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Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

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Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#101

Post by bluGill »

wcoenen wrote: post #56
pydry wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices It seems like an opportunity more than a crisis to me. There are tons of potential applications for "free" electricity. * Storage heating/cooling that's basically free * Manufacturing carbon neutral jet fuel * Cheaper aluminium production It could also lead to onshoring of certain industries which previously moved to locales with access to cheap…

It might work, but it's not necessarily going to be very profitable. The equipment that sits around waiting for low or negative electricity prices represents locked up capital, and ongoing maintenance and depreciation costs. For the same reason, it's not a good idea to have bitcoin mining equipment sitting around waiting for cheap electricity. The hardware becomes obsolete very quickly, so there's only limited time t…

That depends on how often you can use the equipment. The company I work with pours cast iron in one factory - if you get a job there you work the overnight shift because that is when power is cheap. Since energy is the main cost of melting iron (it takes a lot of energy to get to get over 1100c) we are willing to let the equipment be idle and pay the workers extra to work a shift that doesn't work with the rest of the world.

Planned maintenance in that factory is worked with the power company. I'm not sure if that means they are also doing maintenance on some power plant, or if that means during Christmas lights season.

If you can predict high wind times a week in advance I'll work my energy hungry production around your cheap energy prices. The only thing I need is some sort of guarantee that those times will happen "often enough". I can pay employees to work 60 hour weeks some months, and other months get paid vacation, so long as over a full year I get reasonable use of my factory and there is some prediction.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#102

Post by [deleted] »

missedthecue wrote: post #68
Glench wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, great point. I like this report showing that rapidly decarbonizing will create 25 million jobs, save the average American household $2000 per year, and improve the quality of life of everyone: "How to create 25 million jobs by decarbonizing the economy" - https://www.fastcompany.com/90533448/how-to-create-25-millio...

That is like saying we can create 25 million jobs by starting a land war in Asia. I mean they directly compared it to WWII mobilization in the article.

[deleted]

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#103

Post by bluefirebrand »

kalleboo wrote: post #81
eldaisfish wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of Tesla's batter in south Australia? It was recently expanded to 193 MWh. Care to guess how long it'll run at full power? Around 60-100 minutes. At its rated power of 100 MW, it can power around 25% of South Australia's lowest demand. That's it. At peak demand, the fraction is lower still. Cars have a fraction of the energy storage capacity of a single battery site and not all cars are connected to th…

25% of lowest demand sounds amazing! I'm mostly a pessimist about renewables due to the storage issue so I would have guessed more like 2-5%. Assuming lowest demand is at night, that means that building just 3 more batteries you could power the whole state for an hour at night?

Agree, I'm missing some context to see why your parent post thought this was good enough. I suspect that "Lowest Demand" is being thought of in two different ways.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#104

Post by batpangolin »

lizknope wrote: post #71
jariel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Canada has a massive Oil sector, Scotland doesn't so much - and with a tinge of hypocrisy they want a bigger share of the revenue proceeds from North Sea Oil. Canada's economic influence in the world is fairly strongly tied to Oil to the point where over the last 30 years it's correlated with the buying power of the dollar, and certainly the economic veracity of most Alberta. It also fundamentally alters the…

I thought Scotland DID have a large oil sector. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Scotland%27s_oil You can argue whether it is Scotland's or the UK's but I live in the US and it is up to Scotland and the UK to sort out independence and their place in the EU.

Yes, in fact the 'jobs split' between Scotland and England is probably more in Scotland's favor than any putative split of the oilfields after Scottish independence would be.

There is a concentration of oil infrastructure in Scotland and oilfields which would be in English territorial waters are serviced from Scotland.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#105

Post by bilekas »

adwn wrote: post #76
bilekas wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's not necessarily going to be very profitable. Not paying for electricity is profitable by default.. Having a reserve for the long term that's environmentally friendly, its a benefit.. Investing in infrastructure that doesn't depend on finite fossil fuels is profitable.. So I have no idea what you're talking about. > For the same reason, it's not a good idea to have bitcoin mining equipment sitting around wa…

> So I have no idea what you're talking about. Then you should also read the sentence directly after the one you quoted, in which it's explained: > > The equipment that sits around waiting for low or negative electricity prices represents locked up capital, and ongoing maintenance and depreciation costs.

> The equipment that sits around waiting for low or negative electricity prices represents locked up capital, and ongoing maintenance and depreciation costs

But the costs over time are negligible when current alternatives will eventually only go up due to scarcity. I might be missing something.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#107

Post by ThomPete »

batpangolin wrote: post #84
Toutouxc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not solving the problem. There are lots of applications for "free" electricity, but there aren't many applications for unpredictable and unstable bursts of free electricity.

But these applications will appear.

so will fusion. Much better to spend resources building high density energy like fusion than these Rube Goldberg machines.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#108

Post by galangalalgol »

tda wrote: post #73
pydry wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There hasn't been nearly enough done on demand shaping. Rather than wondering how we can store all the excess capacity it's probably more cost effective to wonder how we can shift demand. Aluminum smelters in Germany use gargantuan amounts of electricity, for instance, but they can use 3x as much on Friday when power is cheap than Monday when it's not with relative ease. Using a powerwall to keep production steady wo…

I completely agree. This is a bit of a process though, look at how Texans with variable rates responded to extremely high (90 times normal rate) prices: some just said f*ck it and managed to use 10-20K USD electricity in a few days.

For those that still had power, I don't think they were thinking about the price, they were busy trying to make sure their pipes didn't freeze or to find clean drinking water if they already had. And inviting neighbors over that didnt have water or power and maybe had flooding with burst pipes and icicles on the ceiling. A couple blocks from me there were people building trash can fires with people huddled around them and further off in the neighborhood someone froze trying to sleep in their car instead of driving on the frozen roads. I can see skyscrapers from my front lawn, its not like its rural, we just weren't prepared. Lifesaving resources like shelter, heat, water, or medicine for that matter don't play nicely with the free market. Infinite demand...

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#109

Post by JamesBarney »

londons_explore wrote: post #51
pydry wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices It seems like an opportunity more than a crisis to me. There are tons of potential applications for "free" electricity. * Storage heating/cooling that's basically free * Manufacturing carbon neutral jet fuel * Cheaper aluminium production It could also lead to onshoring of certain industries which previously moved to locales with access to cheap…

Sadly these 'negative' prices aren't available to regular people. Only a select few who can trade on the spot market can use them. If regular people could get paid to switch on space heaters, the negative prices would soon go away.

Here in Texas a lot of people could get access to spot prices and it didn't work out as well as they'd hoped.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#110

Post by batpangolin »

ThomPete wrote: post #107
batpangolin wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But these applications will appear.

so will fusion. Much better to spend resources building high density energy like fusion than these Rube Goldberg machines.

Are you suggesting that fusion is a close-to-viable technology which has been held back because it hasn't had enough research resources spent on it?
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