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The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

gspp.berkeley.edu

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Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#101

Post by manfredo »

specialist wrote: post #91
manfredo wrote: post #64

A few things stick out to me: * This study assumes that we can ramp up purchases of solar and wind generation to match this graph: https://imgur.com/lMU252r while costs continue to decrease. That's not how markets work. Rapidly buy solar panels and the cost of solar panels go up. Put solar panels in all the places where it's easy to install and now you have to pay extra to put them in places where it's not so conveni…

Are you predicting that solar panel production won't continue to scale to meet demand?

The limiting factor of producing solar panel at these immense scales is the cost of raw materials. As other posters pointed out this study is already assuming that the cost of solar panels and wind will be barely greater than the cost of materials.

And yes, if the US tries to increase it's solar capacity by a factor of 50 in the next 15 years (and especially while other countries try to do the same) these materials will become more scarce and thus more expensive.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#102

Post by 7thaccount »

desdiv wrote: post #54
hairytrog wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drop what to 80%? Our economy works really well because electricity is 100% dispatchable. You flip the switch at any time, things work. If you go below that, the economy will follow the weather, which I guess is just a different way to operate. But it's not so fun. I have some friends in South Africa where power rationing is in place. You basically have a few dead hours every day because the grid isn't run well and t…

Headline says: "US can reach 90 percent clean electricity by 2035" and you gave your analysis. GP is asking how your analysis would change if we drop the target to "US reaching 80 percent clean electricity by 2035".

The SPP region (small piece of Texas and then the heartland around Oklahoma and Kansas although there are many states) has already hit > 70% renewable penetration during some hours of the day with very little storage, but a LOT of wind (> 20 GW).

The problem is sustaining that 70% for a longer time period. Wind is intermittent, so firming it up with additional solar (also intermittent, but generally at different times) and a lot of storage would have to be the next step if you wanted a sustained > 70%.

I'd guess with very high probability that this region (very geographically large), but not too many large population centers will hit 80% renewable penetration within 3 years based off of current growth. It is still a guess as to how long it will take before you'd see 80% across peak and not in the morning. Still, this has all happened in a few years.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#103

Post by xyzzyz »

nordsieck wrote: post #75
xyzzyz wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most data centers needs non-stop 24/7 reliability, and there are very few use cases where it makes sense and is even possible to delay your workload waiting for lower energy prices. Smelters have complicated processes, and they cannot really turn on a dime. Lastly, data centers and smelters are expensive capital investments, and typically the economic calculation requires them to be run non-stop to recoup the capital…

> Most data centers needs non-stop 24/7 reliability, and there are very few use cases where it makes sense and is even possible to delay your workload waiting for lower energy prices. Perhaps your parent was thinking of EC2 spot instances? > Lastly, data centers and smelters are expensive capital investments, and typically the economic calculation requires them to be run non-stop to recoup the capital investment. I s…

Perhaps your parent was thinking of EC2 spot instances?

Maybe, but the whole reason cloud providers offer ephemeral instances is precisely because letting the machines sit idle is a waste of capital.

I suspect this is true for almost all commercial operations.

I'm not sure if that's the case. I think it depends on the efficiency of production, ability to stockpile the product and the demand. Not all factories operate around the clock, because round the clock labor is also very expensive.

Residential electric car charging is the only thing I can think of that's (...)

I think a relatively easy development here would be to install large water tanks in people houses, and heat them up/cool them down when energy is cheap, and reuse stored energy when energy is more expensive, to save on heating/AC. But yes, energy these days is so cheap compared to labor and to value added that a complex schemes of idling production when energy prices are high is probably a non-starter in developed countries.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#104

Post by hairytrog »

hairytrog wrote: post #21

Exciting. But here are some problems. - Unfortunately, they are averaging the entire US, which is made of several grids, so the bad days are not that bad in their analysis. To fix those bad days, you'd need hella more storage, hella more capacity. e.g. 3-4x the renewables capacity than the normal need. - Such a system has a very low resiliency because it depends on national grid. If Covid has taught us anything, it i…

I think I came out a little strong and biased here. My apologies. Some more thoughts on this article.

- They group nukes in the clean %, so today we're at 37% clean already. not bad. Going to higher clean % with mix of wind/solar expansion + new storage + dispatchable nukes is very possible and the political momentum to throw a lot of money at this is there.

- I think it's unlikely costs can be reduced much in most parts of the US if we still want 100% dispatch capability.

- It's not just about cost. We should consider paying a bit more for carbon considerations, within reason and without forgetting who gets punished by higher prices in the short term, and without compromising the 100% dispatchable standard.

- Wind/solar LCOE is approaching very low numbers, so it should be used as much as possible, but we shouldn't throw a trillion dollars from the government, as the article suggests, to shove wind/solar down the grid's throat. It's likely to break the grid and waste a load of money. Government should just ensure the markets can properly deal with higher renewables without compromising the grid. They can do this via establishing capacity markets, resiliency markets, R&D for storage tech, etc. They might also do a carbon tax to try to set the higher cost we are willing to pay from above.

- There are significant resilience, material, and regulation challenges. It's not just the energy storage for a few hours, but longer term for days and weeks. If we are a responsible society and expect smooth operations and we want to do an extreme renewables expansion, we need to pay the price to keep an idle fleet of fully dispatchable gas/nukes in addition to the renewables fleet or establish multi month storage.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#105

Post by philipkglass »

manfredo wrote: post #64

A few things stick out to me: * This study assumes that we can ramp up purchases of solar and wind generation to match this graph: https://imgur.com/lMU252r while costs continue to decrease. That's not how markets work. Rapidly buy solar panels and the cost of solar panels go up. Put solar panels in all the places where it's easy to install and now you have to pay extra to put them in places where it's not so conveni…

How did you get 200 MWh? From page 20 of the report:

"In summary, retaining existing hydropower capacity and nuclear power capacity (after accounting for planned retirements) and about half of existing fossil fuel capacity, combined with 150 GW of new 4-hour battery storage, is sufficient to meet U.S. electricity demand with a 90% clean grid in 2035, even during periods of low renewable energy generation and/or high demand. Under the 90% Clean case, all existing coal plants are retired by 2035, and no new fossil fuel plants are built beyond those already under construction. During normal periods of generation and demand, wind, solar, and batteries provide 70% of total annual generation, while hydropower and nuclear provide 20%. During periods of high demand and/or low renewable generation, existing natural gas plants (primarily combined-cycle plants) cost-effectively compensate for remaining mismatches between demand and renewables-plus-battery generation—accounting for about 10% of total annual electricity generation, which is about 70% lower than their generation in 2019."

150 GW of batteries with 4-hour discharge is 600,000 MWh.

http://www.2035report.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/2035-Re...

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#106

Post by ip26 »

xyzzyz wrote: post #103
nordsieck wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most data centers needs non-stop 24/7 reliability, and there are very few use cases where it makes sense and is even possible to delay your workload waiting for lower energy prices. Perhaps your parent was thinking of EC2 spot instances? > Lastly, data centers and smelters are expensive capital investments, and typically the economic calculation requires them to be run non-stop to recoup the capital investment. I s…

Perhaps your parent was thinking of EC2 spot instances? Maybe, but the whole reason cloud providers offer ephemeral instances is precisely because letting the machines sit idle is a waste of capital. I suspect this is true for almost all commercial operations. I'm not sure if that's the case. I think it depends on the efficiency of production, ability to stockpile the product and the demand. Not all factories operate…

I think a relatively easy development here would be to install large water tanks in people houses, and heat them up/cool them down when energy is cheap

Literally already happening. I have a demand response control box retrofitted onto my electric tanked water heater. It shuts off during high rate times.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#107

Post by manfredo »

philipkglass wrote: post #105
manfredo wrote: post #64

A few things stick out to me: * This study assumes that we can ramp up purchases of solar and wind generation to match this graph: https://imgur.com/lMU252r while costs continue to decrease. That's not how markets work. Rapidly buy solar panels and the cost of solar panels go up. Put solar panels in all the places where it's easy to install and now you have to pay extra to put them in places where it's not so conveni…

How did you get 200 MWh? From page 20 of the report: "In summary, retaining existing hydropower capacity and nuclear power capacity (after accounting for planned retirements) and about half of existing fossil fuel capacity, combined with 150 GW of new 4-hour battery storage, is sufficient to meet U.S. electricity demand with a 90% clean grid in 2035, even during periods of low renewable energy generation and/or high…

The graph displays 150 GW, with no duration specified. 4 hours of 150GW storage, or 600GWh of storage, is still only 5% of the nation's current daily electricity consumption.

And that's probably going to be an even smaller share in 2035 as more vehicles go electric.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#108

Post by manfredo »

cinquemb wrote: post #87
manfredo wrote: post #64

A few things stick out to me: * This study assumes that we can ramp up purchases of solar and wind generation to match this graph: https://imgur.com/lMU252r while costs continue to decrease. That's not how markets work. Rapidly buy solar panels and the cost of solar panels go up. Put solar panels in all the places where it's easy to install and now you have to pay extra to put them in places where it's not so conveni…

> This study thinks we can achieve this with only ~200 MWh of storage. Agree, very unrealistic. One thing that always disappointing to me about these conversations is that solar == photovoltaics, batteries == li-ion electrochemical… luckily the world isn't limited to these asumptions and developments have been and continue to be made, even if they are mostly ignored/overlooked by the HN crowd.

Things like kinetic storage are geographically limited. Most places with available hydroelectric storage already generate electricity from dams.

Chemical storage in the form of natural gas produced by the Sabatier process is very inefficient. Currently it's at 55% efficiency to go from power to gas. Even the most efficient combined cycle plants are currently 65% efficient. End to end efficiency is ~1/3.

Also, using synthetic natural gas requires a means to capture the exhaust of gas plants to actually make it carbon neutral. Converting the fraction of a percent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not currently possible.

The conversation is mostly about batteries because that is the only known option at the moment, other than geographically limited ones.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#109

Post by godelski »

manfredo wrote: post #100
godelski wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really agree with this, even though I am an avid nuclear proponent. I do think France has it right, but there's some other things to consider. France is phasing out some of its nuclear and does not plan on replacing it. No they aren't going to 0% or even 50%, but they are doing it and this is a good idea. They are replacing old plants with renewables where they can and replacing and building new plants where…

> France is phasing out some of its nuclear and does not plan on replacing it A statement they keep making to placate anti-nuclear advocates but keep postponing and postponing. Because there's no way to reliably generate the majority of electricity using wind and solar, and only small parts of France are suitable for hydroelectricity. Diversification doesn't matter for energy that comes from heat engines. Just like h…

> A statement they keep making to placate anti-nuclear advocates but keep postponing and postponing. Because there's no way to reliably generate the majority of electricity using wind and solar, and only small parts of France are suitable for hydroelectricity.

This is really confusing. Me, nor France, said that they are going to go to 0% nuclear. In fact, I remember saying

> No they aren't going to 0% or even 50%

Maybe I should be more clear and say "Less than 50%".

So I'm confused because I'm reading your response as disagreeing what IS happening (decommissioning IS happening) and taking it to mean that ALL reactors are being proposed to be decommissioned. Which is definitely not true.

> Diversification doesn't matter for energy that comes from heat engines.

What? We've always had diversification. So does every other country. They also always have. Different energy sources have different advantages. It would be dumb not to use the one that has the most advantage for the specific situation. And of course there's the old saying "don't put all your eggs in one basket." But you seem to be disagreeing with this but also agreeing by saying

> Sure it's good build alternatives where it's cheaper

A big part is that France doesn't produce its own nuclear and so renewables do provide some self resilience. That does have some advantages, but obviously France does want to keep a mostly nuclear system (recycling is self resilience too).

> But the main draw of nuclear power is that its output entirely controllable.

Which this isn't really true. You CAN throttle nuclear but not infinitely and surely not like you can with coal or natural gas. France just sells the excess and this "throttles" a lot for them. It is very efficient.

> there's nothing wrong with powering a country entirely on nuclear power.

The issue is easier for France than other countries, simply because momentum. One thing you have to consider with building reactors is that they take longer to develop and build than other sources. Which I'll agree that we should have started yesterday, but let's be realistic. If you really believe this then you should also be a proponent of renewables because they are a better stop gap to a nuclear based system than coal and natural gas are.

Re: The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills

#110

Post by manfredo »

godelski wrote: post #109
manfredo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> France is phasing out some of its nuclear and does not plan on replacing it A statement they keep making to placate anti-nuclear advocates but keep postponing and postponing. Because there's no way to reliably generate the majority of electricity using wind and solar, and only small parts of France are suitable for hydroelectricity. Diversification doesn't matter for energy that comes from heat engines. Just like h…

> A statement they keep making to placate anti-nuclear advocates but keep postponing and postponing. Because there's no way to reliably generate the majority of electricity using wind and solar, and only small parts of France are suitable for hydroelectricity. This is really confusing. Me, nor France, said that they are going to go to 0% nuclear. In fact, I remember saying > No they aren't going to 0% or even 50% May…

> Maybe I should be more clear and say "Less than 50%".

> So I'm confused because I'm reading your response as disagreeing what IS happening (decommissioning IS happening) and taking it to mean that ALL reactors are being proposed to be decommissioned. Which is definitely not true.

They keep delaying their supposed nuclear cutbacks: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/11/20/frances-decision-to-d...

The reality is that wind and solar can't replace nuclear or Fossil fuels without some insanely good energy storage that is currently the stuff of science fiction.

> Which this isn't really true. You CAN throttle nuclear but not infinitely and surely not like you can with coal or natural gas. France just sells the excess and this "throttles" a lot for them. It is very efficient.

Incorrect. Reactors can be modulated in terms of thermal output. You can throttle the electrical output even if the thermal output remains the same by cooling the water more aggressively. Furthermore excess energy is not a hard problem to solve. Desalinate water, or other energy intensive tasks are good energy sinks.

> One thing you have to consider with building reactors is that they take longer to develop and build than other sources. Which I'll agree that we should have started yesterday, but let's be realistic. If you really believe this then you should also be a proponent of renewables because they are a better stop gap to a nuclear based system than coal and natural gas are.

France built up it's nuclear generation from 10% to 80% in the span of 15 years. By comparison, solar and wind are still waiting for an effective energy storage system to come into existence.

Renewables are not capable of generating more than ~40% of a country's electricity due to the fundamental mismatch between the time that energy is generated and the time that energy is consumed. Look at Germany to see the failure of solar and wind to produce a carbon free energy system. The solution exists, and has existed for over half a century now.

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