Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by batpangolin » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

eldaisfish wrote: post #141

batpangolin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the problem with this number. Scotland (seen as a separate energy economy) sometimes exports energy to England and Wales, sometimes imports it. Scotland's production of renewable energy, considered in total MWh, represents 97% of its consumption of all electrical energy. Clearly, in dollar value, the number is smaller since they usually export at times of low prices and import at times of higher prices. T…

Electrical energy is always in balance. Saying that 97% of Scotland's electrical energy needs were met by renewables is highly misleading because it ignores the most important piece of context - time. Scotland could have generated 300% of daily energy demand from wind one some days. And zero on others. The reality is that one cannot be subtracted from the other to claim that net consumption is zero precisely because…

The claim that 'one can be subtracted from the other' is a straw man. The words 'Equivalent of 97%' are right there in the headline.

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

#252

Post by jonplackett » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #138

jonplackett wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a joke about the UK not getting a good brexit deal and instead trying to get a deal like Canada, and therefore not being able to sell its excess electricity to somewhere closer, like the EU.

Exactly. The "super canada" concept. Anyone who thinks Canada is in any way comparable to Europe as a UK trading partner doesn't know much about geography. Maybe if Britain hadn't had a hissy fit they could now be selling that extra power across the channel.

At least we ended up with Canada - some were trying for an 'Australia' deal.

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

#253

Post by ben_w » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 8:28 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #247

ben_w wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PV alone made 3% of global electricity in 2019. Wind was 5.3% of global electricity demand in the same year. PV has been growing at close to ~37% per year (compound) since 1992, and at current rates will be making almost all electricity by 2025 and all power (i.e. enough to electrify transport, heat, etc.) by 2030. And given wind and solar are currently the two cheapest form of power, it is very plausible the growth…

Electricity is less than 20% of the world energy consumption. I find it fascinating that a tech focused forum like HN is so intent on taking an inferior solutions like wind and solar which literally can't provide enough heat for the majority of needs we have, can't scale, requires insane amounts of land, requires complex daisy chains of different solutions to work, isn't reliable, requires absurd amounts of resources…

> Electricity is less than 20% of the world energy consumption.

I know. I made implicit reference to that with the 2025/2030 split.

> I find it fascinating that a tech focused forum like HN is so intent on taking an inferior solutions like wind and solar which…

Has it occurred to you that you might be… wrong? I mean, when I find myself disagreeing with a lot of smart people, I do ask myself that question. I could go thought all of your claims separately, but I’ve never found that to be successful at convincing anyone.

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

#254

Post by bluGill » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

rhodozelia wrote: post #249

Scoundreller wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you’re doing. All I really need is for my technology to work, and all-in that’s under 100w. Each light bulb is ~4-6w. Too many people think about the above two because it’s easier to see/feel/touch while it’s really thermal loads that are the bulk of household loads. If I have to go down to 15C or deal with 30C, delay my shower/dishwasher/clothes washer/dryer to save enough bucks when it could really…

How much would you have to save? For me it is thousands I can’t be bothered to delay kids bath times to save five bucks!

My parents in 1988 put their water heater on an overnight mode. Even with 4 kids taking baths we ran out of hot water twice that I remember (so about once every 5 years), and I can assure you as kid we weren't worried about conservation. 200 gallons (800 liters) of storage turns out to be plenty for all the baths people take in a day.

I know my parents got half price electric for water heating, but I don't know how much they actually saved.

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

#255

Post by prennert » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

swarnie_ wrote: post #92

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…

Bringing the inf. online will take time and needs government backing. I have my issues with this Tory decade but in this small area they've absolutely smashed it out the park.

> Energy policy in Scotland is a matter that has been specifically reserved to the UK parliament under the terms of the Scotland Act 1998 that created the devolved Scottish Parliament. However, since planning is a matter that has been devolved, the Scottish government has the ability to shape the direction of energy generation in Scotland by approving or refusing new projects.

> In 2004, the Enterprise Committee of the Scottish Parliament called for the development of a 'fully fledged' Scottish energy policy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_Scotland?wpro...

The 2003 Scottish parliament was Labour, later parliaments were SNP.

Is there a UK wide energy policy that pushed aggressively for renewables?

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

#256

Post by billbrown » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #172

ThomPete wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the powersource isn't reliable it's a problem. A problem that doesn't have any solutions in sight that are closer than something like fusion which would be the preferable solution rather than unreliables like wind and solar.

> "something like fusion which would be the preferable solution" The preferable solutions are ones that actually exist.

Reliable solar and wind power is similarly non-existent.

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

#257

Post by headmelted » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

goodcanadian wrote: post #229

headmelted wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nissan were looking into V2H for years but not sure what happened with it. I was registered for a pilot at one point with a third party but never got invited to participate and have since forgotten who the company is. EDIT: Looks like these can now be purchased and imported from China by end users: https://www.setec-power.com/product/vehicle-to-home-v2h-6kw/

We are involved in (so far as we know) the largest residential V2G trial in the world (certainly, the largest in the UK). Some links: https://www.indra.co.uk/v2v-grid-to-vehicle https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/vehicle-to-grid-char... https://www.cenex.co.uk/projects-case-studies/sciurus/

OVO Energy that’s the one! Sadly I appear not to be in the pilot area.

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

#258

Post by dan-robertson » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #193

dan-robertson wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the problem is that what people actually want is not exposure to volatility in the energy market so much as cheaper energy prices. And energy looks cheaper if you just get wholesale prices because you are not paying for the insurance against high prices that your energy provider is probably buying. It isn’t easy to convince people that they are picking up pennies in front of a steamroller, so I’m not sure I woul…

With smart enough appliances, we could smooth out that volatility. Shed the pool heater/cleaner, beer fridge and the hot water heater when things get incredibly expensive. Put the washer/dryer in slow-mo when prices are high. Ultra-chill the freezer and A/C when prices go low/negative. Turn on a resistive heater and shut off the gas heat when things are negative... Instead we want complicated too-big-to-fail grid sto…

So one difficulty is that the future price of electricity is hard to predict. There is a whole lot of money that goes into trying to make probabilistically accurate predictions about the future prices of things. If it were easy then there wouldn’t be such a large industry around solving these problems. Because it is hard to predict future prices, it is hard to know if prices have temporarily changed (ie if prices are high/low) or if prices are going to continue changing and will stay that way for a while (ie if prices are currently lower/higher than they soon will be).

For example, if you had a smart home that cut off heating in the recent Texas event when it saw prices rising (because it assumed prices would revert soon allowing for cheaper heating a little later) it would end up having to pay even more later when prices turned out to continue rising.

I don’t really think smart appliances are a sufficient solution for ordinary people because there is too much power usage that is fixed (or worse, correlated with high demand/low supply) and I don’t think consumers are actually signing up for the price volatility on their fixed usage.

It feels like you are suggesting that it’s ok to have everyone picking up pennies in front of steamrollers because they can speed up a bit if the steamroller gets too close or go and pick up more pennies if it is further away. But I say that this won’t be good enough if the steamroller starts going faster and they get too tired running away. It’s especially bad because many people merely thought they were picking up pennies and didn’t realise they were being chased by a steamroller. I feel like this analogy is pretty strained by now but the recent events in Texas showed a lot of people getting squashed without realising that they had been spending years running around in front of steamrollers.

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

#259

Post by belorn » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #186

belorn wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It not only misleading, it is intentionally mixing of fungeable and non-fungeable goods in order to turn something obvious dirty as being clean. If Scotland exports of wool exceeded the amount of imported cotton, then we can pretend that the cotton import never existed. Cotton and wool is pretty interchangeable as textile fibers. This then allow us to purchase cotton that is produce by child labor, because the cotton…

So the producer of the pollution gets off scot free? Or are you going to count the pollution twice?

I would rather count pollution twice than zero, but in the example of abusive labor, we definitively do count it twice. Companies should be called out if they buy products produced by forced labor camps, child labor, and conflict diamonds, and sweatshops. At the same time, the companies that actually do the forced labor or employ people under abusive conditions are very much also guilty.

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

#260

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #215

WalterBright wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from the top of my head Charging your electric car battery. BTW, heating/cooling my house is half my energy bill. Time shifting that could easily cut that by a third. All I need to make that work is variable rates. But with fixed 24/7 rates, nobody has any incentive to do that.

> heating/cooling my house is half my energy bill. Time shifting that could easily cut that by a third. All I need to make that work is variable rates. This isn't as simple as you make it sound. You can't just cool your house once when electricity is cheap and then have it stay cool all day. Keeping your house at a different temperature than outside is a constant, active process. There are industrial systems that "st…

> This isn't as simple as you make it sound.

It is. There is no single comfortable temperature, it's a range. The first step is when electricity is cheap, cool the house to the low end of the range.

The next step is to cool a tank of water. People already have a hot water tank, it doesn't seem like much of an engineering or cost challenge to have a cold water tank, and using that to cool air.

A further step is to increase the thermal mass of the house, which means it will take longer to heat up. Thermal mass can be simply adding a big pile of rocks in the basement and blowing air through it.