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For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

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Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#151

Post by Teever »

adrianN wrote: post #119
KennyBlanken wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of land in cities. Rooftops and solar canopies (parking lots with solar panels over them) for example. Solar canopies can even go above outdoor public transit lines. They're all over the place in my area. I've seen them in church parking lots, supermarkets, you name it. Added benefit: you and your car are shaded from sun, snow, rain..

It's a lot more expensive to put panels on roofs than to put them on a meadow somewhere.

So settle on something in the middle -- cover parking lots.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#152

Post by ben_w »

chollida1 wrote: post #117
ben_w wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by this population density map: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Canada_P... And the ever-useful "The True Size Of…": https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTU1OTcwMjU.MTI5MjQ... I think you're overstating the difficulty given that population distribution. And those two large splotches on the map representing Calgary and Edmonton and with most of the population pretty close by, they're o…

Appreciate the response but I'll be honest I don't understand what point you are making. My only point is that Alberta being larger than Germany means its more expensive to deliver power to all its various small towns distributed around the province. That seems pretty tautologically correct to me given that power lines have a cost and must be constantly maintained and built to support new power demands. I'm unsure ab…

> Run a simple thought experiment. Would it be easier to deliver power 100 meters or 100 km's? That's what we are debating here.

What you're debating is the cost of using a grid that already exists and is already in use.

> I'm unsure about what the cross section of aluminum has to do with the size of a province,

The answer is right there in the same post. Multiply them together to find out how much material you need (and by extension cost); likewise resistive losses.

The material costs for making an extremely efficient grid are trivial compared to everything else involved in the supply of energy that already exists and has already connected all those "various small towns distributed around the province".

--

Also, I demonstrated with my maps that if you put a copy of the German borders around the Calgary-Edmonton conurbation, you'd get almost the entire population of Alberta, so your stat is misleading.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#153

Post by Jensson »

Teever wrote: post #150
7thaccount wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just mean if you have geographical diversity, it helps with the availability of renewables. For example, if wind is in 5 different locations across Alberta (for sake of example), you're less likely to run into issues with losing it all at once like you would if all your wind came from a single area and the wind stopped blowing there or dropped to a very low value.

Yeah but the downside to that in a place the size of Alberta is that you need to run electrical infrastructure that can handle the load of 4.3 million people across a 1000km distance.

Sounds like Sweden or Norway, not very hard to do.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#154

Post by lesuorac »

dheera wrote: post #123
chollida1 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you basically ignored the point about them buying Russian oil/gas, thus enabling the Russian war. But yes, I agree that China makes things. India doesn't really have that excuse for using coal.

India's government is dirt poor in comparison to China's government. Clean energy is expensive. Both governments are actually very pro-clean-energy and more willing to deploy it, given the money, than a certain two ~80-year-old farts that take turns every 4 years playing stupid politics games and picking fights.

> Clean energy is expensive.

Eh, nuclear sure but in general no. That's the whole reason solar is becoming so popular is that it's cheaper [2].

If you have to pair solar with storage then it becomes more expensive [1] (general X+Y is more expensive than just X or Y). But uh, people tend to work when the sun shines so you can add a ton of solar to offset the increased energy usage during the day.

[1]: https://www.powersouth.com/is-solar-cheaper-than-natural-gas...

[2]: https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/natural_g...

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#155

Post by toomuchtodo »

cm2187 wrote: post #139
mrguyorama wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those unaware, China and India do NOT like getting their power from coal. They've both had decades now of abysmal smog and pollution that literally (like, statistically trackable) kills people every year, including people otherwise productive in society. China is absolutely dumping the price of solar panels. A fully renewable energy China is one that is harder for Western countries to sanction, has more prestige…

As far as I am aware, Texas offsets the volatility of renewable with carbon based energy. Those renewable are not viable in a world with no carbon based energy. https://grid-analytics.ece.utexas.edu/chart/fuel-type-genera...

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/texas-wi... ("Texas will add more grid batteries than any other state in 2024.")

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/how-texa... ("How Texas became the hottest grid battery market in the country")

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/12/texas-power-grid-bat... ("As brutal heat tests Texas’ power grid, batteries play a small but growing role in keeping the lights on")

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/batteries-texas-consumers-6... ("Batteries saved Texas consumers $683M during 2-day January freeze: Aurora Energy Research")

https://web.archive.org/web/20240707022007/https://www.eia.g... (EIA 12 month forward looking generator deployment; scope to Texas and gray icons, which indicate battery storage)

vel0city's recent comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40504630: "Texas has 6.3GW of battery capacity installed largely in the last three years and is on track for another ~15GW (a bit over 20GW total) by the end of 2024. There's 141GW of battery projects in the queue for connection to ERCOT, with a large chunk of that coming online in 2025 and 2026."

If you look at California, what happens is that renewables grow rapidly, pushing out fossil generation (coal first, and then fossil gas, as fossil gas is more flexible from a generation perspective wrt throttling and commodity cost). At some point, you arrive at a situation where your spot prices drop below zero during daylight hours (as you're generating power in excess of grid demand, renewables can bid to give away the power or curtail, fossil gas and coal cannot, they'll take the L to keep spinning while paying for fuel and the per hour O&M costs). This is when battery deployment takes off, as batteries can charge when power is almost free, and discharge in the evening hours after sunset when it is profitable to do so. You can see California's ~10GW of batteries "breathe" daily in the data doing this. This revenue, combined with grid services (synthetic inertia, black start capability readiness [jump starting fossil generators during a grid outage]), makes batteries a strong economic proposition from an investment perspective.

Battery firmed renewables compete directly with fossil gas from a cost perspective. As of ~6 months ago, Texas had 100GW of solar in ERCOT’s interconnect queue, in comparison to ~65.8GW of fossil gas generation and ~14.3GW of coal generation currently operating. Even assuming worst case capacity factor (20% hypothetical vs 25% actual per https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...), 75GW of solar with a storage component is enough to push that coal generation out of the mix. It's also unlikely solar deployments stop or slow down.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40601878 ("HN: Lazard: IRA brings LCOS of 100MW, 4hr standalone BESS down as low as US$124/MWh")

https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost... ("Lazard 2023 Levelized Cost Of Energy+")

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#156

Post by josho »

refurb wrote: post #147
NoLinkToMe wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada emits more Co2 per capita than China today, by 1.5x. But Co2 doesn't only count in 'last years'. It counts as a cumulative effect. The Co2 damage of Canada per capita is way beyond that of China, cumulatively. In cumulative terms, China has emitted 'only' 7.5 times as much Canada despite having 35x the population. In other words, Canada's per capita cumulative emissions are about 4.5x those of China. And that'…

Unless you're not a big fan of productions - things like food, you can't compare CO2 emissions alone. It all comes down to cost-benefit. The goal is the maximum production per unit of CO2 - for every unit of CO2 you maximize what is produced from it. Yes, the US produces 13.49% of all global CO2, but it also produces 25.22% of all output. China produces 31% of all CO2 emissions, but only 17% of all production.

If these were metrics for your startup I’d call them vanity metrics. You just used data to explain that the US captures higher margins on their products and China does a lot of low margin or commodity production.

The data doesn’t help us inform an opinion of whose carbon use is better than others.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#157

Post by triceratops »

lesuorac wrote: post #154
dheera wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India's government is dirt poor in comparison to China's government. Clean energy is expensive. Both governments are actually very pro-clean-energy and more willing to deploy it, given the money, than a certain two ~80-year-old farts that take turns every 4 years playing stupid politics games and picking fights.

> Clean energy is expensive. Eh, nuclear sure but in general no. That's the whole reason solar is becoming so popular is that it's cheaper [2]. If you have to pair solar with storage then it becomes more expensive [1] (general X+Y is more expensive than just X or Y). But uh, people tend to work when the sun shines so you can add a ton of solar to offset the increased energy usage during the day. [1]: https://www.powe…

If it's such slam-dunk, why aren't all Western nations already at 100% solar and wind?

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#158

Post by s1artibartfast »

mrguyorama wrote: post #99
randomdata wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let's all take a moment to stare at the horror show that is the 13% that is real estate. 12% in both USA (2023) and Mexico (2015). Other countries that use a similar classification seem to also be in the same range. Japan, for example, also sits at 12% (2022). Is a single percentage point really that horrific?

This is the most interesting bit of information in this entire comments section: Japan, which has a completely different view, model, and concept of real estate that does NOT treat it as an investment, ends up with the same portion of GDP locked/used/coming from real estate. I feel like there's important information in that tidbit, but I am not equipped to grasp it.

One possible takeaway is that just maybe real estate isnt a parasitic zero-sum activity that some make it out to be.

That developing, renovating, bankrolling, managing, and maintaining physical infrastructure is real work and creates real value.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#159

Post by triceratops »

refurb wrote: post #147
NoLinkToMe wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada emits more Co2 per capita than China today, by 1.5x. But Co2 doesn't only count in 'last years'. It counts as a cumulative effect. The Co2 damage of Canada per capita is way beyond that of China, cumulatively. In cumulative terms, China has emitted 'only' 7.5 times as much Canada despite having 35x the population. In other words, Canada's per capita cumulative emissions are about 4.5x those of China. And that'…

Unless you're not a big fan of productions - things like food, you can't compare CO2 emissions alone. It all comes down to cost-benefit. The goal is the maximum production per unit of CO2 - for every unit of CO2 you maximize what is produced from it. Yes, the US produces 13.49% of all global CO2, but it also produces 25.22% of all output. China produces 31% of all CO2 emissions, but only 17% of all production.

Then the US should be able to do without dirty, polluting imports from China. Right?

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#160

Post by s1artibartfast »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #19
nightowl_games wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I understand it, Canada's economy is wholly dependent on the tar sands.

Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction accounts for 8.21% of Canada's GDP. So, not so much, but let's all take a moment to stare at the horror show that is the 13% that is real estate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Canada Edit: I realize that source is from 2020, which may be skewing those numbers, but it seems that statista still roughly agrees in 2024. https://www.statista.com/statistics/594293/gr…

given the housing shortage in both US and Canada, I think we would want the portion of GDP coming from real-estate new home construction to be even higher.
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