue. If they get hit by an earthquake / terrorist attack / other emergency, the natural tendency of the system is to stop moving things, including the fuel, which means that the source of energy is immediately removed, and the danger with it. At worst the reactor itself may get destroyed, but containment techniques should guarantee minimal radiation escaping to the environment. Fission on the other hand requires a large quantity of fuel just to get the chain reaction started, so if things go wrong, you'd better have a robust cooling system, because nothing is going to stop that fuel from producing lots of waste heat. The fuel melts and escapes containment, radiating surrounding groundwater and the general environment. Even without catastrophes, fission results in lots of irradiated coolants and 'spent' fuel that is still hot enough that it needs to be stored in water for years after it leaves the reactor.
- knodi123 11y ago
  what I don't get is, isn't "highly radioactive" waste dangerous because it puts out so much energy? So..... maybe we should just plop that waste back into a fission reactor, then?
emergentcypher 11y ago
Hey everyone, I found the paid shill.
- dang 11y ago
  Accusations of astroturfing and shilling without evidence are not allowed on Hacker News. An opposing opinion is not evidence.
marze 11y ago
A pretty ignorant and FUD filled post to be top ranked.
- bigdubs 11y ago
  If that's how you feel, give examples why. Personally I don't think what is in that post is too far off from reality; "renewable" energy is a net loss still. Nuclear is the cleanest source per measure of energy produced option we have.
  - elektromekatron 11y ago
    1 - Storage. Ignoring developments in storage as part of the build out for renewable power will always make it seem as though you need loads of baseload. And storage is far better developed than fusion. It exists for one thing. 2 - Is ignoring the research done by the grids themselves that indicate they can save money on link upgrades by building out lithium storage systems. 3 - solar panels are nearly all silicon, the storage is mostly lithium and nickel and copper. Some polluting compounds get used, but come on, we are comparing to oil, gas, coal and nuclear. To crap as much in the capital production of devices that last decades as is produced by a chemical fuel economy requiring constant replenishment over the same timescale, would be pretty impressive.
SovietDissident 11y ago
3 - The rare earth mining operations in China which provide the raw materials for solar panels, batteries, and many other electronics products are reportedly quite filthy and require massive energy (diesel trucks, processing plants, etc.) http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rare-earth-mining-china-social-environmental-costs http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rare-earth-m... The push for renewable energy would not be possible at its current scale if it weren't so attractive to the political elite (and subsidized as well), for the shortcomings you mentioned. Fossil fuels and nuclear simply better fulfill the role of consistent, cheap, plentiful energy. Unfortunately, even though nuclear is quite safe, has very few emissions, and emits a ton of energy, it takes a Herculean effort to get federal approval to build a plant.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Fossil fuels are massively subsidized by being allowed to pollute without paying for the consequences. They are not cheap when you account for the externalities they're allowed to impose. The decision to allow fossil fuel users to poison us all is a political one and it's pretty much the only reason renewables are even still a question instead of being the obvious answer.
  - rplst8 11y ago
    Rare earth mineral mining also gets that subsidy as does the manufacture of PV panels.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      True, but the scale doesn't come anywhere close. Renewables production isn't changing the climate, poisoning seafood, or giving millions of people lung diseases.
      - hueving 11y ago
        Well it is because it depends on heavy industry to manufacture it. I'm curios, are there stats on the energy that goes into manufacturing a windmill + battery setup vs the expected energy output over the lifetime? In other words, are they at least self sustaining? Haul trucks and crushers for mining take massive amounts of energy that are currently being driven by fossil fuels. So renewables are subsidized by fossil fuels and the question is how much?
torgoguys 11y ago
Re: 1-I support balanced development (yes, including nuclear, but I get why some don't like it), but solar is AWESOME to pair with central electric production. It actually HELPS out with this issue. Very hot, sunny days is when there is peak power consumption. It's also the peak of solar production and can help avoid utilities having to spin up the (very expensive) temporary peaker plants. Re: 2-Again, depending on how you look at it, solar helps with this, at least for homeowner rooftop production. If I'm producing my own electricity on-site, the utility company electricity never has to step-down voltages and move that last mile. I'm not using it (or I'm using less of it) so the energy coming from a central power plant never has to come down the "last mile" to me! Feeding back in is where you've got a bit of a point, but it's not really worse than with central production. In general distributed generation is going to be vastly more efficient (from the perspective of line losses) than central generation. Also, why bring up batteries? You don't need batteries to produce solar. If you have extra power, most people are feeding it into the grid, not batteries. Re: 3-Agreed. Creating the panels is in general a very energy intensive process (in ways unrelated to the rare earth components), not to be ignored. It takes time for an "energy payback" if you will, but it's there. And the panels are very long-lasting.
- jdmichal 11y ago
  > Also, why bring up batteries? You don't need batteries to produce solar. If you have extra power, most people are feeding it into the grid, not batteries. Because feeding back to the grid is only a sustainable solution when a minimal number of entities are doing it. What happens when the majority of entities are feeding back to the grid? Where is all that energy supposed to go? The answer, of course, is storage. And this isn't just some made up problem either; it happens right now with a different solution. There's a huge slack in power demand at night. Sometimes enough that the power providers will offer deep discounts to bulk buyers to get rid of excess supply. So you see some industries that use massive amounts of power, like aluminum refineries, shift to mostly night operations. But shifting demand around will only help so much. Now, while distributed generation is fine, I don't think distributed storage is going to work. Storage cost (both economic and ecologic) and efficiencies are simply much better scaled up.
mikeash 11y ago
How does wind power match the output of hydraulic power? Hydro generation can be turned on and off pretty much at will. The only limitation is that the level of your reservoir can't drop below a certain level. But the reservoirs are huge and typically operate far away from the minimum level. Hydro plants are a perfect complement to anything because of this. Unless the region suffers a years-long drought, you can operate the hydro plant at will, and turn it on whenever your less reliable stuff isn't operating. Add a pump and you can even operate it as a gigantic battery. The only problem with hydro power is that there isn't enough of it to run everything. If there were, we wouldn't even think about running anything else. Losses become less important as things move to renewable. Who cares if your storage batteries lose 20% of your solar power to inefficiencies? That's energy that you were going to just radiate back into space otherwise. If solar becomes really cheap, that just means you slap on some more solar panels and call it a day. And don't forget that solar production matches up well with peak electricity consumption, and transmission losses are small in the common case where production and consumption are co-located.
- amorphid 11y ago
  Hydro is produces little C02 but causes other problems. http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/affect/hydro.html http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/affect/hydro.h...
- cfsc 11y ago
  I will give you the example of my country, Portugal. We have very rainy winters and the reservoirs usually get full. At some points the entire production of the country is provided by hydraulic power (minus the base coal plants that can't be stopped). With rain usually comes a lot of wind. The eolic energy is sent to the Spanish grid for free, since the energy needs are meet by the hydraulic energy alone. In summer, we have very dry weather and the reservoirs are used just for top the demand of peak hours. The wind is irregular and more prevalent at night. Now we are retrofitting some dams to allow pumping, so the excess wind power at night is used to pump water back into the dam. This process unfortunately only has 60 % efficiency. My main point is, for the price of all those eolic towers, pumping dams and gas power plants that backup the renewables, we could build a more reliable nuclear fission power plant at a lower price.
netcan 11y ago
You're right but…. I think the general idea is that moving to renewables turns the problem into a more solvable one, or a bunch of more solvable ones. It's an inherently optimistic idea, but I sort of buy it. Grids that take more advantage of decentralized production, cleaner solar panel manufacturing (or mineral extraction). That sort of thing. There's another big thing to add to your list: transport. It's almost all hydrocarbons. Planes, ships, cars, trucks. Same answer for this one. We'll a solar, battery, or hydrogen powered vehicles.
officialjunk 11y ago
I think you are forgetting about the fact that we can store energy. This will act as a buffer and not run into the problems you are describing. Of course the buffer size needs to be reasonable and we need to collect and store energy at a rate greater than or equal to the rate of consumption, but I think we can achieve now with current technology.
- dragontamer 11y ago
  Energy storage solutions are getting better, but energy storage research didn't really pickup till the 1990s. Pumped Hydro (~80% efficiency) is still the best large-scale energy storage mechanism in the USA. Maybe in a few years Redox-Flow Batteries (Or flywheels, or Lithium, or Compressed Air, or...) will catch up to technologies from the 1960s and we can have advanced energy storage. But for now, the vast vast majority of energy storage is basically pumping water up a hill and letting it back down at a later time. Something like 95% of the entire USA's energy storage is pumped hydro.
khed 11y ago
The most damning argument against using solar or other intermittent renewables as the main form of electricity generation is there aren't high eroei storage techniques. http://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Weissbach_EROI_preprint.pdf http://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Weissbach_EROI_preprint.pdf
- Retric 11y ago
  Bad math. If it takes 10kwh to build a 1kwh storage system that seems like an issue. However, if you use that storage system to store 1kwh every day for 20 years that's 10kwh to store 7,300 kwh which is clearly a non issue. PS: From a cost of energy standpoint you can quickly see that at 10c/kwh all forms of energy storage are way in the black on this issue. Just by looking at their cost vs how much they store over their lifetime. But, more importantly storage is supplemental as during some of the day you’re just directly using the energy without storage.
seasoup 11y ago
I think we'll hit the turning point when renewable infrastructure can be built with energy and supplies that are also renewable, sort of like writing the compiler for a programming language in that language.
outworlder 11y ago
> You can check Brazil in recent history to check the effects of droughts in the power grid. In the end there is a need of conventional power plants always ready to backup the grid when the renewable energy is not available. Disclaimer: I'm Brazilian Sure, you need some conventional powerplants as backup system. However, that's much better than having them run all the time. Don't forget that conventional plants should also have their backups. The hydroelectric dams do the heavy lifting really. We also have a nationwide energy grid, so we can reallocate resources as necessary. What we actually need is more renewables. The northeast is (almost!) always sunny. If there's not enough sun, it's usually because of rain(increasing reservoir levels) and there's wind (boosting wind power). The north (near the Amazon forest) has an abundance of rain. The south and southeast are hit and miss, the weather is far less reliable. With a nationwide power grid, surplus can be reallocated. In case that's insufficient, then the thermoelectric power plants can be started, hopefully running on natural gas or biodiesel. We do have a nuclear power plant, wish we had more. > The majority of losses of the power distribution network are on the last mile Which is why microgeneration should be encouraged. Having enough local generation to offset the losses alone would be a win. > Since we are talking of the environment, rare earth metals have a very pollutant and energy intensive extraction process which in most cases is not accounted in the environmental cost of solar panels. Sure. But what about the resources to build conventional power plants? It is not like their extraction, transportation, processing and assembly is free. Thermoelectric power plants also release harmful gases into the atmosphere for as long as they are operating. Solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric dams don't do that (for hydro, I guess they'll release a bunch of methane and other chemicals for quite a while after they are constructed, due to the dead life when the artificial lake is formed). Fusion is always 10 years away. I wouldn't hold my breath. Nuclear power plants will also require a lot of energy (and pollution!) in order to be constructed. The newest designs are a win in my book, but we can't pretend they don't do environmental damage. Oh, almost forgot. If you are concerned about rare earth mining, then let us build more solar concentrators. They only require mirrors, no rare earths. The heat exchange medium can also be molten salts, which will retain a lot of thermal energy for the night, without using batteries. They require direct sunlight however, while solar panels will work (at reduced efficiency) even in overcast skies.
mahranch 11y ago
> rare earth metals have a very pollutant and energy intensive extraction process which in most cases is not accounted in the environmental cost of solar panels. Thanks to China overplaying their hand, this may be changing. Rare earths were exactly that, rare. And China was quite literally the only country you could get them from (they were the only country that was fine with dealing with all the pollution and waste. Though "dealing with" might be too liberal). They took advantage of their monopoly and used it to bully nations, as well as engage in severe price gouging. They even temporarily banned all rare earth exports to Japan (big electronics producer) back in 2010 because of a minor fishing trawler dispute. Some countries and business got fed up with China's bullying and began looking at ways to do it cheaper and cleaner. It wasn't that it was "hard" to deal with the waste and pollution, it's that it was expensive to get everything set up and up to IAEA standards. Nobody wanted to invest that much and have China start undercutting the market again. But China continued to play the bully and demand rose. Finally, it became worth it to open up some new mines (and reopen older ones). Both America and Australia have begun mining operations within the last few years (and meet IAEA environmental standards), and Vietnam signed an agreement to supply Japan with rare earths. Last year, a company in Malaysia was granted a license to refine rare earths with IAEA's seal of approval. They're expected to supply 1/6th the world's rare earths and virtually eliminate China's stranglehold.
- kwhitefoot 11y ago
  Rare earths are not rare; the problem is that they don't often occur in concentrated ores. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element#Geological_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element#Geological_...
Animats 11y ago
Unless you're making gallium arsenide cells, solar panels don't need rare earths. They're used mostly for motors. As for rare earth mining, the US is way ahead of China in rare earth mining technology. Molycorp's Mountain Pass, CA rare earth mine is now in full production.[1] No more tailings ponds. There's a big back-end process to recover most of the water and solvents. There's a large amount of solid waste, but it's basically what was in the ground, minus the good stuff. Even the Sierra Club is grudgingly satisfied with the project.[2] The China producers have had to cut their prices drastically to compete. Molycorp is now struggling financially, and increasing output.[3] Not clear who will win, but right now there's a glut of rare earths. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id8hDUT5nHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id8hDUT5nHQ [2] http://www.desertreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/DR_Spring2011.pdf http://www.desertreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/DR_Sp... [3] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/03/23/what-60-minutes-got-wrong-about-rare-earths-and-china/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/03/23/what-60-m...
Abraln 11y ago
That is part of why I prefer tidal power. It is predictable, and because water is so much thicker than air you can get more energy than from wind turbines. They can even be integrated into hurricane protection measures (I forget The specific term).
dredmorbius 11y ago
Much of the variability in solar and wind is predictable, both long term (solar generation at night or during a given season is highly preditable) or near-term (weather forecasts give very good 72-hour estimates of both load and supply). Germany's experience, documented by the Fraunhoffer Institute, are an excellent example of this. There are occasions where per-MWh prices have spiked or fallen drastically, but those are both rare (2-3X annually, for a few hours), and are almost always instances where the forecasts were in error. The means of dealing with this are to have: 1. Dispatchable load (rather than today's dispatchable supply): high-intensity uses which can be cycled rapidly or on schedule. 2. Storage. Pumped hydro and compressed air energy storage (CAES) are the two most likely options. Synfuels -- hydrogen or synthetic gas or liquid hydrocarbons created from surplus electrical supply, are the most likely options in my book. 3. Standby capacity. Biomass, dispatchable renewable supply (hydro, geothermal), and other fuel-driven capacity (preferably carbon-neutral) seem to be the best bets. I'm pretty bearish on battery solutions in general -- they may work for standby, but the volumes and costs required for long-term supply are enormous. Fuel cell tech might be slightly better. Rare earths aren't significantly used in solar, and only slightly in wind. Note that not shifting from fossil fuels isn't an option. Whether due to CO₂ emissions or fuel shortages, that'll have to happen sooner or later. Nuclear's a possible bridge but faces major long-term obstacles. Most notably that it fails of itself to answer the liquid fuels demand (though, as with renewables, synfuels driven by nuclear generation are possible).

by cfsc 11y ago

bane 11y ago

I think we'll see a companion industry for base-load energy storage following pretty fast. Musk's companies are already in on some of this, but I think it will take more forms than just electro-chemical batteries: for example, kinetic or thermal systems can be scaled up quite large and can provide fairly steady base-load ready power. If this fails, we'll probably still see energy storage taking off in the consumer space as devices are built to simply assume intermittent power...everything will basically have an UPS that will just carry it through to the next time the power is on. We see this already in many places with low development, mobile phones are the preferred access to the internet, personal home generators are common, people keep banks of car batteries around and charged so they can watch the TV or keep the fridge up and running. If we knew our current base-load systems were going away in 50 years, humanity could engineer solution to keep modernity around.

AngrySkillzz 11y ago
Seriously though, I don't understand how our entire grid has made it this far with no storage. All the electricity used in the US is produced at basically the same instant. Flywheel storage systems would be a great idea to supplement renewable energy, or even to supplement our current electricity generation technologies. Peaking plants are crazy expensive and most of the time base load pretty greatly exceeds actual usage; it would be great to be able to store some of that energy and use it instead of a peaker.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  There are three ways to handle the difference between relatively fixed base load power generation and highly variable grid usage. First, you can add variable load power generation facilities, that are less efficient overall, but can change output levels more quickly. Second, you can add an energy storage and return capacity to the grid. For this, you need a reversible process and good efficiency. Third, you can add variable usage. "Smart grid" appliances, particularly air conditioners, are good for this. But an energy-intensive industrial process co-located with the power plant, that could be scaled up or down automatically, would be better. The fact that most solutions to the problem of handling variable load when it is most efficient to have near-constant production are of the first variety is easily explained by the economic factors. A power generating company understands power generation better than any other industry, therefore has a bias towards solving its power generation problems with different kinds of power generation. It is only relatively recently that computing made it possible for automated usage negotiations could take place between producer and consumer on a scale that would be significant. And we still don't quite have batteries good enough to make peak-leveling storage practical or cost-effective. Pumped hydro is about the only game in town, and that depends heavily on appropriate terrain.
- barney54 11y ago
  The fact that peakers are more cost efficient than flywheels or other storage tells you how expensive storage is. Plus it tells you that our electricity grids have been very robust to not need storage.

oldpond 11y ago

>I would rather support a balanced production with nuclear (fusion?) power plants providing the fixed needs of the grid and renewable energies making up the rest. I agree on the fusion part. The NIF has been strangely silent about their project for the last year or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility

Phlarp 11y ago
NIF is always strangely silent, because they don't exist to drive progress towards fusion based electrical power generation, they exist to validate and test miniaturized nuclear weapon designs.
- oldpond 11y ago
  I don't know about that, but I was watching their ignition tests succeed one after another, and then they stopped. If they did succeed they would want to run it for awhile before announcing it. <tinfoil hat off>

elektromekatron 11y ago

Saying that you would prefer fusion is lovely, but it is not currently on the table.

athenot 11y ago
Fusion is still in development, but the goal is definitely for it to become a major player. http://www.iter.org/mach http://www.iter.org/mach
- elektromekatron 11y ago
  Fusion is basic science research. In a few decades it may become engineering. Making solar and storage cheaper is already engineering. I do expect fusion to out-compete solar and storage eventually, but probably not in the next 50 years unless one of the fringe groups does something amazing.
  - rplst8 11y ago
    I'd argue that making solar and storage cheaper is not engineering. Currently, their efficiency and capacity do not warrant widespread use. More research should be done before money is wasted deploying half-baked technology. You can try to engineer cost savings and efficiency out of the current solutions, but using all that brain power on something that might yield single digit percent gains is a massive waste of talent IMO. The minds that are working on those problems would be much better utilized working on solar and storage research as well as more long term solutions like nuclear fusion (NIF, ITEF).
    - elektromekatron 11y ago
      I'd argue that making solar and storage cheaper is not engineering. You could, but I don't think it makes a lot of sense as an argument.
    - rplst8 11y ago
      Not sure why I got down voted on this. Without the government subsidies, the market for current gen PVs and batteries would be infinitesimally small. Wouldn't it be better to spend those subsidies on research for better PVs and batteries?

dougmany 11y ago

I am curious about your third point. From my understanding solar panels are 99% sand. I searched around a little and all I could find is that the thin film type need Tellurium. The rarity of Tellurium is comparable to that of platinum. The standard crystalline type do not. Maybe someone else can expand on this.

pjc50 11y ago
They don't need a lot of Tellurium, and that's only for the "thin film" cadmium-telluride ones. Most are mono- or poly-crystalline. There's quite a few nasty intermediate chemicals: http://www.solarindustrymag.com/issues/SI1309/FEAT_05_Hazardous_Materials_Used_In_Silicon_PV_Cell_Production_A_Primer.html http://www.solarindustrymag.com/issues/SI1309/FEAT_05_Hazard... - but the responsible manufacturer will recycle them on-site. "Rare earth" supply concerns usually means neodymium for magnets. In any case, most of them could be extracted from aluminium mine tailings ("red mud") at moderate expense.
ChrisGranger 11y ago
He might be referring to gallium arsenide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium_arsenide#Solar_cells_and_detectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium_arsenide#Solar_cells_a...

grecy 11y ago

I don't disagree with your points, though here are a few counter-points: 1. Nuclear is vulnerable to the weather too. [1] I can't find a link right now, but I'm quite certain a number of plants in the southern US have been off for a long time due to lack of cooling water. 2. Once each house is producing approximate what it's using, there will be very little movement of power over the grid, so it makes no difference that it's low voltage, high current. 3. Agree 100% - we need to invent better solar panels and more wind. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/health/20iht-nuke.1.5788480.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/health/20iht-nuke.1.578848...

elektromekatron 11y ago
France had to shut down several reactors in the 2003 heatwave due to the river water getting too hot and had to try and cool some of them by spraying water on them from the outside. http://www.rense.com/general40/reactors.htm http://www.rense.com/general40/reactors.htm http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/aug/12/france.nuclear http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/aug/12/france.nuclear
Ygg2 11y ago
> Nuclear is vulnerable to the weather too. Technically true. Practically, not as much. Solar/Wind power is several magnitutdes more vulnerable to weather than nuclear. There is a huge difference that you're out of power because a heatwave is hitting your country, and that you're out of power because it's been raining all day or there wasn't enough wind.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  How long does a rainy day last? How long is climate change such that California is seeing going to last? It is insane to consider nuclear a safer choice than solar and wind. I will concede solar and wind aren't firm resources, but that is quickly changing with utility scale battery storage and distributed rooftop generation.
  - electricblue 11y ago

comrade1 11y ago

Something I don't understand about fusion, doesn't it also produce radioactive waste? Does the containment system get irradiated with high-energy neutrons? Ok, I looked it up myself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Waste_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Waste_management It does produce nuclear waste, but with a short half life. The waste is more radioactive than fission waste, but will be pretty much gone in 500 years. Since it does produce radioactive waste, could fusion also make large areas of the earth uninhabitable like fission when there's an accident? I used to prefer fission and fusion research but seeing what happened in chernobyl and fukushima I had seconds thoughts, and now seeing how well renewables are doing I don't care for fission and fusion any longer. Funny story, in Switzerland they release water from mountain reservoirs during the day to produce electricity and sell the surplus to France and Germany at a high price, and then at night they buy nuclear-produced electricity from France at a fraction of the cost and pump the water back up into the mountains to repeat the process the next day.

antimagic 11y ago
Fusion accidents are much less likely - they need to be constantly supplied with new fuel for the reaction to continue. If they get hit by an earthquake / terrorist attack / other emergency, the natural tendency of the system is to stop moving things, including the fuel, which means that the source of energy is immediately removed, and the danger with it. At worst the reactor itself may get destroyed, but containment techniques should guarantee minimal radiation escaping to the environment. Fission on the other hand requires a large quantity of fuel just to get the chain reaction started, so if things go wrong, you'd better have a robust cooling system, because nothing is going to stop that fuel from producing lots of waste heat. The fuel melts and escapes containment, radiating surrounding groundwater and the general environment. Even without catastrophes, fission results in lots of irradiated coolants and 'spent' fuel that is still hot enough that it needs to be stored in water for years after it leaves the reactor.
knodi123 11y ago
what I don't get is, isn't "highly radioactive" waste dangerous because it puts out so much energy? So..... maybe we should just plop that waste back into a fission reactor, then?

emergentcypher 11y ago

Hey everyone, I found the paid shill.

dang 11y ago
Accusations of astroturfing and shilling without evidence are not allowed on Hacker News. An opposing opinion is not evidence.

marze 11y ago

A pretty ignorant and FUD filled post to be top ranked.

bigdubs 11y ago
If that's how you feel, give examples why. Personally I don't think what is in that post is too far off from reality; "renewable" energy is a net loss still. Nuclear is the cleanest source per measure of energy produced option we have.
- elektromekatron 11y ago
  1 - Storage. Ignoring developments in storage as part of the build out for renewable power will always make it seem as though you need loads of baseload. And storage is far better developed than fusion. It exists for one thing. 2 - Is ignoring the research done by the grids themselves that indicate they can save money on link upgrades by building out lithium storage systems. 3 - solar panels are nearly all silicon, the storage is mostly lithium and nickel and copper. Some polluting compounds get used, but come on, we are comparing to oil, gas, coal and nuclear. To crap as much in the capital production of devices that last decades as is produced by a chemical fuel economy requiring constant replenishment over the same timescale, would be pretty impressive.

SovietDissident 11y ago

3 - The rare earth mining operations in China which provide the raw materials for solar panels, batteries, and many other electronics products are reportedly quite filthy and require massive energy (diesel trucks, processing plants, etc.) http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rare-earth-mining-china-social-environmental-costs http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rare-earth-m... The push for renewable energy would not be possible at its current scale if it weren't so attractive to the political elite (and subsidized as well), for the shortcomings you mentioned. Fossil fuels and nuclear simply better fulfill the role of consistent, cheap, plentiful energy. Unfortunately, even though nuclear is quite safe, has very few emissions, and emits a ton of energy, it takes a Herculean effort to get federal approval to build a plant.

mikeash 11y ago
Fossil fuels are massively subsidized by being allowed to pollute without paying for the consequences. They are not cheap when you account for the externalities they're allowed to impose. The decision to allow fossil fuel users to poison us all is a political one and it's pretty much the only reason renewables are even still a question instead of being the obvious answer.
- rplst8 11y ago
  Rare earth mineral mining also gets that subsidy as does the manufacture of PV panels.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    True, but the scale doesn't come anywhere close. Renewables production isn't changing the climate, poisoning seafood, or giving millions of people lung diseases.
    - hueving 11y ago
      Well it is because it depends on heavy industry to manufacture it. I'm curios, are there stats on the energy that goes into manufacturing a windmill + battery setup vs the expected energy output over the lifetime? In other words, are they at least self sustaining? Haul trucks and crushers for mining take massive amounts of energy that are currently being driven by fossil fuels. So renewables are subsidized by fossil fuels and the question is how much?

torgoguys 11y ago

Re: 1-I support balanced development (yes, including nuclear, but I get why some don't like it), but solar is AWESOME to pair with central electric production. It actually HELPS out with this issue. Very hot, sunny days is when there is peak power consumption. It's also the peak of solar production and can help avoid utilities having to spin up the (very expensive) temporary peaker plants. Re: 2-Again, depending on how you look at it, solar helps with this, at least for homeowner rooftop production. If I'm producing my own electricity on-site, the utility company electricity never has to step-down voltages and move that last mile. I'm not using it (or I'm using less of it) so the energy coming from a central power plant never has to come down the "last mile" to me! Feeding back in is where you've got a bit of a point, but it's not really worse than with central production. In general distributed generation is going to be vastly more efficient (from the perspective of line losses) than central generation. Also, why bring up batteries? You don't need batteries to produce solar. If you have extra power, most people are feeding it into the grid, not batteries. Re: 3-Agreed. Creating the panels is in general a very energy intensive process (in ways unrelated to the rare earth components), not to be ignored. It takes time for an "energy payback" if you will, but it's there. And the panels are very long-lasting.

jdmichal 11y ago
> Also, why bring up batteries? You don't need batteries to produce solar. If you have extra power, most people are feeding it into the grid, not batteries. Because feeding back to the grid is only a sustainable solution when a minimal number of entities are doing it. What happens when the majority of entities are feeding back to the grid? Where is all that energy supposed to go? The answer, of course, is storage. And this isn't just some made up problem either; it happens right now with a different solution. There's a huge slack in power demand at night. Sometimes enough that the power providers will offer deep discounts to bulk buyers to get rid of excess supply. So you see some industries that use massive amounts of power, like aluminum refineries, shift to mostly night operations. But shifting demand around will only help so much. Now, while distributed generation is fine, I don't think distributed storage is going to work. Storage cost (both economic and ecologic) and efficiencies are simply much better scaled up.

mikeash 11y ago

How does wind power match the output of hydraulic power? Hydro generation can be turned on and off pretty much at will. The only limitation is that the level of your reservoir can't drop below a certain level. But the reservoirs are huge and typically operate far away from the minimum level. Hydro plants are a perfect complement to anything because of this. Unless the region suffers a years-long drought, you can operate the hydro plant at will, and turn it on whenever your less reliable stuff isn't operating. Add a pump and you can even operate it as a gigantic battery. The only problem with hydro power is that there isn't enough of it to run everything. If there were, we wouldn't even think about running anything else. Losses become less important as things move to renewable. Who cares if your storage batteries lose 20% of your solar power to inefficiencies? That's energy that you were going to just radiate back into space otherwise. If solar becomes really cheap, that just means you slap on some more solar panels and call it a day. And don't forget that solar production matches up well with peak electricity consumption, and transmission losses are small in the common case where production and consumption are co-located.

amorphid 11y ago
Hydro is produces little C02 but causes other problems. http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/affect/hydro.html http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/affect/hydro.h...
cfsc 11y ago
I will give you the example of my country, Portugal. We have very rainy winters and the reservoirs usually get full. At some points the entire production of the country is provided by hydraulic power (minus the base coal plants that can't be stopped). With rain usually comes a lot of wind. The eolic energy is sent to the Spanish grid for free, since the energy needs are meet by the hydraulic energy alone. In summer, we have very dry weather and the reservoirs are used just for top the demand of peak hours. The wind is irregular and more prevalent at night. Now we are retrofitting some dams to allow pumping, so the excess wind power at night is used to pump water back into the dam. This process unfortunately only has 60 % efficiency. My main point is, for the price of all those eolic towers, pumping dams and gas power plants that backup the renewables, we could build a more reliable nuclear fission power plant at a lower price.

netcan 11y ago

You're right but…. I think the general idea is that moving to renewables turns the problem into a more solvable one, or a bunch of more solvable ones. It's an inherently optimistic idea, but I sort of buy it. Grids that take more advantage of decentralized production, cleaner solar panel manufacturing (or mineral extraction). That sort of thing. There's another big thing to add to your list: transport. It's almost all hydrocarbons. Planes, ships, cars, trucks. Same answer for this one. We'll a solar, battery, or hydrogen powered vehicles.

officialjunk 11y ago

I think you are forgetting about the fact that we can store energy. This will act as a buffer and not run into the problems you are describing. Of course the buffer size needs to be reasonable and we need to collect and store energy at a rate greater than or equal to the rate of consumption, but I think we can achieve now with current technology.

dragontamer 11y ago
Energy storage solutions are getting better, but energy storage research didn't really pickup till the 1990s. Pumped Hydro (~80% efficiency) is still the best large-scale energy storage mechanism in the USA. Maybe in a few years Redox-Flow Batteries (Or flywheels, or Lithium, or Compressed Air, or...) will catch up to technologies from the 1960s and we can have advanced energy storage. But for now, the vast vast majority of energy storage is basically pumping water up a hill and letting it back down at a later time. Something like 95% of the entire USA's energy storage is pumped hydro.

khed 11y ago

The most damning argument against using solar or other intermittent renewables as the main form of electricity generation is there aren't high eroei storage techniques. http://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Weissbach_EROI_preprint.pdf http://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Weissbach_EROI_preprint.pdf

Retric 11y ago
Bad math. If it takes 10kwh to build a 1kwh storage system that seems like an issue. However, if you use that storage system to store 1kwh every day for 20 years that's 10kwh to store 7,300 kwh which is clearly a non issue. PS: From a cost of energy standpoint you can quickly see that at 10c/kwh all forms of energy storage are way in the black on this issue. Just by looking at their cost vs how much they store over their lifetime. But, more importantly storage is supplemental as during some of the day you’re just directly using the energy without storage.

seasoup 11y ago

I think we'll hit the turning point when renewable infrastructure can be built with energy and supplies that are also renewable, sort of like writing the compiler for a programming language in that language.

outworlder 11y ago

> You can check Brazil in recent history to check the effects of droughts in the power grid. In the end there is a need of conventional power plants always ready to backup the grid when the renewable energy is not available. Disclaimer: I'm Brazilian Sure, you need some conventional powerplants as backup system. However, that's much better than having them run all the time. Don't forget that conventional plants should also have their backups. The hydroelectric dams do the heavy lifting really. We also have a nationwide energy grid, so we can reallocate resources as necessary. What we actually need is more renewables. The northeast is (almost!) always sunny. If there's not enough sun, it's usually because of rain(increasing reservoir levels) and there's wind (boosting wind power). The north (near the Amazon forest) has an abundance of rain. The south and southeast are hit and miss, the weather is far less reliable. With a nationwide power grid, surplus can be reallocated. In case that's insufficient, then the thermoelectric power plants can be started, hopefully running on natural gas or biodiesel. We do have a nuclear power plant, wish we had more. > The majority of losses of the power distribution network are on the last mile Which is why microgeneration should be encouraged. Having enough local generation to offset the losses alone would be a win. > Since we are talking of the environment, rare earth metals have a very pollutant and energy intensive extraction process which in most cases is not accounted in the environmental cost of solar panels. Sure. But what about the resources to build conventional power plants? It is not like their extraction, transportation, processing and assembly is free. Thermoelectric power plants also release harmful gases into the atmosphere for as long as they are operating. Solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric dams don't do that (for hydro, I guess they'll release a bunch of methane and other chemicals for quite a while after they are constructed, due to the dead life when the artificial lake is formed). Fusion is always 10 years away. I wouldn't hold my breath. Nuclear power plants will also require a lot of energy (and pollution!) in order to be constructed. The newest designs are a win in my book, but we can't pretend they don't do environmental damage. Oh, almost forgot. If you are concerned about rare earth mining, then let us build more solar concentrators. They only require mirrors, no rare earths. The heat exchange medium can also be molten salts, which will retain a lot of thermal energy for the night, without using batteries. They require direct sunlight however, while solar panels will work (at reduced efficiency) even in overcast skies.

mahranch 11y ago

> rare earth metals have a very pollutant and energy intensive extraction process which in most cases is not accounted in the environmental cost of solar panels. Thanks to China overplaying their hand, this may be changing. Rare earths were exactly that, rare. And China was quite literally the only country you could get them from (they were the only country that was fine with dealing with all the pollution and waste. Though "dealing with" might be too liberal). They took advantage of their monopoly and used it to bully nations, as well as engage in severe price gouging. They even temporarily banned all rare earth exports to Japan (big electronics producer) back in 2010 because of a minor fishing trawler dispute. Some countries and business got fed up with China's bullying and began looking at ways to do it cheaper and cleaner. It wasn't that it was "hard" to deal with the waste and pollution, it's that it was expensive to get everything set up and up to IAEA standards. Nobody wanted to invest that much and have China start undercutting the market again. But China continued to play the bully and demand rose. Finally, it became worth it to open up some new mines (and reopen older ones). Both America and Australia have begun mining operations within the last few years (and meet IAEA environmental standards), and Vietnam signed an agreement to supply Japan with rare earths. Last year, a company in Malaysia was granted a license to refine rare earths with IAEA's seal of approval. They're expected to supply 1/6th the world's rare earths and virtually eliminate China's stranglehold.

kwhitefoot 11y ago
Rare earths are not rare; the problem is that they don't often occur in concentrated ores. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element#Geological_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element#Geological_...

Animats 11y ago

Unless you're making gallium arsenide cells, solar panels don't need rare earths. They're used mostly for motors. As for rare earth mining, the US is way ahead of China in rare earth mining technology. Molycorp's Mountain Pass, CA rare earth mine is now in full production.[1] No more tailings ponds. There's a big back-end process to recover most of the water and solvents. There's a large amount of solid waste, but it's basically what was in the ground, minus the good stuff. Even the Sierra Club is grudgingly satisfied with the project.[2] The China producers have had to cut their prices drastically to compete. Molycorp is now struggling financially, and increasing output.[3] Not clear who will win, but right now there's a glut of rare earths. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id8hDUT5nHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id8hDUT5nHQ [2] http://www.desertreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/DR_Spring2011.pdf http://www.desertreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/DR_Sp... [3] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/03/23/what-60-minutes-got-wrong-about-rare-earths-and-china/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/03/23/what-60-m...

Abraln 11y ago

That is part of why I prefer tidal power. It is predictable, and because water is so much thicker than air you can get more energy than from wind turbines. They can even be integrated into hurricane protection measures (I forget The specific term).

dredmorbius 11y ago

Much of the variability in solar and wind is predictable, both long term (solar generation at night or during a given season is highly preditable) or near-term (weather forecasts give very good 72-hour estimates of both load and supply). Germany's experience, documented by the Fraunhoffer Institute, are an excellent example of this. There are occasions where per-MWh prices have spiked or fallen drastically, but those are both rare (2-3X annually, for a few hours), and are almost always instances where the forecasts were in error. The means of dealing with this are to have: 1. Dispatchable load (rather than today's dispatchable supply): high-intensity uses which can be cycled rapidly or on schedule. 2. Storage. Pumped hydro and compressed air energy storage (CAES) are the two most likely options. Synfuels -- hydrogen or synthetic gas or liquid hydrocarbons created from surplus electrical supply, are the most likely options in my book. 3. Standby capacity. Biomass, dispatchable renewable supply (hydro, geothermal), and other fuel-driven capacity (preferably carbon-neutral) seem to be the best bets. I'm pretty bearish on battery solutions in general -- they may work for standby, but the volumes and costs required for long-term supply are enormous. Fuel cell tech might be slightly better. Rare earths aren't significantly used in solar, and only slightly in wind. Note that not shifting from fossil fuels isn't an option. Whether due to CO₂ emissions or fuel shortages, that'll have to happen sooner or later. Nuclear's a possible bridge but faces major long-term obstacles. Most notably that it fails of itself to answer the liquid fuels demand (though, as with renewables, synfuels driven by nuclear generation are possible).