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Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

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Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#81

Post by avar »

ajross wrote: post #66
gustavus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course if they had a nuclear base they wouldn't even need the natural gas plants.

Nuclear is emphatically not an instant-on hot backup. Plants take time to spool up, and very importantly time to cool down. Fukushima happened because you can't just turn a reactor off, it produces energy that has to go somewhere while the intermediate fission products decay over hours-to-days.

In this scenario you could just run the nuclear plant all the time, but just direct its electric production to heating a giant pool of water or whatever.

Then when the grid needs more power you do less of that, and instead send electricity to the grid.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#82

Post by SoftTalker »

monero-xmr wrote: post #34
simonhorlick wrote: post #26

Note that since about 2021 renewables have overtaken fossil-based sources of energy on price. New installations of utility scale wind and solar PV are now cheaper than their alternatives. Not to mention protection from price fluctuations in the cost of fuels needed to power fossil fuel plants.

Why did they cancel all the wind power plants in New Jersey even though they are cheaper?

Wealthy influential people didn't want to look at windmills.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#83

Post by tuatoru »

avar wrote: post #81
ajross wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is emphatically not an instant-on hot backup. Plants take time to spool up, and very importantly time to cool down. Fukushima happened because you can't just turn a reactor off, it produces energy that has to go somewhere while the intermediate fission products decay over hours-to-days.

In this scenario you could just run the nuclear plant all the time, but just direct its electric production to heating a giant pool of water or whatever. Then when the grid needs more power you do less of that, and instead send electricity to the grid.

Electrolyzing water to make hydrogen for ammonia (fertilizer) and industrial chemical feed stocks, please.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#85

Post by dukeofdoom »

Jedd wrote: post #79
dukeofdoom wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to call it delusional, because green technology is feasible in some places. But in a lot of places and applications it's not just that it doesn't work, it's not feasible to ever work. Inflation is bad enough now. To blindly push it like a communist ideology...don't be surprised when the lower classes revolt because they can't heat their homes or afford food, due to cost of energy trickling into the price…

Yup, this is what I mean about 'we're exceptional' claims. 'It can't work here, and can never work here, because ...' and then followed by some basic math mistakes wrapped up into some wild extrapolations, augmented with some demonstrably pessimistic assumptions that every piece of the stack can't ever get better, or be swapped out for something better. That suspiciously well-prepared rando on tiktok you used as a ci…

He built his own electric logging truck:

https://www.tiktok.com/@freightfamous/video/7292048160296406...

If you think BC's mountainous forests can be logged using rail lines ... I don't know what to tell you. The rest is you projecting "exceptional claims" about green technology, that amount to wishful thinking.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#86

Post by adrianN »

gustavus wrote: post #11
wongarsu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the gas plants aren't burning any natural gas, I would say that's fair. Standing by to supplement power on load spikes is one of the primary roles of gas plants (together with pumped hydro), and that they didn't need to supply any electricity over those six days is noteworthy. From a climate standpoint there also isn't much wrong with having generating capacity in fossil fuels, what matters is how many gre…

Of course if they had a nuclear base they wouldn't even need the natural gas plants.

No? Either you have enough nuclear to cover 100% of peak demand, in which case you just run them exclusively (at a terrible capacity factor) because nuclear is almost exclusively capex, or you don't, in which case you need gas peakers.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#87

Post by kieranmaine »

mmasu wrote: post #17
pmoleri wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People like these small wins. And for good reason, it proves wrong the mainstream thinking that this is impossible. Quite a few countries already run the full year over 90% renewable[1] and we still neglect it with all kind of excuses. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewab...

a lot of data there is pre-covid, would be interesting to see what’s happening today - especially in Europe, with the consequences of the Russia-Ukraine war on energy markets.

This contains data up to Jun 2023 for the EU.

https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/eu-fossil-genera...

"The first half of 2023 saw a collapse in EU fossil generation, leading to the lowest output on record. Wind and solar continued their growth, with solar generation increasing by 13% and wind by 5%. Hydro and nuclear are recovering from their historic lows in 2022, though their long term outlook is uncertain."

The section "Wind and solar are leading the renewables charge" has graphs for each EU country showing H1 TWh generation by either fossil or renewables.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#88

Post by throwaway2037 »

snewman wrote: post #76
voisin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source for this? I would think inflation in construction and maintenance costs for traditional generation would still keep it more expensive.

For renewables, most of the cost is up front, then they're cheap to run because they don't need fuel. (High capex, low opex.) Fossil fuel plants have more of a mix of upfront and operating costs. High interest rates make it expensive to borrow the upfront cost of renewables.

I did some googling about this issue. Roughly I searched: natural gas/solar/wind construction cost per MW in United States

I found: Natural gas: ~1200 USD/kW, Solar: ~1500 USD/kW, Wind: ~1500 USD/kW

Let us say that solar and wind is about 25% more expensive to build. All types have high up front costs, so interest rates will affect nearly equally. However, operations for solar and wind must be way cheaper over 10/20/30 year time frame. To be fair, I never read anything about maintenance costs for solar and wind. It certainly isn't zero, as the wind turbine will need periodic servicing, and the solar panels need to be cleaned.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#89

Post by eldaisfish »

snewman wrote: post #76
voisin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source for this? I would think inflation in construction and maintenance costs for traditional generation would still keep it more expensive.

For renewables, most of the cost is up front, then they're cheap to run because they don't need fuel. (High capex, low opex.) Fossil fuel plants have more of a mix of upfront and operating costs. High interest rates make it expensive to borrow the upfront cost of renewables.

there is another important metric that most of these cost calculations ignore - the cost of reliability. Renewable generators create this problem due the variable and uncertain nature of their fuel. The cost of dealing with this is not paid by them.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#90

Post by acchow »

avar wrote: post #81
ajross wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is emphatically not an instant-on hot backup. Plants take time to spool up, and very importantly time to cool down. Fukushima happened because you can't just turn a reactor off, it produces energy that has to go somewhere while the intermediate fission products decay over hours-to-days.

In this scenario you could just run the nuclear plant all the time, but just direct its electric production to heating a giant pool of water or whatever. Then when the grid needs more power you do less of that, and instead send electricity to the grid.

Or powering GPU compute centers. When the grid needs more power, these dynamically power down (raise LLM generation prices)
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