41–50 of 204 posts
Ironically gas and solar / wind sometimes go together with gas filling gaps in generation on a more flexible basis. Interesting to read here that gas will be "crushed". That will need some huge battery capacity - not saying its not possible but...
Coal though - if article was coal is going to be crushed - sure.
Some time, in not so distant future, we will have abundant, almost infinite, almost free, renewable energy. We will forget what an energy bill is, because administration overhead will be higher than the price of the energy itself. It will just be an inconspicuous tiny item on the city taxes. And we won't think it's amazing. We'll take it for granted. It will become new normal. Just like now we don't remember any more…
Some time, in not so distant future, we will have abundant, almost infinite, almost free, renewable energy. We will forget what an energy bill is, because administration overhead will be higher than the price of the energy itself. It will just be an inconspicuous tiny item on the city taxes. And we won't think it's amazing. We'll take it for granted. It will become new normal. Just like now we don't remember any more…
As you surely know, that's been said before, mostly about nuclear fusion and fission breeder reactors, both of which have inexhaustible resources. What's different this time? There's still absolutely massive amounts of major equipment needed in a wind/solar dominated energy system.
Some time, in not so distant future, we will have abundant, almost infinite, almost free, renewable energy. We will forget what an energy bill is, because administration overhead will be higher than the price of the energy itself. It will just be an inconspicuous tiny item on the city taxes. And we won't think it's amazing. We'll take it for granted. It will become new normal. Just like now we don't remember any more…
Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar and big batteries . Without some form of storage, peaking power plants are required to support wind and solar, and these are typically gas-fired.
This assumes that we keep supply and demand pricing models mismatched. The current "fixed price 24/7" model is not set in stone. AC/heating, EV charging, many industrial processes can shift demand and make good forecasts about how flexible their demand is vs average intra-day variation in electricity prices.
If it is a low-wind evening and prices on the grid are higher than normal what fraction of people are going leave their electric cars with depleted batteries instead of charging them? Say a charge takes say 8 hours, there isn't a lot of room overnight to shift the load around. How many people will refrain from charging because it is going to cost you $50 instead of $10? I think the answer to that can be seen from how much people refrain from driving when fuel costs go up. Given that traffic never gets better I would say none!
1) electricity is cheap. it will have to get a lot more expensive for anyone to care enough to change the way they are using it 2) a lot of the demand is inflexible, regardless of price. lights are going to be on, dinner is going to be made when kids are hungry, car is going to be charged overnight because must go to work tomorrow.
there is going to come a point where all wind and solar must have a certain amount of firm capacity - say it has to be able to deliver 50% of nameplate rating for 5 days straight - and this is going to significantly add to the $/MWH cost of renewables. Then after 5 cloudy days in a row (unthinkable!) the output of the solar farm is 10% of nameplate until it is sunny again.
Some time, in not so distant future, we will have abundant, almost infinite, almost free, renewable energy. We will forget what an energy bill is, because administration overhead will be higher than the price of the energy itself. It will just be an inconspicuous tiny item on the city taxes. And we won't think it's amazing. We'll take it for granted. It will become new normal. Just like now we don't remember any more…
Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar and big batteries . Without some form of storage, peaking power plants are required to support wind and solar, and these are typically gas-fired.
As heavy industry has declined in the West though, we have less of that than we used to.
This was the idea of "smart grids", which we seem to hear rather less about than a few years ago now.
Some time, in not so distant future, we will have abundant, almost infinite, almost free, renewable energy. We will forget what an energy bill is, because administration overhead will be higher than the price of the energy itself. It will just be an inconspicuous tiny item on the city taxes. And we won't think it's amazing. We'll take it for granted. It will become new normal. Just like now we don't remember any more…
Some time, in not so distant future, we will have abundant, almost infinite, almost free, renewable energy. We will forget what an energy bill is, because administration overhead will be higher than the price of the energy itself. It will just be an inconspicuous tiny item on the city taxes. And we won't think it's amazing. We'll take it for granted. It will become new normal. Just like now we don't remember any more…