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Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

cleantechnica.com

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Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#191

Post by Retric »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #189
Retric wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US close to average in terms of solar with most countries are on a similar curve +/- a few years. However, I used the US because our electricity demand is fairly static. The US is only up 13% since 2000 unlike Africa’s electricity demand which doubled, or China’s 600% increase over that period.

China is where energy things are happening, both on the generation side and on the industrial consumption side. The US feels like a quiet backwater in comparison.

Only in terms of scale not innovation.

China still gets most of its elected from coal and hydro. They are still building a little nuclear and lots of coal alongside all that wind and solar.

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#193

Post by ClumsyPilot »

sigilis wrote: post #118
jjoonathan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just assumes someone else fixes the storage/overprovision problem, otherwise energy will get cheaper in the summer and more expensive in the winter until storing euros does not work.

That’s what markets are for: someone else will fix the problem because there’s money in it. It’s generally something you can rely on, that someone will try to get their hands on stored euros.

This is literally called magical thinking - there is money in breaking the law of gravity, so what?

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#194

Post by ClumsyPilot »

verisimi wrote: post #15

I don't get why solar is so popular. In more northern regions, you get much less light in the winter. You effectively can only generate around one tenth of the energy you can in the summer - this is from experience talking to others who monitor their solar installations. But, you need more energy in the winter. People are in more, using electricity for heat cos it's colder. I'm pointing out that there is a supply/dem…

Hydrogen could be viable way to do seasonal storage, it's generation reasonably efficient and can be stored in huge quantities. It's also a bit of a trojan horse for traditional energy companies

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#195

Post by defrost »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #193
sigilis wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what markets are for: someone else will fix the problem because there’s money in it. It’s generally something you can rely on, that someone will try to get their hands on stored euros.

This is literally called magical thinking - there is money in breaking the law of gravity, so what?

Addressing storage | provisioning issues is not breaking the laws of thermodynamics.

We're talking aviation industry as a reasonable equivilance here, not magical anti-grav machines.

Reddit is really the venue for eponymous comments.

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#196

Post by thelastgallon »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #125
bilsbie wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always said this! Make daytime energy 100x cheaper and the market will respond. Appliances will start building in batteries, behaviors will change , and who knows what else the market will come up with.

How is daytime energy supposed to get 100x cheaper and still allow solar, which only generates during the daytime, to recover its costs? Unless you mean for the nighttime price to increase by a huge factor, but then how would that out-compete existing technologies for generation at night?

Four quick solutions, there may be more!

(1) Transmission: When it is night somewhere, it is daytime somewhere else. All you need is transmission lines. Shipping electricity is so much easier than shipping fossil fuels, 40% of all shipping[1]: https://qz.com/2113243/forty-percent-of-all-shipping-cargo-c.... With vertical panels we can capture power early mornings and evenings, reducing the duck curve, but also for transmitting power long distances. There are long undersea cables being deployed, Denmark Wind to England recently, Morocco to Europe, Singapore to Australia. These can be bidirectional.

(2) CSPs with molten salt storage: In addition to solar panels, we could also leverage CSPs and provide 24/7 power. Hopefully, CSPs follow the same learning rate as panels: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16012018/csp-concentrated...

(3) EVs: EVs can absorb power whenever it is overabundant. Power prices go negative 200 million times a year, EVs can charge at that time. Eventually, we'll have 100 - 200m cars, this is a gigantic, distributed and resilience battery. Cars are parked 22 - 23 hours/day, their primary purpose is energy storage, we get to take a ride on them for some time during the day.

(4) Wind: Wind is not daytime only. We can overprovision wind also, which complements with solar. "Offshore wind farms generate electricity from wind blowing across the sea. They are considered more efficient than onshore wind farms, thanks to the higher speed of winds, greater consistency and lack of physical interference that the land or human-made objects can present.": https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16012018/csp-concentrated...

We switched from circuit switched networks (the dominant network since 1850 telegraphs till early 2000, about 150 years), to packet switched networks. Packet switched networks transformed telecom infrastructure which led to all the developments we see today and the cost reduction to zero, which was unimaginable to anyone until early 2010s. Telegraph/phone used to cost a lot! We can imagine similar trajectory with electricity, the legacy grid being the equivalent of circuit switched network, which will be replaced with a new grid, with EVs taking the role of energy "switches" (store and forward switches enabled packed switched networked, store energy and supply the grid back with a few hours latency is the role of EVs)

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#197

Post by chris222 »

bilsbie wrote: post #87
tallowen wrote: post #2

I found this podcast with Jesse Jenkins to be a really helpful start to understand non fixed energy resources. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-the-sun-isnt-alwa... I thought that the most cost effective way to supply energy would require a certain amount of base load. It seems like this is a misunderstanding because of how much cheaper and more available these non fixed resources are than fixed resources.…

I’ve always said this! Make daytime energy 100x cheaper and the market will respond. Appliances will start building in batteries, behaviors will change , and who knows what else the market will come up with.

HVDC transmission can help here as well.

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#198

Post by MostlyStable »

Scoundreller wrote: post #149
MostlyStable wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangentially related gripe: My biggest issue in making this work reliably is that my "smart" thermostat is trying to be too smart. Our power gets cheap at 10pm. I can't just set my HVAC to turn on at 10 and go full blast until power gets expensive again at 6am. I have to program a set temperature at a time. if I set that at 10pm, my thermostat tries to make sure that it _reaches_ that temp at exactly the time. So it…

What’s your “smart” thermostat?

Lennox 7500 series.

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#199

Post by opo »

bilsbie wrote: post #87
tallowen wrote: post #2

I found this podcast with Jesse Jenkins to be a really helpful start to understand non fixed energy resources. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-the-sun-isnt-alwa... I thought that the most cost effective way to supply energy would require a certain amount of base load. It seems like this is a misunderstanding because of how much cheaper and more available these non fixed resources are than fixed resources.…

I’ve always said this! Make daytime energy 100x cheaper and the market will respond. Appliances will start building in batteries, behaviors will change , and who knows what else the market will come up with.

Who has ever said that solar/wind or any other form of power is going to be 100 times cheaper than what we have now?

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#200

Post by klabb3 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #128
klabb3 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Energy this cheap gives us a huge incentive to change our energy use patterns to match power abundance rather than to take energy demand as a constant. I have not listened to the podcast, but I know for a fact that’s much harder than it sounds. Parking spaces, highways, factories, offices, parks, beaches, hiking trails, skiing, museums, stadiums, even grocery stores have an extreme variability in demand. Almost all…

You can replace a significant proportion of the grid with intermittent generation without any trouble. Using solar for the air conditioning load in the summer is perfect. Use whatever you want to charge electric car batteries because they're batteries and most cars are parked >90% of the time. You can can't shift 100% of the load based on time of day through pricing, but you can do a non-trivial amount. Then you pick…

> You can replace a significant proportion of the grid with intermittent generation without any trouble.

Yes, in some locations. That’s a no brainer and where it’s economical it’s already happening. But unpredictable supply particularly needs on-demand energy. Nuclear can’t respond quickly, so if you don’t have hydro you’re likely left with gas.

> Use whatever you want to charge electric car batteries because they're batteries and most cars are parked >90% of the time.

Agreed. We have some way to go with universal infrastructure support for that though.

> You can can't shift 100% of the load based on time of day through pricing, but you can do a non-trivial amount.

Possibly. The major sources today are heating, AC, fridges. Cooking will come up there if you remove gas. In either case, industrial and commercial are ~60% of use and how do we move that significantly out of peak hours?

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