Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030 • Hacker News Board

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#141

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 2:29 AM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #129

pfdietz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you all are engaging in the "nothing can be invented" argument. It's profoundly reactionary, and also hypocritical, because nuclear itself is dead without great improvement. Uranium quickly runs out if the world is powered by burner reactors and known uranium resources, so either massive seawater uranium extraction or breeding cycles would be needed. Batteries have the advantage of being explorable at a small sc…

> Yes, you all are engaging in the "nothing can be invented" argument. No, we're engaging in the "this has been resistant to being invented so far, so let's not bet everything on it showing up tomorrow" argument. > Uranium quickly runs out if the world is powered by burner reactors and known uranium resources You could quadruple the present rate of uranium use, representing in a major contribution to mankind's energy…

Not at all. The technology for hydrogen energy storage is (with the possible exception of cheap electrolysers) is off the shelf. It's not widely used not because it's not available, but because natural gas is cheaper to store and burn when there are no CO2 taxes. But the CO2 taxes will be raised enough to push natural gas out, if we're going to control global warming.

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#142

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 2:32 AM UTC

Manfredo_1 wrote: post #137

pfdietz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. Hydrogen storage is much more invented than seawater uranium extraction. All the components are close to off the shelf; it's just a matter of putting them together (and for the CO2 tax to be high enough to make it worthwhile). Seawater uranium extraction is at a much lower TRL (technology readiness level). This is an excellent example of your hypocritical double standards on this subject.

Name one hydrogen electric grid storage facility. Not prototypes, but actual commercial facilities connected to the grid. You insist that hydrogen is so technically ready, yet nobody is using it.

I will repeat the reply I gave elsewhere to this argument:

Dude. You are falling back to the "if it isn't already being done, it can't be done" argument. Please stop this foolishness.

Hydrogen is being stored in a few places. That the storage isn't larger isn't because of any technical obstacles, it's because there's no reason to store it now. In particular, when we can burn natural gas without CO2 charges, using the hydrogen for energy storage is pointless.

This doesn't mean hydrogen CAN'T be stored, it just means the market conditions for widespread adoption of an off-the-self technology aren't there yet.

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#143

Post by rhodozelia » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 2:33 AM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #57

turtlebits wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless battery prices drastically drop, 2 days of power is 60kwh (quoting earlier figure), even if batteries were $100/kwh, that's $6000 in batteries (or ~$9 if you're on grid) edit: bad math, had $60k

What makes you think they won't drop significantly? PV panel costs have dropped by dramtically due to efficiencies of scale, and batteries are only just seeing production begin to ramp up.

how long before I can buy a Tesla for 50% of what one costs now? If the batteries are going to get so cheap we should be seeing some great price drops in electric cars. If not ... why not? And that reason will probably apply to battery energy storage too.

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#144

Post by rhodozelia » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 2:35 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #87

polyomino wrote: post #73

What if instead of pulling carbon above ground, we inject oxygen underground, produce electricity and CO2 below ground and then leave the CO2 down there. Has anyone tried this?

This is more or less what post-combustion capture carbon-capture-and-storage plants do, with the minor detail that they do the actual combustion above ground instead of below ground. But the inputs and outputs are as you describe: oxygen from the air, fossil fuels from underground, CO₂ outputs injected back underground, heat outputs sent to somewhere unspecified, typically the air. CCS power stations are substantiall…

Economically uncompetitive compared to solar/wind 500% overbuilt? How many hours storage have to be added to the solar / wind to make a ccs gas plant competitive?

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#145

Post by Manfredo_1 » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 2:35 AM UTC

That "manipulation of hydrogen" mostly involves use in the the chemical industry. We don't use hydrogen to power gas turbines.

I'm not sure why you're trying to deny the existence of chemical facts: https://www.twi-global.com/technical-knowledge/faqs/what-is-....

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#146

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 2:35 AM UTC

rhodozelia wrote: post #135

pfdietz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would not use batteries for the "rare, but prolonged" storage use case. You'd want something with lower capital cost, even if it were much less efficient. For example: hydrogen burned in turbines.

Who pays for the shadow generation system that we keep perfectly maintained and ready to generate 100% of system demand on the 5 days stretch of cloudy windless days? This cost has to be added to the cost of building a 100% solar/wind system. Nobody is arguing the solar and wind power isn’t cheap, but the cost of power on those cloudy windless weeks is going to be real high to make having all that standby generation…

The cost will be there, but overall it looks like it will be cheaper than nuclear.

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#147

Post by Manfredo_1 » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 2:38 AM UTC

Hypx wrote: post #139

Manfredo_1 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, hydrogen rapidly corrodes any metals that it comes into contact with. If they are interchangeable, expect drastically smaller service intervals.

A claim which simply isn't true. Only certain alloys have a problem with hydrogen. We've been using hydrogen in industry for decades and most of this problem has been solved.

We've been using hydrogen in the chemical industry. We haven't been using hydrogen to drive combustion turbines very much, and even then it's in a mixture of natural gas.

Unfortunately, those alloys that experience embrittlement includes the ones used in steam turbines: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09215...

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#148

Post by flavius29663 » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 2:41 AM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #133

flavius29663 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

either way, the original point remains: solar and wind alone are not reliable enough.

Back up with turbines and an adequate hydrogen store and solar/wind are as reliable as you wish. (EDIT: we are in violent agreement?)

I think we have to agree on the meaning of some words first: "wind and solar alone" means wind and solar and nothing else.

You say backup with turbines....but of course, that's what I'm saying too. gas turbines are pretty cheap, small (relatively) and easy to fire. Gas storage is also a tried technology

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#149

Post by Manfredo_1 » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 2:48 AM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #142

Manfredo_1 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name one hydrogen electric grid storage facility. Not prototypes, but actual commercial facilities connected to the grid. You insist that hydrogen is so technically ready, yet nobody is using it.

I will repeat the reply I gave elsewhere to this argument: Dude. You are falling back to the "if it isn't already being done, it can't be done" argument. Please stop this foolishness. Hydrogen is being stored in a few places. That the storage isn't larger isn't because of any technical obstacles, it's because there's no reason to store it now. In particular, when we can burn natural gas without CO2 charges, using the…

You're falling back to the "if it works on paper it'll be guaranteed to work at scale, and work cheaply" argument. Please stop this foolishness.

It's not just a question of storage, you can just use a salt cavern for that.

It's also a question of electrolyzing water into hydrogen efficiently.

And converting it back into electricity efficently.

And building all of these systems cheaply.

And deploying all of these systems at massive scale.

We're still on the first phase of that. As per your other comment we still don't even have effective elctrolysers to do this cost-effectively [1].

Will hydrogen storage pan out? Maybe. But until then it's not a solution. It's a potential solution, like fusion, or algae in vats, and thermal storage, and all the other potential solutions being proposed. It's not a solution that has actually demonstrated viability.

!. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26599346

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#150

Post by flavius29663 » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 2:49 AM UTC

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #130

flavius29663 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

storage alone will almost never be enough. The electricity is just too important for the modern societies to leave it to chance. You will have events where there will be no wind or sun for weeks. In order to have that many batteries it would require monumental investments. And those batteries would sit unused for years. You need a diverse and distributed generation network, backed by gas burning plants.

I mean, gas definitely doesn't *need to* be involved. At that point you're better off with fission. For example, the US is connected north to south in 2 electric grids (TX excludes itself, but is huge). Making all three of those grids large enough that the sun definitely isn't obscured for weeks. Additionally, places like India are talking about building a "world gird" to be the solar power generator for the world.

it's one thing to interconnect a few GW here and there, but to power the Texas grid you need 80GW or so. That is a humongous amount of power. You would need at least 10-20 HVDC projects that span thousands of miles each.

BTW, Texas is already connected to the other grids, but not synchronized, e.g. https://www.tdworld.com/overhead-transmission/article/209645... As we all know, these kind of connections were not enough during the big freeze.

But say you make that investment. That is still not a guarantee that you won't have a continent wide lull without sun or wind. You just can't risk it. It's cheaper and more effective to just install some gas turbines for backup. If you fire them up 2 times a year it won't matter for the CO2 budget.