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In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

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Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#511

Post by tialaramex »

llm_nerd wrote: post #252
tialaramex wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me "a bunch" is when it'd be tedious to list them. For a few years the UK had few enough that you could list their names, then gradually four, three, two, one, none. Canada as a whole isn't in that place yet, though it doesn't have plans to build more of these plants and they will gradually reach end of life or transition to burning something else. Coal isn't one of the "convenient" fossil fuels where you might ch…

"For a few years the UK had few enough that you could list their names, then gradually four, three, two, one, none" Sure, it's embarrassing that we still have any coal plants. But really, there are only eight small units remaining, located in the provinces of Nova Scotia (4), New Brunswick (1), and Saskatchewan (3). Every other jurisdiction abolished them. Maybe small nuclear will be the solution for these holdouts.…

Oh, OK, eight is fewer than I thought, my impression was a dozen or more. I take it back then.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#512

Post by bluGill »

margalabargala wrote: post #508
bluGill wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not as big a problem as it sounds - you cannot provides enough power for you neighbors and so your breakers (fuses) will cut power long before the lineman gets there. though linemen are trained that they are working on a live line unless they have personally shorted it out. There are many other ways a seemingly dead line can be live so they don't take a chance.

That's not how that works. Your breakers are sized to support your panel size. If you have 10kW panels that can push 10kW onto the grid when the grid is live, they can push 10kW when the grid is down. The limiting factor is the power your panels produce which in this case is also...10kW. You're probably right about linemen but there are a lot of other reasons not to feed power onto a dead grid.

Your main breaker isn't the only one. Your inverters have protection of some sort as well.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#513

Post by ericd »

epolanski wrote: post #496
lejalv wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do time my dishwasher and washing machine to align with peak solar where I live. I'd like to appeal to you to evolve that frame of mind. To help avoid first world problems (I can't wash a dish by hand, I need it now ) devolving into third-world ones (power cuts, crop failures, torrid tropical nights on mid latitudes, mountains disintegrated). Sometimes its important to remind we're on a generational mission, and it…

I don't like your feedback, it's condescending and you know nothing about me. 1. In my area 96% of energy is gas-based. I live in Rome, Italy. It's written in my energy bill. I ain't got no solar. Night or day it's mostly a matter of relatively small changes of demand. 2. If you want to do something real for the environment change your diet! I'm sick of this neverending focus on energy when the biggest impact you can…

Pretty sure your diet is a relatively small part of your carbon footprint.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#514

Post by filloooo »

Tade0 wrote: post #471
filloooo wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your geopolitical views are so naive it's hard to take seriously. EU is now an unwilling dumping ground for China, hostility and paranoia are growing by the day now that China is no longer a lucrative market itself and is pursuing its interests outside commerce, the cordial days are numbered. Russia would never be subservient to China, once the war ends Russia would be back being a geopolitical player because of its…

Russia recovering from this invasion they started is the naive take. It's currently selling its resources at a steep discount and that is unlikely to change because its customers are only in it for the bargain they're getting.

Russia has always been selling it's oil and gas at a discount, that's why it had so much clout in the EU and CIS, nothing new, it's literally its geopolitical strategy since the Soviet Union.

All these talk of cutting off Russia won't last more than a year after the war, nobody refuses cheap energy, certainly not the cash strapped Europeans.

They'll probably be the world leader in critical metals and rare earth deposits if they invested more on prospecting and the ice melts.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#515

Post by filloooo »

mekdoonggi wrote: post #469
filloooo wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your geopolitical views are so naive it's hard to take seriously. EU is now an unwilling dumping ground for China, hostility and paranoia are growing by the day now that China is no longer a lucrative market itself and is pursuing its interests outside commerce, the cordial days are numbered. Russia would never be subservient to China, once the war ends Russia would be back being a geopolitical player because of its…

I am certainly not an expert. What resources or military capability does Russia have that China could not eclipse, replace, or source from a partner? What would it mean for Russia to become a "real" western country? Why would China fear that? Whatever happens, Russia needs to sell resources to stay afloat. I have a hard believing that if it came down to it, China couldn't just seize Vladivostok.

[flagged]

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#516

Post by jacquesm »

tialaramex wrote: post #510
owenversteeg wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree. Certainly transportation is an obvious one. But of course there are still some losses; when you include all the losses in the system and cold weather you can easily get ~80% for EVs vs. ~30% for ICE cars. Heat pumps can be very efficient, but 5x more efficient than combustion/resistive heating (which is near 100%...) is not common in practice. 3x, sure, plenty of installations that get that or better…

Resistive heating is indeed almost 100% efficient, but combustion is only about 90% efficient and that's using modern technology to scrape almost everything we can, which has a cost in terms of the product upfront cost and maintenance. The reason it's not much higher is that we must vent the exhaust gases. If you were OK with the burned gas vapours in your home you could get close to 100%, but they're poisonous and s…

Anywhere you use resistive heating you're better off with a heatpump which is far more efficient than that.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#517

Post by blackjack_ »

MakersF wrote: post #472
IshKebab wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with solar isn't the night. Getting enough batteries to cover that is totally doable. The issue is the winter. And not even because of fewer daylight hours - on sunny winter days there is usually still a good amount of solar. The problem is its often very cloudy in the winter. In the UK in winter we regularly have periods of 5 cloudy days in a row where solar output is virtually zero. I don't know what th…

It's unfair you're being down voted, you're right. I used to think that we could get by with just solar wind and batteries, but then after collaborating with people on an ideal energy mix the numbers were obvious: there is a (small) fraction that cannot be covered. Not with storage (the discharge cycles are so few that the cost is prohibitive. How can a battery pay for itself with 10-20 discharges a year? And this ap…

Yeah but we are nowhere near the end of the scaling curve. For now, we can use the natgas plants during the unexpected outages while solving for green hydrogen / whatever backup plants. Like when a household has one EV and one gas car, they can always just take the gas car when they have range anxiety and don't know about chargers. NBD.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#518

Post by dmix »

kokey wrote: post #47

Every time, over the years, that there has been some kind of headline saying renewables have overtaken fossil fuels, when you look at it a bit more closely there is always a big 'but'. For example, it was compared to coal (not taking into account electricity from gas), or it was for one day, or it was a percentage of new installations, or it excludes winter, includes nuclear etc. This time, however, it looks like it'…

> compounding gains that didn't cause massive economic hardships along the way.

I’ve read multiple stories of European manufacturers saying they are struggling with high operating costs, with energy being a major factor making it difficult to compete with China who has invested in every sort of energy broadly. China doesn’t just compete on labour costs like people think, they figured out ways to make every part of operating there cheaper.

Just keeping the prices baseline to something else that’s already relatively expensive shouldn’t be the only goal. But it’s progress I guess.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#519

Post by nandomrumber »

owenversteeg wrote: post #246
kokey wrote: post #47

Every time, over the years, that there has been some kind of headline saying renewables have overtaken fossil fuels, when you look at it a bit more closely there is always a big 'but'. For example, it was compared to coal (not taking into account electricity from gas), or it was for one day, or it was a percentage of new installations, or it excludes winter, includes nuclear etc. This time, however, it looks like it'…

The only asterisk this time is that this is electricity, not energy. Still impressive, but electricity is only 22% of total energy use, so they are at about 12% of the total for the EU and 7.8% for Europe. For that, you want this graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou... Fun to play around with, you can also change the selection to view the world, US, China, individual EU countries etc. Y…

> The only asterisk this time is that this is electricity, not energy. … and 7.8% for Europe.

Yes, the _!ONLY!_ thing is, this won’t move the needle at all on climate change.

Wind and solar for electric is the lowest of low hanging fruit.

No one has even proposed that they have maybe even possibly have perhaps thought of an idea to address transport and agriculture related emissions.

Lithium ion batteries, or a solid state alternative aren’t it. Not without being some orders of magnitude more energy dense and lighter. And you still need to electrify those sectors to be able to charge the batteries.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#520

Post by zdragnar »

jacquesm wrote: post #516
tialaramex wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resistive heating is indeed almost 100% efficient, but combustion is only about 90% efficient and that's using modern technology to scrape almost everything we can, which has a cost in terms of the product upfront cost and maintenance. The reason it's not much higher is that we must vent the exhaust gases. If you were OK with the burned gas vapours in your home you could get close to 100%, but they're poisonous and s…

Anywhere you use resistive heating you're better off with a heatpump which is far more efficient than that.

Unless you live somewhere that (air, e.g. in an EV) heat pumps can't function at high efficiency. Tonight and tomorrow night will be -20F/-28C. Always good to have a backup plan, no matter what your primary heat source is.
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