Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by ccozan » Mon, Jun 26, 2017, 6:22 AM UTC

alex8022 wrote: post #188

london888 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK Readers may find this page interesting giving info on our energy sources. I didn't realise we use less energy now than we did in 1998. http://visual.ons.gov.uk/uk-energy-how-much-what-type-and-wh...

Another interesting site shows current uk grid demand and generation from different types of power: http://gridwatch.co.uk

Also interesting to watch the Romanian grid live:

http://www.transelectrica.ro/widget/web/tel/sen-harta/-/hart...

hmm, wind is quite slow today, normally blows about 1.5gw. biomass is a nice surprise.

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

#192

Post by jabl » Mon, Jun 26, 2017, 6:43 AM UTC

tajen wrote: post #190

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.

> 1 megaton equivalent For those interested, Hiroshima was ~20Kt. Modern nuclear bombs are ~20Mt, with the biggest at 100Mt. I'm more worried about the glasshouse effect of so much LNG.

> Modern nuclear bombs are ~20Mt, with the biggest at 100Mt.

IIRC US (and other Western ones as well I guess) ICBM warheads are about 300Kt, Russian ones about 1Mt.

The Russian did test a 50Mt device (Tsar Bomba) during the cold war (technically, there's apparently no upper limit how big you can make them), but such large devices are not really militarily useful to the point of justifying their bulk/weight/expense.

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

#193

Post by jabl » Mon, Jun 26, 2017, 6:45 AM UTC

petre wrote: post #185

ndonnellan wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the holy grails of solar is syngas: using solar thermal power to convert CO2/water to a mix of hydrogen and methane. If you can do it efficiently enough, the gas is the energy storage and you can either pipe it or use it to fuel a NG turbine/combined-cycle plant which will be more thermodynamically efficient than a simpler solar->steam cycle plant. The reason it's a holy grail is because there are some major m…

Syngas can be easily converted to DME (dimethyl ether), which is a cleaner diesel replacement. It's stored just like LNG, in pressurized containers at 0.5 MPa - typical roadbike tyre pressure.

> Syngas can be easily converted to DME (dimethyl ether), which is a cleaner diesel replacement. It's stored just like LNG, in pressurized containers at 0.5 MPa - typical roadbike tyre pressure.

Presumably you meant LPG. LNG is another thing entirely..

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

#194

Post by ZeroGravitas » Mon, Jun 26, 2017, 6:50 AM UTC

dilemma wrote: post #153

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bottleneck is the grid. The Grid has to match the production and demand, and at times that is why CA gives away electricity to AZ and pay for AZ for consuming its electricity. In turn, AZ turns off some of its production. This is more likely due to subsidies. The government wants more solar so it pays the producer to make it. They can sell it for any price down to the negative of that subsidy (i.e. pass on 99%…

Input and output need to be matched regardless of any subsidies that may exist.

You missed the part where I said solar and wind can simply turn themselves off ("curtailment") in order to balance the grid if demand is too low.

People get a bit excited about negative prices, as if it heralds the end of sanity. But it's usually a very sensible, market-driven response to either subsidies (which to be clear, think are a good thing) or to inflexible coal generation which would rather pay money than throttle down for short periods.

There's also this idea that it'll destroy the grid by overproducing. When really the worst that'll happen is something like the infamous duck curve, where gas plants can't ramp up as far and as fast as needed. The shocking solution? Just turn them on early so they've got time to ramp and curtail the solar being produced at that time.

Since a bit of extra curtailment in Spring is such a boring solution I have to wonder at the motives of the people who report on the Duck Curve as a looming threat to the grid.

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

#195

Post by tpallarino » Mon, Jun 26, 2017, 6:53 AM UTC

leephillips wrote: post #17

davidf18 wrote: post #10

I wonder what the economics would be without the federal tax incentives for wind and solar. Does anyone know? EDIT: Someone above provided a link that provides the figure I was looking for: "Between 2010 and 2016, subsidies for solar were between 10¢ and 88¢ per kWh and subsidies for wind were between 1.3¢ and 5.7¢ per kWh. Subsidies for coal, natural gas and nuclear are all between 0.05¢ and 0.2¢ per kWh over all ye…

It's a complex question. In trying to answer it, one should keep in mind that the tax incentives for fossil fuel production dwarf the $15 billion per year or so that supports renewable energy. In addition, fossil fuels impose an estimated $200 billion/yr in social costs (external costs), in the form of pollution, etc. And it would be hard to estimate how much of our defense spending should be attributed to the need t…

Don't forget the Iraq war.

Edit: Nvmd, you didn't

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

#196

Post by stevehb » Mon, Jun 26, 2017, 6:57 AM UTC

worlddeployer wrote: post #181

cat199 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a salt dome holding area, and not a tanker, to be fair.. but yes, it exploded. People in houston (~45m-1h drive away) felt the rumble and thought it was an earthquake..

From your original post: > Vapor cloud detonation has never been considered particularly likely, and never documented as far as I know This is an example of a vapor cloud detonation. I'm just pointing out that it's happened, so I'm not sure why you're saying it's never been documented. Unless you just meant in the context of a tanker, but that's not how you phrased it. As it happened, I lived in the area at the time…

Not the same person...

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

#197

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Jun 26, 2017, 7:02 AM UTC

slang800 wrote: post #160

jacquesm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Natural gas energy can be transported much more easily than solar or wind. Yes, but not easier than it is to transport electrons. And solar and wind energy can be converted into electrons and then transported across vast distances using existing infrastructure.

Transporting electrons is extremely difficult. Even with HVDC lines (usually more efficient than AC lines over long distances) you get around 3.5% loss per 1000km. If you tried to run a submarine cable the distance that LNG tankers travel, you'd end up losing a quarter to a half of your power just during transmission. Not to mention the cost of actually building & maintaining that infrastructure.

Transporting any kind of energy across long distances is tied to losses. LNG tankers will lose a few percent per voyage (~3-5 %), which is better than an electrical transmission line on the same distance, however it is still LNG and not yet electricity. You then have to factor in the conversion losses at a gas fired electrical plant.

The plant, the ship, the terminal and the rest of the infrastructure aren't free either.

The good thing about LNG is that it can be converted into electricity, the reverse is rather harder :)

Nobody is trying to run submarine cables across such distances because there is absolutely no reason to do so, all you'd do is hook up nearby power grids using much shorter runs of cable.

So nobody in Romania or Greece is consuming power generated in Norway or Sweden directly but the effect of adding renewable power to the grid in say Norway will usually offset a little bit of fossil fuel generated power elsewhere in the grid.

Electrons are very friendly in that sense. They also don't explode.

https://thetyee.ca/News/2017/04/28/How-Safe-is-LNG/

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

#198

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jun 26, 2017, 7:03 AM UTC

tajen wrote: post #190

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.

> 1 megaton equivalent For those interested, Hiroshima was ~20Kt. Modern nuclear bombs are ~20Mt, with the biggest at 100Mt. I'm more worried about the glasshouse effect of so much LNG.

> Modern nuclear bombs are ~20Mt, with the biggest at 100Mt.

IIRC, the biggest the US ever deployed operationally was 9Mt, and those have since been retired. The common strategic warheads now deployed are, IIRC, 100-350kt range.

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

#199

Post by GoToRO » Mon, Jun 26, 2017, 7:10 AM UTC

notadoc wrote: post #127

I'm sure the politicians will solve that problem.

Yep. I've seen some documentary where they said that in a very sunny region of Spain it was too expensive to put solar panels on your own roof due to taxes. The large companies made sure it was not feasible for home owners to do so.

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

#200

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Jun 26, 2017, 7:24 AM UTC

saryant wrote: post #149

jacquesm wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure, but they are much less dependent on those factors than fossil fuels.