Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 419 posts

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#361

Post by barking »

fuzzbuzz wrote: post #310
undreren wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but theptip writes below that heating water in residential and commercial settings might be better. When I worked at Ørsted, we did this all the time . We had a huge electric kettle, which we used to produce district heating water. But there are many more things you can do with surplus energy. You can make methane gas from pure CO2 and hydrogen when you apply electric power as a catalyst. The methane can then be ea…

A banal long term way of storing energy is to pump water up to some high ground. Whenever you need it, use a turbine to get the energy back.

The train goes up, the train goes down: a simple new way to store energy https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11524958/energy-storage-rail

This sounds good to me and it claims have 86% efficiency.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#362

Post by thinkcontext »

dwd wrote: post #295
thinkcontext wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wait for power prices to be negative (or merely lower than usual) you are not getting an economic return on the money you put into the desalination plant when it is not running. Think about it, if you get a 100M Euros loan to make a desalination plant, how long will it take to pay that off if you only run your plant a few hours per day vs 24 hours per day. Whether it makes economic sense depends on the differe…

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-08/hydrogen-fuel-breakthr... Ammonia would be preferrable as it is carbon-free and readily liquified.

There's plenty of demand for hydrogen as hydrogen. And one of the things the Germans are doing is mixing hydrogen into the natural gas supply. That's pretty cheap to do compared to having to spend energy on chemical alchemy to turn the hydrogen into something else. Another option is to turn it into natural gas, plenty of existing infrastructure for handling that as well. So, ammonia is interesting but by no means a slam dunk.

And whether it makes sense to ship it internationally is an open question given the differing economics of green hydrogen vs sticking a hole in the ground and having fossil fuels come out. Here's what I said in the other thread:

"The comparative advantage nations have over each other in energy in a post-fossil fuel world will be much reduced. That is, Saudi Arabia has a huge advantage over Japan in terms of cheap fossil fuel energy, so Japan imports a lot from them. Though Saudi Arabia likely has an advantage over Japan in renewable resources, its not as dramatic as their fossil fuel advantage, so Japan would invest in their own energy resources and import less of them.

Because of this there will likely be much less international energy traded in general."

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#363

Post by Kliment »

bogomipz wrote: post #328
Kliment wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The coal terrorists are able to demand subsidies not because of their poor workers (they are in fact laying off lots and lots of workers as a side effect of mergers, and their total employment is just several thousand people) but because a lot of local government is funded by coal company shares held by cities. This is why coal is still a thing.

>"a lot of local government is funded by coal company shares held by cities." Do you have a citation for this? What are examples of the many local governments that are funded by coal company shares? How do you fund a local government by buying shares in a coal company? Coal is "still a thing" because it is incredibly abundant and despite being horrible for the environment, burning it is a thermally efficient means of…

Over here, in Germany, specifically NRW, it's quite literally true - a bunch of local councils hold a lot of RWE (local coal company) shares and fund local services from dividents. They were very upset a couple years back when RWE decided not to pay out dividents. Here's a news article from back then (in German) https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/energie/article152907251/Waru...

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#364

Post by Kliment »

petre wrote: post #298
Kliment wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is somewhat misleading - there is a Europe-wide energy grid, Germany has many neighbors, and a lot of power has been flowing across borders even before this project started. It doesn't make sense to look at Germany in isolation. While I agree that the German approach is misguided (should have shut down coal first, not nuclear) I don't think it's as problematic as you make it seem - the spikes in wind average out…

Peaker gas plants running on gas imported from whom, Russia? At least Germany has the biggest gas sorage capacity in Europe. https://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_europes_vulnerability... A possibly better strategy would be to produce DME using excess capacity and convert diesel vehicle engines to DME. Then export both the cars, the fuel and the tech to produce the fuel locally. Maybe even use it as input for peaker…

Germany already uses large amounts of gas, mainly for heating, hot water, and cooking. It's not like using coal for electricity changes the fact that Germany depends on gas imports.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#365

Post by howard941 »

yayana wrote: post #98
DoctorOetker wrote: post #22

I don't truly understand this "problem". I understand storing the energy in batteries is currently very expensive economically and materially. However I believe there are plenty of "goods" (irrespective of if they are bulk materials, or partially processed products) which have a high processing energy per volume ratio (this does not need to be recoverable stored energy). Allow me to give an example: currently we have…

I think Pumped Hydroelectric Storage is what you are looking for. I've seen a few of them here in Switzerland. I think many were originally built out with the train system's grid for it's reliably scheduled low and high capacity times. http://energystorage.org/energy-storage/technologies/pumped-...

A few alternative storage mechanisms:

- Splitting water into the fuels for fuel cells

- Converting in-ground swimming pool to neighborhood-scale battery

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#366

Post by r-bryan »

tyu100 wrote: post #346
xigma wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically this is a problem because a bunch of existing incumbents are probably going to go bankrupt, or at least have to write down a lot of capital equipment and invest in new technologies. That's not how it works. In Germany, the government subsidizes farmers to put up Windfarms, then forces the electric companies to buy the electricity at an inflated price, which those companies charge their customers for. As a…

Same in Ontario, Canada. They heavily subsidized green energy sources and then laid the debt on the publicly owned power utility which passed on the cost to ratepayers, leading to the highest power rates in North America and a utility that is still heavily dependent on legacy nuclear and hydro to provide grid stability.

Boston (also in North America) paid 21.9 cents/kWh in June. As I type this, Ontario residents are paying on-peak 13.2 cents/kWh.

https://www.oeb.ca/rates-and-your-bill/electricity-rates

https://www.bls.gov/regions/new-england/news-release/average...

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#367

Post by plufz »

fuzzbuzz wrote: post #310
undreren wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but theptip writes below that heating water in residential and commercial settings might be better. When I worked at Ørsted, we did this all the time . We had a huge electric kettle, which we used to produce district heating water. But there are many more things you can do with surplus energy. You can make methane gas from pure CO2 and hydrogen when you apply electric power as a catalyst. The methane can then be ea…

A banal long term way of storing energy is to pump water up to some high ground. Whenever you need it, use a turbine to get the energy back.

One more example.

Bath County Pumped Storage Station in the US. Huge place.

https://www.dominionenergy.com/about-us/making-energy/renewa...

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#368

Post by tantalor »

logfromblammo wrote: post #151
tantalor wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes its called a grow light they cost about $7 at home depot. It doesn't matter what you grow; weeds will work.

A bioreactor full of algae is a bit more efficient. You can even pump CO2 exhaust from your power plant directly into it. Then you can sell the glop.

Now that's soylent.

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#369

Post by swalsh »

rwcarlsen wrote: post #37
maerF0x0 wrote: post #5

> It’s left the utilities complaining that they can’t earn the returns they expected for their investment in generation capacity. Good. That's a well functioning market economy. Those who make poor investment choices need to feel the sting of losses else the market fails to work correctly.

Low/negative prices (caused largely by various regulation/policies) have been putting a lot of economic pressure on existing nuclear power generation - sometimes causing it to close [1]. Generation that is largely replaced by natural gas plants. So maybe this very non-free-market state is actually not helping make forward progress on what many would consider to be one of the most important issues relating to energy -…

If negative externalities such as carbon were properly priced, the dynamics could possibly change (guessing, I'm not quite sure what a fair price on carbon would be, and what the difference in price between nuclear and natural gas is)

Re: Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid

#370

Post by kleiba »

matthewmcg wrote: post #148
DoctorOetker wrote: post #22

I don't truly understand this "problem". I understand storing the energy in batteries is currently very expensive economically and materially. However I believe there are plenty of "goods" (irrespective of if they are bulk materials, or partially processed products) which have a high processing energy per volume ratio (this does not need to be recoverable stored energy). Allow me to give an example: currently we have…

Interesting thought. In Richard Rhodes new book Energy , he describes how an early iron smelting works in England, faced with temporarily low demand due to a recession, rolled its excess iron into railroad tracks which could be re-used for other purposes once demand recovered: Richard Reynolds, who managed the Darbys’ Ketley ironworks, near Coalbrookdale, in the 1760s, introduced cast-iron plates and then cast-iron r…

Note the "Reynolds wanted to keep [...] his employees at work" part. This was at a time where being an employer was understood to come with a responsibility towards the people you employed. Well, at least today people have 40 hour work weeks with the weekends off.
Post reply on HN