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A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

reneweconomy.com.au

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Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#141

Post by Schroedingersat »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #108
Schroedingersat wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the cost of 5kW nameplate of new western nuclear (>$10/W) you can get, right now, at retail, as an individual: 50kW nameplate of solar, and 8kW nameplate of wind, and 75kWh of storage and a 5kW generator (which will almost never need turning on) and a biogas digester. And it will produce enough excess power to replace itself (with a cheaper version) or just triple the batteries if you can get 2-3c/kWh for the sur…

I wouldn't advocate for new nuclear (for the same reason the creator of this model gives, it just isn't cost effective) but existing nuclear in stable, northern regions that also have hydro is definately a positive if you're aiming to get to carbon-free power faster. If you don't have the much hydro then it can fight with solar/wind for usage of that dispatchable resource, and if you don't have the nuclear you can bu…

Agreed. Keep the current nuclear on as long as it's safe and doesn't cost more than eg. a new green ammonia build.

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#142

Post by sremani »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #69
thayne wrote: post #57

"in Australia" is an important qualification here. Australia has a very high ratio of available solar and wind energy to population. Not that getting Australia fully on renewables wouldn't be exciting. But it is definitely an easier target than say the US.

Quite a lot of people live in Texas and California where renewables are already pretty advanced, plus there's nuclear in the north, and they have hydro and grid connections with Canada who have even more hydro and nuclear so the USA should be easier. The US intends to hit this target (i.e. 95% carbon-free generation) in 8 years I think, with 100% and wider electrification of current fossil fuel uses in 2035 and it di…

>> 95% carbon-free generation

I am still not clearly getting the picture here - what exactly this means.

US has about 30% electricity generated by Coal and I do not see that go away in next 20 years let alone 8. What am I missing here?

As of today, US energy portfolio is around 83% fossil. The best case scenario for 2040 is something like 50%, that includes we get Nuclear fusion, massive battery storage, material science breakthroughs that will put a dent on steel and cement consumption.

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#143

Post by epistasis »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #118
Schroedingersat wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the cost of 5kW nameplate of new western nuclear (>$10/W) you can get, right now, at retail, as an individual: 50kW nameplate of solar, and 8kW nameplate of wind, and 75kWh of storage and a 5kW generator (which will almost never need turning on) and a biogas digester. And it will produce enough excess power to replace itself (with a cheaper version) or just triple the batteries if you can get 2-3c/kWh for the sur…

nuclear definitely needs to be in the mix to reach 100% fossil-fuel-free energy generation; not gonna happen on wind/solar/hydro alone

This has been an article of religious faith, but I'm not sure it has ever been a technologically defensible opinion. Before the recent order of magnitude drops in battery prices, it may have been an economical argument, but to make that economic argument one would have to ignore the technological tech curve of solar and renewables.

And now that nuclear won't be able to compete on the economics, whereas 10 years ago we though we could still build nuclear for historical prices, people have not updated their reasoning.

Most of the models that included nuclear alongside renewables used far far lower prices for nuclear than we can actually build it for. And even then, nuclear was only selected at ~10% of generation for cost reasons, not tech reasons.

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#145

Post by connicpu »

epistasis wrote: post #139
throwaway894345 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that electrification of fossil fuel applications is going to significantly increase the demand on our grid. So it’s not enough to get to parity in renewables, but we have to go far beyond our current capacity in order to accommodate a world in which almost every car is electric (whether electric hybrid or green hydrogen) and almost every home uses electric rather than natural gas for heating (not to me…

It's going to increase the amount of energy flowing through the grid, but there's plenty of excess grid capacity to accommodate that. The grid is a technological marvel, but one weakness about it is that it has never included storage except small amount of hydro (which I've heard some claim is because nuclear needed it so that the reactor could stay always on, but I have my doubts on that origin story) Without storag…

Even without any other sources of power, storage already makes sense for hydro since ideally you'd like to store excess water that comes during above average rainy seasons so that you have more power to use during a drought, but allowing your nuclear base load to stay running even when the rest of the grid demands less does seem like another useful benefit

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#146

Post by qqqwerty »

thrown_22 wrote: post #125
thayne wrote: post #57

"in Australia" is an important qualification here. Australia has a very high ratio of available solar and wind energy to population. Not that getting Australia fully on renewables wouldn't be exciting. But it is definitely an easier target than say the US.

Australian energy prices doubled in the last 6 months. I'm not sure who would ever use the Australian market as a model, other than "under no circumstances follow suit".

Energy prices everywhere are up. That is what happens when the global economy is bouncing back from a pandemic and one of the biggest energy suppliers in the world decides to embark on the first major land war in Europe in over 70 years.

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#147

Post by sokoloff »

ktzar wrote: post #140

I wonder how would the results vary if for every MW of renewables there was 100kWh of storage (using flywheels, lipo, thermal rock, gravity, etc...). I really believe a future with 100% renewables is very, very close. Will happen in the 2030s.

That’s only 6 minutes of peak load worth of storage (assuming it’s rated on output kWh, perhaps only 5 minutes otherwise). If you have three different types of renewables, all equally sized, and uncorrelated, it’s 18/15 minutes against a single type of renewable being offline.

That doesn’t seem like enough for a 100% renewables grid to be 3 9’s reliable.

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#148

Post by epistasis »

thrown_22 wrote: post #125
thayne wrote: post #57

"in Australia" is an important qualification here. Australia has a very high ratio of available solar and wind energy to population. Not that getting Australia fully on renewables wouldn't be exciting. But it is definitely an easier target than say the US.

Australian energy prices doubled in the last 6 months. I'm not sure who would ever use the Australian market as a model, other than "under no circumstances follow suit".

Anything else happened the past six months that might, say, affect the LNG prices and thus electricity prices overall?

European prices are up far far higher than 2x

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-23/european-...

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#149

Post by ZeroGravitas »

sremani wrote: post #142
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a lot of people live in Texas and California where renewables are already pretty advanced, plus there's nuclear in the north, and they have hydro and grid connections with Canada who have even more hydro and nuclear so the USA should be easier. The US intends to hit this target (i.e. 95% carbon-free generation) in 8 years I think, with 100% and wider electrification of current fossil fuel uses in 2035 and it di…

>> 95% carbon-free generation I am still not clearly getting the picture here - what exactly this means. US has about 30% electricity generated by Coal and I do not see that go away in next 20 years let alone 8. What am I missing here? As of today, US energy portfolio is around 83% fossil. The best case scenario for 2040 is something like 50%, that includes we get Nuclear fusion, massive battery storage, material sci…

All the big developed nations have committed to phase out coal by 2030, the USA skipped it because of politics, but if you read any of the coverage of that they usually say that it would happen with or without a government commitment e.g.

Why the U.S. Didn’t Join 40 Other Countries in Pledge to End Coal

subtitle: Economics is already playing a large role in curtailing American coal power

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-u-s-didnt...

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#150

Post by dougmwne »

thayne wrote: post #57

"in Australia" is an important qualification here. Australia has a very high ratio of available solar and wind energy to population. Not that getting Australia fully on renewables wouldn't be exciting. But it is definitely an easier target than say the US.

The US also has plentiful natural resources vs. population size. It seems that Europe would be the least naturally blessed considering high per capita energy use and less solar resources. China has a high population to support, but also owns all that renewables manuring capacity. Other countries do not have such large and energy intense populations.
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