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For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

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Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#301

Post by coryrc »

kragen wrote: post #275
coryrc wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the components don't have a meaningful "maximum load". There's a load with 40-year life, a load with 10-year life, and a load with 160-year life (and obviously this is a continuous curve). It's okay to spend some time at 10-year life load if you can spend more time at the 160-year load than the typical model expects.

things like transformers have a 1-minute load which, if you don't exceed it, they'll last 40 years, but if you exceed it significantly, they'll often catch on fire and explode within a few minutes it's true that there's probably a load right at the rated load which will gradually cook the transformer over the course of 10 years or so, but that's a pretty narrow window that's the kind of capacity that needs to be expa…

It's a far wider window than you think.

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#302

Post by fbdab103 »

voisin wrote: post #298
fbdab103 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP did not mention the mounting option, so I assume they were going for a roof installation. Which has to be a significant markup vs ground mount. I am only partially handy, but even I could throw some poles in the ground and a frame to hold solar panels. Doing the same for a roof would be significantly beyond my abilities.

From the quotes we received ground mount is usually quite a bit more expensive per installed watt. The frames cost more, there’s longer runs of cabling, etc.

Huh, never would have guessed. I assumed cabling was basically free, and the only difference would be the solar mounts were attached to poles vs a roof.

There was a recent experiment[0] where a company is going to start putting panels directly on the ground without any mounting hardware.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33926683

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#303

Post by kragen »

pyrale wrote: post #300
kragen wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reducing the carbon dioxide emitted by 40 percent at the same load does in fact meaningfully ensmallen the global warming problem, unless there's some compensating extra emissions somewhere else in the system, like methane leaking from pipelines

That's just for electricity production. A 40% reduction in the sector where we could do 90-95% leaves no room for sectors where there are fewer opportunities. 40% for electricity means a much lower reduction overall, especially if it informs the efforts we're willing to make.

right, it's only a 40% reduction from the activity that switches to gas

however, methane does work as a transport fuel as well, at least for land transport

not sure what you mean by 'leaves no room for sectors where there are fewer opportunities'

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#304

Post by adrianN »

catiopatio wrote: post #285
adrianN wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturing cars is highly automated and cars are a lot more complex than cleverly arranged sand with some wires glued to it.

> “cleverly arranged sand with some wires glued to it.” Let me guess — you’ve sat at a desk for your entire career?

Nice argument, now I'm totally convinced.

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#305

Post by yunwal »

verisimi wrote: post #10
adrianN wrote: post #7

Nice. The economics of renewables are really hard to beat. I hope we speed up the construction speed and at the same time electrify more sectors.

Really? Solar gives lots of electricity in the summer. But you have light and warmth then. In the winter when you need the electricity, you get maybe 1/10 of whatever the solar array is capable of. Wind is not generally viable, except in very windy locations. Biogas (eg anaerobic digestors) seems much more possible - but even these need warmth to run well - so aren't as good in the winter. And when you think that yes…

> I'm fast coming to the conclusion that all renewable tech is about allowing the government to have deep control over your energy, and to put you in a situation where you are forced to buy very expensive gear from mega-corps.

As opposed to government-sanctioned utility companies and petrol companies? Its pretty easy to make your own solar panel (not an efficient one, but something). It is very capital intensive to mine for natural gas and crude these days. Surely the solar panel + battery offers more independence (as evidenced by the fact that nearly every large RV owner is thinking about getting solar now).

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#306

Post by adrianN »

goatlover wrote: post #281
adrianN wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've known about climate change for at least fifty years now. Every goal we set since then has been "realistic" with considerable effort. Unfortunately we never even attempted to reach them, so we raise the goal by a degree or two every decade or two.

Realistic means it's likely people will put considerable effort into achieving said climate goal, not whether it's possible. Everyone on earth could join hands and achieve world peace or governments could decide to pour trillions into terraforming Mars. But neither is likely to happen.

If you want to lose weight, just setting a goal is insufficient, you have to change your habits too, no matter how unambitious your goal is. It's the same with climate change.

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#307

Post by somesortofsystm »

themitigating wrote: post #196
somesortofsystm wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just stop. China as a manufacturing solution for anyone but the people of the region must cease. It is utterly inefficient to produce stuff far, far from where it will be used. Spreading things out like this is balls. Lets start building again. If we're to get off this dust-ball, we have to learn to do things ourselves, again.

Isn't it just economics? How can a US company compete with the cost of labor?

"Just economics", sure, its cheap to exploit China.

That's why I'm saying: just, stop!

It has to become consumer-preferred to have something cool be built locally.

This won't happen until someone builds something cool this way.

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#308

Post by rcarr »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #202
rcarr wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you’re not just paying for a physical device. You’re also paying for the software that runs on it which is best in class. And before people start saying it’s not, how many people are running 7 year old androids compared to iPhones? In USD, A brand new iPhone, kept for 7 years works out at 32 cents a day - phenomenally cheap for something integral to modern day life. And that’s not even taking into account you…

> how many people are running 7 year old androids Ironically, me. I changed the battery last year, it costed me 13$ (~12 euros), it is as good as new. Now it might be that my Android phone is Chinese as well, so it actually costed me less than 10¢ a day. Even if I had to replace my Android smartphone, I could have changed it 3 times in the past 7 years and still spend less than buying an iPhone that lasted me 7 years…

So you've edited your comment to bring up slave labour for some reason, so obviously your Android phone and your $13 battery are all ethically sourced right?

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#309

Post by Schroedingersat »

robomartin wrote: post #280
gwright wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No. Wind with approximately three hours of storage is about 95% reliable That isn't enough, unless you are happy with 18 days of no power per year. Of course you could maintain traditional power plans to provide power for those 18 days, but then you've doubled or tripled your power costs because you have purchased two systems for providing power. An intermittent system and a second system with the same capacity tha…

> That isn't enough > you have purchased two systems for providing power. Precisely! Correct! Therein lies the problem of renewables few people seem to understand, talk about and want to talk about. Solar and wind require 100% backup for the period of time during which they are not locally available. BTW, a good deal of what I have been saying is supported with data from this paper [0]. It analyzes 39 years of data f…

https://www.autoblog.com/amp/2023/03/22/home-charging-challe...

EVs just charge whenever. Very few people use them like ICEs with regard to fuelling. The only thing needed to make them fit easily in the existing max output envelope is L1 chargers where they spend the day and TOU aware charging (and tarriffs). Most of the energy for charging them will never even hit the grid. And what little does will be mostly during the times of minimum usage. Fast chargers will have battery buffers anyway because no sane operator will want to pay the peak capacity rates for drawing 30MW during peak demand when their competitor next door can outcompete them by 50c/kWh by using a buffer.

You have the right order of magnitude of 3TW nameplate (you're quoting nameplate for the existing capacity which is absolutely not the same thing as CF weighted power, but you know this and you're trying to intentionally conflate the two) for solar + wind and about 3TW peak including storage and energy-limited dispatch lime hydro and w2e, but you really went off the rails with the rest. You also know that a mix of wind and solar has a higher uptime than either alone.

Maybe you should consider for half a second that the real engineers who actually think about this might have come to a different conclusion to your half-assed fermi estimate for good reasons?

Re: For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US

#310

Post by robomartin »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #309
robomartin wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That isn't enough > you have purchased two systems for providing power. Precisely! Correct! Therein lies the problem of renewables few people seem to understand, talk about and want to talk about. Solar and wind require 100% backup for the period of time during which they are not locally available. BTW, a good deal of what I have been saying is supported with data from this paper [0]. It analyzes 39 years of data f…

https://www.autoblog.com/amp/2023/03/22/home-charging-challe... EVs just charge whenever. Very few people use them like ICEs with regard to fuelling. The only thing needed to make them fit easily in the existing max output envelope is L1 chargers where they spend the day and TOU aware charging (and tarriffs). Most of the energy for charging them will never even hit the grid. And what little does will be mostly during…

> your half-assed fermi estimate

You continue to chase me around HN to insult me any time I participate in a discussion about energy.

In the past I have asked @dang to let you carry on with these insults so you could show the world exactly who you are. My reasoning included such things as letting you "get it out of your system".

You have done enough of that.

This is now abusive.

Please.

Stop.

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