141–150 of 166 posts
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How does that help on mobile where I don't see the URL by default. The headline should specify US if it's only for US.
I'm on mobile. I see "energy.gov" just fine.
Even if you know that only US agencies use .gov, it's not like an American agency wouldn't publish a report on a worldwide trend, is it?
False and misleading. First, it only refers to the US, while the headline makes no such qualification. Second, this refers only to electricity generation, which is roughly 25% of US energy use, or 20% if you include energy embedded in imports, mostly fueled by fossil fuels in China. Third, this refers only to gros capacity. For those who have been asleep, the effective energy capacity is far lower for renewables than…
> First, it only refers to the US, while the headline makes no such qualification. Yes the title should be "Land-Based Wind Market Report: 2021 Edition Released" but it still won't say US cause it's not in the title. > Second, this refers only to electricity generation, which is roughly 25% of US energy use, or 20% if you include energy embedded in imports, mostly fueled by fossil fuels in China. Of course it's only…
This latter number is about 3x higher than the useful output since if you need something other than heat, say a car to move, or grid electricity then 2/3rds of the energy will be lost as heat while converting the energy to motion (and then to electricity).
And if you do need heat, then an electric heat pump will provide 2-5 times the heat if you feed it one unit of energy.
This is why electrification of everything that can be electrified will reduce total energy requirements substantially (while increasing the amount of electrical energy we need slightly).
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China is producing all of the "super affordable" solar panels that everyone else are importing. All of that solar panel manufacturing requires coal.
Silicon and Aluminium need lots of electricity. Nice graph showing about 2/3 of solar cell embodied energy inputs is electricity: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S09270248210032... from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09270... Presumably China uses coal because it is most economical for them in the short term (not so good for the world!)
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I'm on mobile. I see "energy.gov" just fine.
....how does seeing energy.gov help? Even if you know that only US agencies use .gov, it's not like an American agency wouldn't publish a report on a worldwide trend, is it?
This isn't a rule by any means but seeing .gov usually translates to "pertains to the US"
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China is producing all of the "super affordable" solar panels that everyone else are importing. All of that solar panel manufacturing requires coal.
Yes. Solving problems for the future generally requires using problematic systems that currently exist.
I feel like the drive to green energy is only to allow us to continue growth and consumption instead of saving the natural world. It seems short sighted.
Best news is that cost of these installations is now quite low: less than $1.5 per watt peak. What about capacity utilisation factor of newly installed turbines? Does it trend downwards? Which means, are we close to exhausting potential of wind? PS: It's not, it's actually trending a bit up. Which is explainable because average capacity of a turbine trends up -> the turbine is bigger and taller -> wind blows faster a…
Theres a lot of other small things contributing to the capacity factor increases too: computer modelling of how the wakes of different turbines interact with each other and the labdscape, energy market changes to penalise slow reacting coal plants and or reward flexible demand, better weather prediction, grid and battery integration, HVDC, marginal engineering and business process improvements as you get companies, technicians and tools dedicated to this industry.
Having said all that, I'm not sure how useful a number it is, but nice that it's going up as generally it tracks the price going down as fixed costs get spread further.
But if the price is low enough, then low capacity factors still make sense. Not sure if theres a stat that captures both of those things at the same time though and also considers the full system costs.
There's almost certainly times and places that a low capacity factor producer that hits your system peak is going to be the best option. Demand response, for example, could be modelled as very low capacity factor generators that only supply when you actually need the extra power.
How much fossil fuel consumption was reduced as a result?
What about, how have recent changes affected the carbon intensity of the US electricity grid?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/the-u-s-electric-power-s...
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That's an exceptionally inefficient way to do it, and it comes with the risk of methane leaks (which would then have a climate warming effect). Hydrogen can be used directly, which skips one conversion step and doesn't need air capture for the CO2. These days no gas plant should be build that can't be converted to 100% hydrogen in the future.
Yes that's true. But Methane is easier to store than Hydrogen. Most countries already have infrastructure in place to store months worth of Methane. And who knows, maybe we figure out some cheap redox-flow batteries or something so that neither option is the cheapest solution. In any case, there is no need for coal or fossil gas as backup, and nuclear is probably out for economical reasons (unless we have some breakt…
We are discussing artificial fossil fuel production with terrible efficiency, in that context nuclear is very viable.
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Yes. Solving problems for the future generally requires using problematic systems that currently exist.
I wonder where all of these raw materials for all the solar panels and wind turbines is going to come from. Do you think we can replace all of our energy with renewable energy without destroying the remaining natural habitats? I feel like the drive to green energy is only to allow us to continue growth and consumption instead of saving the natural world. It seems short sighted.
Yes. In fact it's pretty much the only way to not destroy those remaining natural habitats so it's good were pursuing it if that's what your worried about.
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Yes that's true. But Methane is easier to store than Hydrogen. Most countries already have infrastructure in place to store months worth of Methane. And who knows, maybe we figure out some cheap redox-flow batteries or something so that neither option is the cheapest solution. In any case, there is no need for coal or fossil gas as backup, and nuclear is probably out for economical reasons (unless we have some breakt…
"nuclear is probably out for economical reasons (unless we have some breakthrough in reactor design in the next five years or so)" We are discussing artificial fossil fuel production with terrible efficiency, in that context nuclear is very viable.