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Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

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Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#141

Post by ams6110 »

davidf18 wrote: post #113
maxerickson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My utility sent some LED bulbs in the mail. I expect it was attached to some government incentive (they probably get green credits for the difference in consumption). Lighting isn't that big though, ~10% of US electrical consumption, when you include commercial and street lighting. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=99&t=3 (It's a big chunk, just not a huge one. If you figure on a fair amount of it already bei…

Thanks for the link. Still, incandescents consume a lot of power, and LEDs little.

It's too bad that the light "quality" from incandescent bulbs is vastly better than either LED or CFL.

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#142

Post by philipkglass »

Koromix wrote: post #140
philipkglass wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15% capacity factor is reasonable for rooftop, but utility scale PV in the United States was at 27% last year: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph... Emissions are pretty obviously not going to peak by 2020, unless there's some sort of civilization-smashing catastrophe in the next few years. Large scale active carbon dioxide removal measures will be needed later, or natural processes will eve…

27% is better, though from a quick look it applies only to the US, and in Europe it looks closer to 15%. I need to take time tomorrow to find good sources on this. I'm not convinced by carbon storage, though I don't know enough about it to be sure. It is my understanding that it is either energy-hungry (so useless because we don't and likely won't have enough carbon-neutral energy surplus) or pretty slow (also useles…

Germany has the most PV installed of any European country. Utility scale PV facilities in Germany may reach only 10% capacity factor. But most of the world's present and future electricity demand centers are significantly closer to the equator than Germany is.

"Carbon storage" would normally refer to physically sequestering purified carbon dioxide or other carbon bearing compounds. I agree that storage of that type is not practical.

Enhanced silicate weathering is IMO the process with the best prospects for large scale atmospheric carbon dioxide removal. It is relatively slow but the thermodynamics are favorable and the kinetics are still orders of magnitude faster than waiting for unaided nature to restore the pre-industrial equilibrium. Enhanced weathering CDR just accelerates the kinetics of the natural chemical reaction that turns alkaline silicate rocks and CO2 into silica and alkaline carbonates. Doing it on a scale large enough to make a difference would be a gargantuan undertaking, of course, because the scale of the problem is also gargantuan.

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#143

Post by jacquesm »

saryant wrote: post #134
jacquesm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true but we don't need to, energy markets are large enough over the distances that we can ship those electrons. And 'damn hard' is not the same as impossible, there have been studies done on how to ship electricity from Africa to Europe. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-north-africa-... That's not quite Japan or Europe from the US but it would be intercontinental. The biggest hurdles are politica…

But we do need to ship energy across markets over long distances. There's nothing on the horizon that is going to end that need. Energy is still largely in the domain of geopolitics. Russia can turn off gas shipments to Europe. Qatar can be blockaded. Entire governments can veer towards collapse threatening supplies (Venezuela). Coalitions may decide to forcibly remove another nation's supplies from the market, as wa…

> But we do need to ship energy across markets over long distances.

In the case of that LNG tanker, yes. But for electricity the majority of it is consumed relatively close to where it is generated in the case of renewables and waste as the source. There is an obvious economic incentive to transport it across larger distances if and when feasible but for now there does not appear to be a huge need for this. For natural gas and coal fired plants the distance tends to be much larger, but this goes for any fossil fuel production / consumption setup.

To your other points: it is exactly this independence of geopolitical factors that make renewable energy so attractive.

If there ever is another war in Europe (this could easily happen) I suspect that it will be fought with fossil fuels rather than electricity as the dominant power source for prime movers so in that sense not much will change.

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#144

Post by zeckalpha »

djrogers wrote: post #91
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are multiple transmission line projects in progress in the US to drag wind energy to major load centers. Solar can be produced anywhere of course. Natgas exports may increase, but it appears everyone is getting off of fossil asap. You cannot compete against an energy source with no fuel cost.

> Solar can be produced anywhere of course. That’s not a very realistic view of the globe. There are plenty of populous places with only 8-9 hours of total sunlight during winter months, assuming a clear day. Growing up in Vancouver, it wasn’t uncommon to go a week without seeing sunlight...

However, Vancouver had over 16 hours of sunlight _today_, but Quito only had 12.

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#145

Post by zeckalpha »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #43
majewsky wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Solar can be produced anywhere of course. I take issue with "of course". It will be always be wildly more economic to produce solar power in places with a lot of sun. And without checking, my ballpark guess would be that you get at least 10 times more solar energy out of a panel in Texas than a panel in, say, Canada. Our eyes are just so good at adapting to different light levels that we don't notice the different…

It would also be pretty difficult to use solar in Murmansk, Russia, for about a quarter of the year (it's within the arctic circle, so the sun is below the horizon for most (or all near the solstice) of the day during the winter. And it can actually be less efficient if there's too much sun, solar panel efficiency decreases with temperature. Solar thermal also depends on temperature differential, so if the environmen…

During a separate quarter of the year, the sun is above the horizon for most of the day.

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#146

Post by justin66 »

cwal37 wrote: post #101
olegkikin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Europe is trying to reduce its dependence on the russian natural gas, so they are building LNG terminals all over. LNG tankers are freaking scary though, they are like mini-nukes, approaching 1 megaton equivalent.

For some reason people have this idea that LNG tankers are a big bomb waiting to go up, but that's not really true. Vapor cloud detonation has never been considered particularly likely, and never documented as far as I know. Mostly it seems the vapors that hit the right mix of oxygen and such would burn pretty rapidly, while the warmer gas began to rise. It would certainly be a large fire for a while, but shouldn't h…

I wonder how thoroughly the various failure scenarios have been modeled and reported on. Something merely of the magnitude of the East Ohio Gas Fire [1] in a crowded port or canal would be awful, and I'm pretty sure a supertanker carries a lot more gas.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_East_Ohio_Gas_explos...

The industry has every incentive to do a careful job with the safety features of these ships and the terminals they unload into, but the trouble with ships is that things sometimes run into them... sometimes really big things.

It's a pretty awesome way to carry around a lot of portable energy, though.

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#148

Post by adventured »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

It appears we're at the inflection point where even natural gas (in addition to coal) is getting pushed out of the generation mix. Good! About time. This may require paying natural gas generators for their ability to quickly throttle to back renewables, but only as a temporary measure until utility scale batteries fall in cost.

Coal is a third of the US energy mix. It'll take decades to bring that to zero at present energy consumption using both NG and renewables. NG will continue to expand by necessity. We're about to switch over to electric vehicles, which will add a huge amount of new electricity demand to the grid. There's no scenario where we support that shift in the next ~30 years on renewables alone. More likely, circa 2050, we're going to see 30-40% NG with 50-60% renewables (maybe 10% nuclear).

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#149

Post by saryant »

jacquesm wrote: post #143
saryant wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we do need to ship energy across markets over long distances. There's nothing on the horizon that is going to end that need. Energy is still largely in the domain of geopolitics. Russia can turn off gas shipments to Europe. Qatar can be blockaded. Entire governments can veer towards collapse threatening supplies (Venezuela). Coalitions may decide to forcibly remove another nation's supplies from the market, as wa…

> But we do need to ship energy across markets over long distances. In the case of that LNG tanker, yes. But for electricity the majority of it is consumed relatively close to where it is generated in the case of renewables and waste as the source. There is an obvious economic incentive to transport it across larger distances if and when feasible but for now there does not appear to be a huge need for this. For natur…

My point is that renewables aren't independent of geopolitical factors.

Re: Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

#150

Post by bigiain »

chongli wrote: post #136
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scary bit for LNG is a BLEVE (Boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion). Even non-flammable liquids undergoing a BLEVE can be incredibly destructive, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgdfgxLApL4 So it's nothing to do with vapor cloud detonation, that's pretty much irrelevant compared to the destruction of the rapid phase transition from liquid to gas.

I think a tanker ship is pretty safe from a BLEVE. Those explosions usually result from a tank being heated continuously by a very hot fire underneath it. I'm not sure where you would find one of those at sea unless the tanker wrecked on top of an erupting volcano.

And there's my entry for Bruce Schneier's next movie-plot threat contest...
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