Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid • Hacker News Board

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#131

Post by AdamTReineke » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 8:30 PM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #126

ourmandave wrote: post #81

Meanwhile in Iowa, Mid American Energy is well on their way to 100% renewal by 2021 with an endless array of wind farms. Their final phase of the project started in 2018 with a $922M investment. Iowa Public Radio toured one of the windmills back in January. https://www.iowapublicradio.org/post/skyscrapers-fields-wind...

Do they have plans for energy storage?

Currently piloting. "Our pilot project 1-megawatt battery storage facility, announced in November 2018, is now operational in Knoxville, Iowa. It provides 4-megawatt-hours of storage capacity, or enough electricity to power nearly 900 average Iowa homes for up to four hours." https://www.midamericanenergy.com/battery-storage

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#132

Post by outworlder » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 8:31 PM UTC

mattferderer wrote: post #106

rmuesi wrote: post #84

I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out: a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise. But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on…

Solar farms are spreading & starting to take over a lot of quality farmland in the northern midwest because of the scale/price reasons you suggest.

Farmlands are already solar arrays. They are just making power rather than produce now.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#133

Post by kragen » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 8:31 PM UTC

codesushi42 wrote: post #78

astazangasta wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is not right. Most power generation is done by steam in the US (85%). Steam can get much hotter than boiling water, and it is cheap and makes no waste.

That doesn't have to do with temperature, it has to do with the efficiency of the engine. Gas burns at a much higher energy than steam, so it's much easier to extract more energy with less fuel, making for a smaller form factor. I should clarify I was talking about an engine here. Not a power generator. What I said is correct though. You can compensate for lower temperatures with a more efficient engine & energy conv…

Neither the “engine”/“power generator” distinction you are attempting to make, not the statement “gas burns at a higher energy than steam”, is physically meaningful. It is true that supercritical steam turbines operate at a lower temperature than gas turbines, and if the cold reservoir of the Carnot engines in question were at the same temperature, that would indeed make gas turbines potentially more efficient. But in fact gas turbine outlet temperatures are much higher. This is why adding a steam engine to the output of a gas turbine makes it more efficient. (This is called a “combined cycle power plant”.)

The actually relevant distinction is that gas turbines, like other internal combustion engines, have a much higher ramp rate than external-combustion engines like a steam turbine. This makes “peaker” gas turbines a crucial resource for establishing power grid stability.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#134

Post by temp-dude-87844 » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 8:32 PM UTC

rmuesi wrote: post #84

I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out: a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise. But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on…

Yes, it's highly likely the continued rise of utility-scale solar and lower retail electricity prices will impact the financial sensibility of home solar. Of couse, California recently mandated solar power on much of new home construction, so the state forced the issue and we're likely to see more legislative and legal efforts from its opponents to fight it, and from its supporters to try to remedy those impacts that defeat its point. Net metering is a widely-deployed incentive to encourage home solar, but is opposed by plenty of influential lobbies. Homes with solar have some unique benefits, like added resilience from grid fluctuations, but it remains to be seen what monetary value people will place on such features.

As with many things, the story of home solar will likely be one of early adopters duped by bad numbers and opportunistic businesses, of jurisdictions mandating the issue and running into all sorts of unintended consequences, and a tangled web of policies enacted to fudge the numbers until the observed costs to the affected people pencil out to a socially-acceptable level of hardship or benefit.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#135

Post by cosmodisk » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 8:33 PM UTC

asdkhadsj wrote: post #33

krferriter wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm renting a house in central NC and May-September our power bill skyrockets from AC. The windows are not insulated at all and we have a lot of them. Even the floors, walls, and ceilings leak heat like crazy, you can feel it just putting your hand close to the wall or ceiling. We run AC to get it down to 76F and it's still crazy expensive and using a lot of unnecessary power. We need to encourage insulation, es…

> The US needs to heavily encourage these sorts of improvements to buildings, it's good for everyone. Is it though? I imagine your landlord doesn't think it's good for them. It's not bad for them, but why would they spend hundreds or thousands of dollars improving your apartments insulation when it costs them nothing to keep the poor thermal in place. I too lived in rentals that had terrible thermal protection. It wa…

I live in London nowadays. When brosing rental properties,the first thing I check in photos is whether it has normal radiators ( gas heating). If I see electric ones, I move on to the next property.Also rent is much cheaper on these...

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#136

Post by jaredcwhite » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 8:33 PM UTC

darksaints wrote: post #46

I know someone who has gone fully off the grid via sailboat and is currently on his way around the world. He converted his sailboat to a hybrid setup (electric engines powered by the same batteries that power his stovetop, refrigerator, etc.). His power sources keeping those batteries charged are solar (1200W) and sail regeneration [0]. He has an 18kw diesel generator as a safety measure. His story is particularly in…

Cool story, thanks for sharing that.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#137

Post by Baeocystin » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

rmuesi wrote: post #84

I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out: a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise. But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on…

We're starting to see things shift away from simple panel installs on a home being as quite a good deal as they were. They still make economic sense, but the caveats are coming. When we got our system in 2015 (Bay Area, California), the full tax credit and rebate system was in effect, which wound up shaving more than a third of the cost off of the total system price. Then, we were able to get on a rate plan (PG&E E7) that paid us quite well for our overproduction.

A year later (2016), PG&E 'retired' the E7 plan, as it was too beneficial for home solar users. We're now on the E6, which is not as good, but still better than the straight TOU plans PG&E currently offers. Next year, even the grandfathered E6 plans are going to go away, and solar customers will be on a time-of-use plan that extends peak hours until well past dark, making it again more difficult to recover solar's cost as a homeowner.

This will be able to be offset to some degree by systems like Tesla's PowerWall (I don't have one yet, will consider it in the coming years) but it's definitely a game where the utilities have a love/hate relationship with people who own their own systems.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#138

Post by dv_dt » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #113

dv_dt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Peak solar power output and peak air conditioning load line up pretty well, so that doesn't need storage. In general, yes, but if you look for a term called the duck curve which characterizes that frequently the load comes up after peak output, or even after sunset. For coastal CA wind often helps fill that offset as winds frequently come up near sunset, but it's not always a guaranteed thing. So there does need to…

I can't tell if the duck curve thing is intentionally misleading, but people all seem to jump to the wrong conclusion. The demand isn't greater in the evening, the relative demand, after you subtract all the energy provided by solar, is in the evening, during periods of the year when demand is low but solar supply is high. It's like someone cured cancer and then someone came up with the llama curve, showing that some…

Perhaps a better statement would be that the duck curve represents unmet need in the evening once solar is in the mix. Without storage, you can add more solar, but into the evening that can only help so much without also adding some amount of storage to offset that available power into a time it is still needed.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#139

Post by darksaints » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

nexuist wrote: post #101

darksaints wrote: post #46

I know someone who has gone fully off the grid via sailboat and is currently on his way around the world. He converted his sailboat to a hybrid setup (electric engines powered by the same batteries that power his stovetop, refrigerator, etc.). His power sources keeping those batteries charged are solar (1200W) and sail regeneration [0]. He has an 18kw diesel generator as a safety measure. His story is particularly in…

>At this point, I feel like the only reason fossil fuels are used anymore in new projects is inertia Solar might work for boats and trains, but can it work for a plane? What about drones? No renewable energy source can beat gasoline, sans nuclear power (which I think we should be transitioning to, along with the rest of the renewables). MIT built a gas powered drone that lasts 5 days (not minutes!) in the air[1] - th…

You're right...I've got an availability bias that has limited my thinking. Any application where energy density is paramount will be dominated by fossil fuels for quite a while.

I'm curious to see what comes first: batteries that match the energy density of fossil fuels, or cost effective synthetic fuels created via renewable methods.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#140

Post by kragen » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

nexuist wrote: post #101

darksaints wrote: post #46

I know someone who has gone fully off the grid via sailboat and is currently on his way around the world. He converted his sailboat to a hybrid setup (electric engines powered by the same batteries that power his stovetop, refrigerator, etc.). His power sources keeping those batteries charged are solar (1200W) and sail regeneration [0]. He has an 18kw diesel generator as a safety measure. His story is particularly in…

>At this point, I feel like the only reason fossil fuels are used anymore in new projects is inertia Solar might work for boats and trains, but can it work for a plane? What about drones? No renewable energy source can beat gasoline, sans nuclear power (which I think we should be transitioning to, along with the rest of the renewables). MIT built a gas powered drone that lasts 5 days (not minutes!) in the air[1] - th…

If the incremental cost of renewable energy drops much more, the cheapest way to make gasoline will be using renewable energy to reduce CO2 with steam at the output of a not-yet-decommissioned coal plant.