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The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

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Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#71

Post by hebrox »

hairytrog wrote: post #69
Retric wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural gas costs more than solar power under 50% utilization. As in the fuel it’s self costs more than solar power plants that waste half of all power produced at current prices. This means a vast over abundance of supply is part of any rational minimal cost strategy. Storage costs are so high it further makes solar tracking arrays cost effective for mitigation of the duck curve. Also, hydro is a massive part of the…

since hydro is basically constant, any analysis can just subtract it from the total demand. the dynamic analysis can proceed without considering hydro.

Reading the description on Wikipedia, I would say it can be part of the dynamic analysis. "With a dam and reservoir it is also a flexible source of electricity, since the amount produced by the station can be varied up or down very rapidly (as little as a few seconds) to adapt to changing energy demands." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#72

Post by xyzzyz »

ip26 wrote: post #53
hairytrog wrote: post #21

Exciting. But here are some problems. - Unfortunately, they are averaging the entire US, which is made of several grids, so the bad days are not that bad in their analysis. To fix those bad days, you'd need hella more storage, hella more capacity. e.g. 3-4x the renewables capacity than the normal need. - Such a system has a very low resiliency because it depends on national grid. If Covid has taught us anything, it i…

Instead of dispatchability payments, why not demand response? Thermostats, electric cars, water heaters, dryers, smelters, and data centers can all turn on a dime if an incentive is there. Also, what's wrong with policy wonks?

Most data centers needs non-stop 24/7 reliability, and there are very few use cases where it makes sense and is even possible to delay your workload waiting for lower energy prices. Smelters have complicated processes, and they cannot really turn on a dime. Lastly, data centers and smelters are expensive capital investments, and typically the economic calculation requires them to be run non-stop to recoup the capital investment.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#73

Post by ouchjars »

WizardAustralis wrote: post #63
dmix wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently the battery plant Tesla built in Australia only powers 30k homes which is a tiny amount. They are working to 'double' the capacity, which I assume goes from 30k to 60k. It seems to be making net-positive amount of money and Tesla built it in record time but sourcing that much lithium to build it for millions of people across the country sounds like a tall order, not to mention the 2-5x costs/time any major…

The Tesla battery only powers about 30k homes for about and hour and a half. Dont get me wrong, it is an amazing piece of tech for stabalising the grid and reducing the dependence on the gas peaker plants but it is a very long way from mass storage for want is a fairly small Aussie state. SA still regularly pulls a lot of power from the Victoria grid which is still dependent a lot on dirty brown coal. Hopefully it is…

The battery plant capacity is growing in hand with decentralised battery storage, an interconnector to New South Wales which is building hydro storage capacity, and demand management. Apparently generation and transmission costs are falling nationwide too, but not to the extent that my bills are going down.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#74

Post by randombytes6869 »

manfredo wrote: post #64

A few things stick out to me: * This study assumes that we can ramp up purchases of solar and wind generation to match this graph: https://imgur.com/lMU252r while costs continue to decrease. That's not how markets work. Rapidly buy solar panels and the cost of solar panels go up. Put solar panels in all the places where it's easy to install and now you have to pay extra to put them in places where it's not so conveni…

That's far too optimistic about storage. For small off-grid systems, you need ~5 days of battery capacity to ride out lack of wind/sun. On a large scale you'll need less because you can move power from place to place.

But still. Sun is down half the day and wind speeds can be low in areas hundreds of miles wide. Its obvious they will need at least a day of battery capacity, probably more. Not hours.

Solar and wind are great. Many areas in the US have hours long periods during the day where power is 100% renewable. But batteries are way too expensive and I don't like when politicians make laws based on predictions 15+ years in the future.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#75

Post by nordsieck »

xyzzyz wrote: post #72
ip26 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of dispatchability payments, why not demand response? Thermostats, electric cars, water heaters, dryers, smelters, and data centers can all turn on a dime if an incentive is there. Also, what's wrong with policy wonks?

Most data centers needs non-stop 24/7 reliability, and there are very few use cases where it makes sense and is even possible to delay your workload waiting for lower energy prices. Smelters have complicated processes, and they cannot really turn on a dime. Lastly, data centers and smelters are expensive capital investments, and typically the economic calculation requires them to be run non-stop to recoup the capital…

> Most data centers needs non-stop 24/7 reliability, and there are very few use cases where it makes sense and is even possible to delay your workload waiting for lower energy prices.

Perhaps your parent was thinking of EC2 spot instances?

> Lastly, data centers and smelters are expensive capital investments, and typically the economic calculation requires them to be run non-stop to recoup the capital investment.

I suspect this is true for almost all commercial operations.

Residential electric car charging is the only thing I can think of that's

1. A relatively large draw

2. Relatively time insensitive

In general, people aren't going to delay their dinner or wash by a few hours to save a few cents in electricity fees. They might be ok with car charging being delayed as long as it's full when they leave in the morning.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#76

Post by godelski »

manfredo wrote: post #66
spenrose wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! You don't seem to like renewables much [1][2]. (You do post about the promise of nuclear energy, including fusion, which for whatever reason seems to be associated with skepticism about renewables [3].) Finally, you called our attention to the need to be skeptical about COVID-19's impacts in mid-April [4]. Cool, cool. "To fix those bad days, you'd need hella more storage, hella more capacity. e.g. 3-4x the renewa…

Nuclear energy, so far, is the only proven way of producing more than 3/4 of a nation's electricity from carbon free sources other than geographically limited options like hydroelectricity. It's a proven technology that has served as France's main electricity source for close to 4 decades. As compared to plans to turn our power grid into a Rube Goldberg machine and dealing with power outages when wind and solar outpu…

I don't really agree with this, even though I am an avid nuclear proponent.

I do think France has it right, but there's some other things to consider. France is phasing out some of its nuclear and does not plan on replacing it. No they aren't going to 0% or even 50%, but they are doing it and this is a good idea. They are replacing old plants with renewables where they can and replacing and building new plants where they can't. This is part of why France has been doing so well in terms of CO2eq production (one of the lowest in Europe, which is especially crazy considering it doesn't have the hydrodynamic opportunities that Sweden does, who also uses a fair amount of nuclear).

Remember that no matter what you do, you want a diversified portfolio for power generation. You don't want to rely on a single resource.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#77

Post by bildung »

hairytrog wrote: post #70
desdiv wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Headline says: "US can reach 90 percent clean electricity by 2035" and you gave your analysis. GP is asking how your analysis would change if we drop the target to "US reaching 80 percent clean electricity by 2035".

Short answer: anything above 20% is unproven and will cost significantly more if you expect to have 100% uptime/reliability. If you're okay with 95% uptime, wind/solar can get the job done, and I believe cheaper based on https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S25424... ____ The flaw with renewables is they are so dam cheap and so dam finicky. Basically, renewables force nukes and nat gas to sell power…

> One data point: Germany is 30% renewables and pays 50% higher than EU average.

The price of energy in Germany was already high before the switch to renewables, for reasons unrelated to renewables. The renewables surcharge only is 21% of the price per kWh: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1009248/household-power-...

Edit: I feel it's worth mentioning that the price per kWh only tells half the story. High energy prices also incentivize buying efficient appliances and having well-insulated houses: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Annual-household-electri...

As anecdata, our German household of five only pays about 80€/month for electricity (cooking with electricity, heating and warm water with gas).

Every serious plan of conversion of an economy towards renewables has reduced energy consumption through reduction of waste as a core element.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#78

Post by kelnos »

ethanwillis wrote: post #42
shubhamjain wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digging into someone's comment history to paint an agenda is a very reprehensible behavior. I was a Covid-19 skeptic as well, I changed my opinion when I saw that the overall death rate YoY - the excess deaths painted a very bleak picture. To think that someone would go down my comment, post, or tweeting history to comment on my bias makes me wonder if it's worth being on social media at all.

It's ironic a bit because if you dig into spenrose's comment history they're critical of nuclear.. and seem to mostly comment on articles like this one. I think this person has an agenda they want to push and they want to shout down anyone with ad-hominems who doesn't share their world view. Is this not against hacker news guidelines? Dang?

> It's ironic a bit because if you dig into spenrose's comment history they're critical of nuclear

Huh? spenrose's most recent comment about nuclear power starts with:

> I am rooting for lots and lots of new nuclear

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#79

Post by kelnos »

sigzero wrote: post #9

The questions are always "How much will it cost?" "Is it worth it?" "Do we have the political will to do it?"

My opinion is that it doesn't matter how much it costs; it is worth it at any cost, because continuing down the path of making our planet uninhabitable for humans is not a winning strategy.

However, I don't think we have the political will to do it, which is really the only thing that matters in the end.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#80

Post by noneeeed »

ip26 wrote: post #53
hairytrog wrote: post #21

Exciting. But here are some problems. - Unfortunately, they are averaging the entire US, which is made of several grids, so the bad days are not that bad in their analysis. To fix those bad days, you'd need hella more storage, hella more capacity. e.g. 3-4x the renewables capacity than the normal need. - Such a system has a very low resiliency because it depends on national grid. If Covid has taught us anything, it i…

Instead of dispatchability payments, why not demand response? Thermostats, electric cars, water heaters, dryers, smelters, and data centers can all turn on a dime if an incentive is there. Also, what's wrong with policy wonks?

People always nay-say demand management, but here in the UK the National Grid already does this. They have contracts with many large industrial companies who presumably get lower rates in return for being able to turn down their demand on request.
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