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Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Community Edition)

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Re: Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Community Edition)

#81

Post by bryanlarsen »

credit_guy wrote: post #53
mcot2 wrote: post #36

It sounds like this should have a date attached to it as the numbers are quite outdated for todays world. This did have some good data for back when it was written of course. * An efficient EV will do less than 12kWh/100km these days. * Utility scale solar pv cost declines have been dramatic. It is now the cheapest form of new energy to deploy. * Developments in deep water off-shore wind have led to much larger turbi…

> Utility scale solar PV [...] is now the cheapest form of new energy to deploy. I've been hearing this claim for a few years now, and I took it at face value, until a few days ago. I was having a discussion with a friend and told him that PV's share of electricity generation must by quite high, and then I checked the EIA website [1], and it turns out only 2.3% of the electricity comes from PV, while about 40% come f…

Most of a terawatt of green energy projects are stuck in a regulatory backlog.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-renewabl...

Re: Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Community Edition)

#82

Post by rufuspollock »

olau wrote: post #78

There was indeed a lot of hot air in sustainability thoughts in 2008, and probably still is, but Mackay's treatment is sometimes bordering the absurd. For instance, the chapter on wind power starts by comparing a back of the envelope calculation on wind power with energy usage by a fossil car. While there are occasional good points, I would not recommend reading this book unless you actually know something about the…

Could you reference some of the "real studies" you mention - this would help update and amend MacKay's work.

Re: Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Community Edition)

#83

Post by sdenton4 »

vkou wrote: post #73
sdenton4 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but the fuel cost goes up over time as extraction gets harder (eventually requiring entire new types of facilities, which themselves take a decade to build), even as wind and solar continue their exponentially decreasing LCOE cost curve. The exponentially decreasing cost curve is the part that I think people haven't actually internalized. The arguments on the pro-nuclear side are pretty much the same as they w…

> even as wind and solar continue their exponentially decreasing LCOE cost curve. What you think is an exponential curve is actually the left side of a sigmoid.

Your meme pertains to exponential /growth/, not exponential /decline/. Exponential growth in a population hits a limit as a population saturates, causing the sigmoid shape. Exponential decline hits a constant asymptote and bottoms out. For populations, that asymptote tends to be zero. For cost curves, as in the solar panel case, it will be something more like capital cost of production divided by panel lifetime, which can be a very small number indeed.

Re: Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Community Edition)

#84

Post by Robotbeat »

credit_guy wrote: post #53
mcot2 wrote: post #36

It sounds like this should have a date attached to it as the numbers are quite outdated for todays world. This did have some good data for back when it was written of course. * An efficient EV will do less than 12kWh/100km these days. * Utility scale solar pv cost declines have been dramatic. It is now the cheapest form of new energy to deploy. * Developments in deep water off-shore wind have led to much larger turbi…

> Utility scale solar PV [...] is now the cheapest form of new energy to deploy. I've been hearing this claim for a few years now, and I took it at face value, until a few days ago. I was having a discussion with a friend and told him that PV's share of electricity generation must by quite high, and then I checked the EIA website [1], and it turns out only 2.3% of the electricity comes from PV, while about 40% come f…

Cheapest to deploy, meaning adding new energy sources.

For instance, even since the year or two that EIA has last updated their numbers to the numbers that just came out that include August 2021... the amount of total solar (far right column) generated (154TWh) vs total electricity generated (4087TWh) gives about 3.8% solar electricity for the last 12 months rolling. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

Re: Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Community Edition)

#85

Post by Robotbeat »

baybal2 wrote: post #54
credit_guy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Utility scale solar PV [...] is now the cheapest form of new energy to deploy. I've been hearing this claim for a few years now, and I took it at face value, until a few days ago. I was having a discussion with a friend and told him that PV's share of electricity generation must by quite high, and then I checked the EIA website [1], and it turns out only 2.3% of the electricity comes from PV, while about 40% come f…

> Something does not add up. If PV is so cheap, why don't we see more electricity being produced by PV? > Utility scale solar PV [...] is now the cheapest form of new energy to deploy For China... The West has very few semiconductor grade silicon smelters, and no industrial scale ones for PV ingots. I think all of PV cell makers in the West just dice Chinese boules

Correct, EXCEPT for thin film cells by First Solar (who make the whole module). Although hopefully this is changing.

Re: Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Community Edition)

#86

Post by Robotbeat »

zbrozek wrote: post #80
bluGill wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how many people are on the bus. Many buses have terrible load averages, good buses can do a lot better. IMO most bus operators do a terrible job at serving people and so it is no surprise that people don't ride.

Most of the buses I see around here (Sunnyvale through San Mateo is my typical stomping ground) are either "not in service" or very nearly empty. I haven't taken a bay area bus in fifteen years. I routinely outpace them on a bicycle. I could imagine 8-15 passenger vans with on-demand routing would see much better utilization.

Yup. They should be easier to electrify, too. Mass produced electric passenger vans should be a thing. Considering transit vans are only like $50,000 apiece for 12 seats, they should be pretty dang cheap to acquire, too, compared to the $1 million 30 seat e-buses. Charging infrastructure should be the same as regular electric cars, too, which makes it cheaper and more flexible to deploy.

Re: Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Community Edition)

#87

Post by credit_guy »

epistasis wrote: post #65
credit_guy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Utility scale solar PV [...] is now the cheapest form of new energy to deploy. I've been hearing this claim for a few years now, and I took it at face value, until a few days ago. I was having a discussion with a friend and told him that PV's share of electricity generation must by quite high, and then I checked the EIA website [1], and it turns out only 2.3% of the electricity comes from PV, while about 40% come f…

There are several reasons: 1) lifetimes of utility assets are measured in decades, not years 2) the utility industry is not used to needing to pay attention to new technology and new information, and has a huge bias against renewables that goes back to the hard energy /soft energy split of the 1970s and 1980s 3) Utility planning models (IRPs, often for five years out) often use outdated info that is 3-5 years old whe…

> 1) lifetimes of utility assets are measured in decades, not years

Fair enough, but here's [1] how the picture looked just 4 years ago. Coal was at 33%, natgas at 33% an solar at 0.6%, wind at 4.7%. So a lot of coal was replaced by natgas, and a bit of wind. For some reason solar went up only by 1.7%

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20170322133856/https://www.eia.go...

Re: Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Community Edition)

#88

Post by kergonath »

derriz wrote: post #38
kergonath wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many countries in Europe have 30% or more of their electricity supplied by intermittent but it turns out that the integration problem isn't as difficult as envisaged. True. It’s very easy when you can tap your neighbour’s power plants when you need. The problem is a bit different when all the neighbours have the same problems at the same time.

Of course interconnection is a big help, but transmission isn't "free" or unlimited, the flows between individual European countries is typically a small fraction (less than 10%) of the national consumption and generation. And there are cases like Ireland which has its own grid - with very limited external interconnection - and yet achieved 42% renewable share last year. Techniques/engineering/theory for integrating…

> Of course interconnection is a big help, but transmission isn't "free" or unlimited, the flows between individual European countries is typically a small fraction (less than 10%) of the national consumption and generation.

It’s more than a little help. Just imagine how a blackout involving 10% of the population or Germany would look like, never mind the EU.

> And there are cases like Ireland which has its own grid - with very limited external interconnection - and yet achieved 42% renewable share last year.

You cannot really compare Ireland with many of the other EU countries, either in term of population or industry, though.

> Techniques/engineering/theory for integrating intermittent sources has advanced considerably in the last ten years.

They have. And it is a good thing, because it really should not be a competition between nuclear and renewables. They still have several issues, which are very difficult to solve without either a massive reduction in consumption, or a massive increase in price.

I really struggle to understand how almost all mainstream “green” parties see fossil fuels as a lesser menace than nuclear. The truth is, if you read their manifesto, that they don’t care about particle pollution beyond “cars are bad” (which is true, but insufficient) or climate change.

It is not a competition, it is a struggle to get rid of fossil fuels, which are an existential threat to our societies. We can sort that out and talk about fusion once we’ve done it. In the meantime, getting rid of fossil fuels is a massive undertaking, and we would be stupid not to use every card in our hand.

Re: Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Community Edition)

#89

Post by redisman »

epistasis wrote: post #70
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David MacKay’s work was for me very important. It showed how one should do a systems analysis for a country to understand how one can achieve the change required. I was astonished when I talked to several of the leading people responsible for energy policy in several political parties in my country, to find they really had no clue about what they where doing on a systems level. I think that updating this book is not…

> I think that updating this book is not pointless, but more importantly doing the same for more countries is really important. While MacKay's work is excellent for a general lay audience to understand general scales of the issue, there are now far more advanced models for this that do things like replay historical weather and demand, down to 15 minute scales, to more least cost systems for zero carbon grids. They ar…

Are there any books or journals you’d recommend that are more up to date? I’m trying to find something more worthwhile to read during downtime

Re: Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Community Edition)

#90

Post by femto »

lr1970 wrote: post #9

Sir David Mackay [0] was a great mind who contributed major discoveries in Machine Learning, Information Theory, Coding Theory and Physics. His book "Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms" is a great resource for anyone learning ML and who wants to understand how ML, Information Theory and Statistics all fit together. The book is available for free download as a pdf [1] as well as for purchase. His u…

Here's the download link for the Without Hot Air book:

http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html

The parent's link was for his other book "Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms", which is a happy thing to stumble upon.

Edit: Just realised that I misread the parent comment and the link to the Info Theory book was intentional.

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