Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

energy.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 166 posts

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#121

Post by Loic »

aero-glide2 wrote: post #118
Loic wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first two lines of the article, emphasis added: > The Land-Based Wind Market Report: 2021 Edition provides an overview of developments and trends in the U.S. wind power market . > A record 16,836 megawatts (MW) of U.S. wind capacity was installed in 2020, bringing the cumulative total to 121,955 MW. Asking a US government to put in the headline that the report is about US stuff is a bit surprising.

My problem is with the title by the hackernews poster. Highly misleading, as your quotes show.

You are right, the original article is: Land-Based Wind Market Report: 2021 Edition Released.

PS: I am sorry, I was sure that HN policy is not to editorialize/change the title. I did not suspect this was done here.

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#122

Post by jillesvangurp »

ishtanbul wrote: post #46
jillesvangurp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar is indeed long term cheaper to install but subject to periodic down-time. Wind blows at night and when it is cloudy. Also the nature of our atmosphere is that there is always some wind somewhere. So, they are complementary. Right now everybody is focused on getting to 100% carbon neutral. However, the question must be asked: why stop there and not go to something like 500 or even 1000% energy generation. There…

Carbon neutrality and excess energy are not a measurement of the same thing. Nevertheless, the energy supply demand balance doesn’t work the way you describe. Most power plants are contracted with a specific energy buyer such as distribution utility or an industrial buyer that is meeting a specific load need or as part of their resource planning. So there is rarely more excess capacity beyond a reserve margin. These…

That's only how it works now. It's an obsolete way to operate our energy markets. Carbon neutrality will require electrifying large markets that currently aren't electrified. That overall market is much larger than the current electricity market. By the time even a small portion of that market has been addressed, most electricity generation will long be renewable. That's happening a lot faster than some people seem to think/hope for. Existing gas/coal plant generation will be a tiny portion of that market. And there won't be a whole lot of new capacity going forward. Arguably, new gas plants are already a very dubious investment.

Most new capacity will either be new players (e.g. Tesla is planning to be a virtual power provider) in the market without a sunk investment legacy or existing players that compete on divesting/isolating their sunk investments the fastest. Either way, this pushes a lot more renewable energy in the market. That in turn accelerates the demise of more expensive things in the market. Including plants that are still under construction which were financed under the assumption that they would operate for a few decades at high price points for energy. I don't think that industry can afford a major drop in cost for renewables. Yet that seems exactly what might be happening.

https://www.rethinkx.com/implications Rethinkx published an interesting perspective on this recently. They point out that the financial incentives of new technology are making this happen much faster than many incumbent players have planned/hoped for. They are calling out a feasible date of decarbonizing 90% by 2035 using existing technology depending on how governments incentivize and stimulate scaling and deploying that. It's a very aggressive and provocative timeline. But the reasoning behind it has some merit. We can haggle about how far they are off but I doubt it will be measured in decades.

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#123

Post by Bellamy »

Maakuth wrote: post #21

> Wind power installations outpaced those in solar power for the first time in several years and represented $24.6 billion of investment So wind is number one and solar is the next one? That's great news!

I have to scroll this far to read that someone is as happy as I am about the news!

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#124

Post by deepnotderp »

Gwypaas wrote: post #120
vivacious wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't renewables heavily subsidised?

The LCOE of unsubsidized newbuilt renewables are currently getting below the marginal cost of existing nuclear and fossil infrastructure. https://www.lazard.com/media/451446/grphx_lcoe-07-07.jpg From: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

This assumes that for some reason you don’t need electricity at night

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#125

Post by [deleted] »

deepnotderp wrote: post #124
Gwypaas wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The LCOE of unsubsidized newbuilt renewables are currently getting below the marginal cost of existing nuclear and fossil infrastructure. https://www.lazard.com/media/451446/grphx_lcoe-07-07.jpg From: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

This assumes that for some reason you don’t need electricity at night

[deleted]

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#126

Post by cinntaile »

wavegeek wrote: post #99

False and misleading. First, it only refers to the US, while the headline makes no such qualification. Second, this refers only to electricity generation, which is roughly 25% of US energy use, or 20% if you include energy embedded in imports, mostly fueled by fossil fuels in China. Third, this refers only to gros capacity. For those who have been asleep, the effective energy capacity is far lower for renewables than…

> First, it only refers to the US, while the headline makes no such qualification.

Yes the title should be "Land-Based Wind Market Report: 2021 Edition Released" but it still won't say US cause it's not in the title.

> Second, this refers only to electricity generation, which is roughly 25% of US energy use, or 20% if you include energy embedded in imports, mostly fueled by fossil fuels in China.

Of course it's only about electricity generation?

> Third, this refers only to gros capacity. For those who have been asleep, the effective energy capacity is far lower for renewables than for stable power sources due to intermittency.

That's what you usually mention when you build something that generates energy. Nothing unusual here either.

> inb4 By referring to facts you have shown you are clearly on the wrong team.

What's with this unhealthy polarization? What teams are you talking about?

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#127

Post by vixen99 »

anovikov wrote: post #3

Best news is that cost of these installations is now quite low: less than $1.5 per watt peak. What about capacity utilisation factor of newly installed turbines? Does it trend downwards? Which means, are we close to exhausting potential of wind? PS: It's not, it's actually trending a bit up. Which is explainable because average capacity of a turbine trends up -> the turbine is bigger and taller -> wind blows faster a…

Does that figure factor in the eventual heavy cost of de-installation?

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#128

Post by MagnumOpus »

Reason077 wrote: post #56
seibelj wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also hope that efficient scale batteries become possible. But if there is an extended deficit with wind / sun then even a battery might not do it. One undeniable advantage of petrochemicals is they work at any time, consistently, and are a solid backup. Maybe we are OK as a society with backup generators being petrochemicals, rather than going nuclear.

> “if there is an extended deficit with wind / sun then even a battery might not do it.” It’s always windy (and sunny) somewhere. The combination of energy storage and grid transmission alleviates intermittency. Chemical batteries are very useful, but far from the only way to store energy.

It's always sunny somewhere, but if that is on the opposite side of the earth during the night, good luck building grid transmission.

It's always windy somewhere, but that also might not be on the same continent as you need it.

So if you don't like gas peakers or don't run a nuclear baseload you need to bridge those short non-windy winter days or weeks with batteries. Multiple nation scale terawatt-hour batteries. Which means millions of Tesla li-ion megapacks or millions of pumped hydro plants - which gets expensive and unfeasible real quick as you run out of either the battery raw materials for the former or suitable sites for the latter.

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#129

Post by robocat »

yesbut wrote: post #107
VintageCool wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, there was more coal power generation in 2021 than 2020 because 2020 was an abormally low year of power consumption. If we skip over the pandemic, there was less electricty generated from coal in 2021 than 2019. Coal in the US has been in long-term decline since around 2008. Natural gas seems to be holding fairly stable at the moment. Depending on source, it looks like the US retired some 9 to 11 GW of coal…

China is producing all of the "super affordable" solar panels that everyone else are importing. All of that solar panel manufacturing requires coal.

Silicon and Aluminium need lots of electricity. Nice graph showing about 2/3 of solar cell embodied energy inputs is electricity: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S09270248210032... from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09270...

Presumably China uses coal because it is most economical for them in the short term (not so good for the world!)

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#130

Post by [deleted] »

yesbut wrote: post #107
VintageCool wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, there was more coal power generation in 2021 than 2020 because 2020 was an abormally low year of power consumption. If we skip over the pandemic, there was less electricty generated from coal in 2021 than 2019. Coal in the US has been in long-term decline since around 2008. Natural gas seems to be holding fairly stable at the moment. Depending on source, it looks like the US retired some 9 to 11 GW of coal…

China is producing all of the "super affordable" solar panels that everyone else are importing. All of that solar panel manufacturing requires coal.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN