31–40 of 110 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The interesting thing is the EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) for oil and gas has been falling for a century. I remember reading somewhere a claim that historical EROEI for crude oil. Year EROEI 1920 125 1970 30 2010 15 Things like tar sands are less than 10.
Some tar sands are below 1 once you include refining and transportation.
There's another large effect that is left out of this story. As solar gets cheaper, and as we get more of it, it reduces the marginal pressure on fossil fuel production. That, in turn, makes fossil fuels cheaper and forces solar to get cheaper still to compete.
Solar doesn't much compete with petroleum. Its main effect is to reduce prices for coal. You'd expect that this might start to affect the profitability of coal companies eventualy.... For solar to affect petroleum , whose primary use is transport , we'll need to solve the storage problem. Tesla notwithstanding that has not happened. Electric vehicle sales were 0.66% of unit auto sales in 2015, and actually represente…
The obvious solution here is solar-generated biofuel, such as the algae projects now being investigated.
I think the biggest impediment to widescale solar adoption is legeslative. If you follow hackernews, you'll regularly see articles about places like Florida (and possibly Nevada if memory serves) where solar could easily power homes, but disingenuous legislative instruments and manipulativly worded ballot initiatives are housed to effectively block solar adoption. This is an example of the top result in Google news h…
I think the issue is that OK, say we managed to get to 100% electricity being solar when the sun is shining. You'd still have the time the sun is not shining, which would likely be more expensive than before (a gas powered plant would only be running half the time - effectively doubling its capital/construction cost per kWh). So you'd definitely have an improvement on some levels but I'm not sure that would really he…
Everyone seems a bit obsessed by batteries as a storage method, when we have more traditional methods: - Pumped-storage hydroelectricity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit... . Sure it's not suitable everywhere. - There's always Molten Salt as well - http://www.solarreserve.com/en/technology/molten-salt-energy... . Also, solar isn't the be all and end all of renewable energy generation. Wi…
A couple of additions and caveats.
Friend of mine at ORNL has been talking up compressed air energy storage (CAES). I'm somewhat dubious due to the Boyles law heating/cooling problem (gasses heat when compressed, cool when expanded, and the resulting heat flows affect both efficiency and equipment function -- gas turbines don't spin well when iced solid).
Pumped-hydro is the most efficient storage solution bar none, but is painfully restricted by siting opportunities. Being able to use oceans as a lower baisin might address this, though salt-water engineering is a significant concern (corrosion and other issues).
Interesting to see molten salt as at large scale that pencils out a viable for even, say, a two week total energy replacement solution for the US. You'd need tankage (insulated) roughly corresponding to current Oaklahoma oil transshipment storage facilities.
Electricity-to-fuel is another option, with Sabatier and Fischer-Tropsch cycles both proven. Carbon source from seawater appears somewhat promising, though my concern is that there's been 50 years of research without a large-scale demonstration project, making me suspect deeper issues.
I actually am a fan of load-shedding, and suspect that the concept of dispatchable load as opposed to supply may be part of the future way of thinking.
Coal => gas is a no-brainer, though also not a total solution, by a long shot.
Geothermal is highly underrated, especially if currently protected areas are opened for consideration. The Yellowstone caldera could possibly supply up to 15% of total US electrical demand.
(1) Utility Scale Solar is already less (2) The price of Solar PV panels is already at $0.40/W. US-based $FSLR is has a roadmap to get to $0.25/W by 2019. In addition PV efficiency is increasing by 10% yoy. This is just from purely riding the 'industrial learning curve'. See [1].
(3) "Value deflation" is a policy issue that has a simple policy solution. As a tech that produces an intermittent product, but has high fixed-costs but zero-marginal costs - solar (like wind) should be financed (and paid for) via a fixed tariff (feed-in tariff or FiT). See [2]. This is how Solar is financed in the rest of the world outside the US. If 'value deflation actually became an issue - then my guess is that regulators in the US would step in (but one can never say with US regulators who tend to get captured by various lobby groups).
(4) Solar will account for 30% of all new capacity power additions going forward globally. This is happening - now. There is over 100,000MW installed globally already.
In addition - every time solar or wind comes up for discussion on HN or elsewhere, the same misconceptions and confusions about baseload, intermittency and costs arise.
To summarise the counter-points again:
(1) Renewables does not need to be base-load or compared to 'base-load'. 'Base-load' is spectrum not a point. See [3]
(2) There is a difference between intermittent and 'unplanned'. Planned vs unplanned is the main issue. Even nuclear has unplanned shut-downs - no tech has a 100% 'capacity factory' running 24/7 365 days. see [4]
(3) Renewables can get to 60-80% penetration via:
(a) increasing efficiencies (happening now)
(b) increasing energy storage efficiencies with declining prices (happening now)
(c) geographical grid-integration (happening slowly)
(d) more flexible software-led demand-side and supply-side management (happening). See [5]
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-14/first-sola...
[2] http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/3-ways-renewable...
[3] http://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/02/base-load-power-is-a-myt...
and http://cleantechnica.com/2014/08/08/rmi-blows-lid-baseload-p... [short video in article]
[4] http://www.energypost.eu/dispelling-nuclear-baseload-myth-no...
[5] Links on renewable energy penetration potential
- NREL Analysis of how to achieve high-penetration renewables in US http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re_futures/
- Ramez Naam http://rameznaam.com/2016/01/31/how-far-can-renewables-go-pr...
- California http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2016/04/04/what-will-california-...
I think the issue is that OK, say we managed to get to 100% electricity being solar when the sun is shining. You'd still have the time the sun is not shining, which would likely be more expensive than before (a gas powered plant would only be running half the time - effectively doubling its capital/construction cost per kWh). So you'd definitely have an improvement on some levels but I'm not sure that would really he…
Everyone seems a bit obsessed by batteries as a storage method, when we have more traditional methods: - Pumped-storage hydroelectricity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit... . Sure it's not suitable everywhere. - There's always Molten Salt as well - http://www.solarreserve.com/en/technology/molten-salt-energy... . Also, solar isn't the be all and end all of renewable energy generation. Wi…
1) You can move them around, as in an electric car. That's useful if you want to do mobile stuff like driving. Or if you just flat-out want to move the facility somewhere it will be more useful.
2) They can be efficiently decentralized, which benefits reliability, and decreases transmission loss.
But anyway, the solution is to use any and all technologies, right? Batteries make sense some places, gravity storage elsewhere.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Suppose solar panels were priced such that, after accounting for installation costs and subsidies and everything else, solar was much cheaper than grid power and paid off quickly. Then pretty much everyone would want one, and the manufacturer would have a huge backorder. So the manufacturers wouldn't do that; instead, they'd price the panels a little higher, sell everything they could produce but not have the backo…
Manufacturers will sell as expensive as they can get away with. Of course, there's decent competition in this market to counteract that. jimrandomh's scheme would require a significant amount of collusion between all major producers.
There's another large effect that is left out of this story. As solar gets cheaper, and as we get more of it, it reduces the marginal pressure on fossil fuel production. That, in turn, makes fossil fuels cheaper and forces solar to get cheaper still to compete.
Solar doesn't much compete with petroleum. Its main effect is to reduce prices for coal. You'd expect that this might start to affect the profitability of coal companies eventualy.... For solar to affect petroleum , whose primary use is transport , we'll need to solve the storage problem. Tesla notwithstanding that has not happened. Electric vehicle sales were 0.66% of unit auto sales in 2015, and actually represente…
Can you site this source please? I am very curious to see the data! thanks
I think the issue is that OK, say we managed to get to 100% electricity being solar when the sun is shining. You'd still have the time the sun is not shining, which would likely be more expensive than before (a gas powered plant would only be running half the time - effectively doubling its capital/construction cost per kWh). So you'd definitely have an improvement on some levels but I'm not sure that would really he…
Everyone seems a bit obsessed by batteries as a storage method, when we have more traditional methods: - Pumped-storage hydroelectricity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit... . Sure it's not suitable everywhere. - There's always Molten Salt as well - http://www.solarreserve.com/en/technology/molten-salt-energy... . Also, solar isn't the be all and end all of renewable energy generation. Wi…
Her Ted Talk[1] and their website[2] explains it much better than I do.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZiaTV6uvFQ [2] http://www.lightsail.com/
Can I trust a report that does not even have the units right?! Price should be proportional to energy (i.e., Joules or Watt-seconds) not power (Watts).