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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

#151

Post by intrepidhero »

ciconia wrote: post #128

A few random thoughts: 1. There are symbiotic relationships between different sources of energy. In order to suck petrol out of the earth we need coal (used in steel manufacturing). In order to mine coal we need petrol (used by diggers and for transport). We still don't know how to manufacture solar panels and wind turbines without fossil fuels. The mining, steel forging and international transport of these products…

And random responses.

1. I don't know if the coal used to make steal can be replaced with synthetic sources but petrol (and diesel and oil) can absolutely be replaced with synthetic fuel powered by renewable energy and carbon capture. The tech is old and boring. What's needed are cheaper renewable sources and more expensive oil, both of which are happening right now.

2. You're absolutely right and there is some debate that battery production can ever scale to level needed. Fortunately some combination of batteries and synthetic fuel almost certainly can get us to 100%.

3. Spot on and highly concerning, particularly as demand for these things at low cost has driven mining operations to places with poor environmental protections.

4. Great point. Demand side management and spot pricing are already things and more wide spread implementations will definitely make renewables more economical. I personally will be super excited to see one of the companies pursuing synthetic fuels figure out how to take advantage of surplus generation to capture carbon and turn it into essentially high energy density storage.

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

#152

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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…

> 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

This seems ambitious. Source?

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

#153

Post by philipkglass »

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…

I don't expect the US to hit that ambitious 2030 target. But you may not realize how fast the American generation mix has been changing recently. In 2015 coal supplied 33% of American electricity generation and renewables supplied 13%:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170328200331/https://www.eia.g...

Coal supplied 21.8% of US electricity generation in 2021 and renewables supplied 20.1%:

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427

Coal is the fastest-shrinking electrical power source in the US:

"Coal will account for 85% of U.S. electric generating capacity retirements in 2022"

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50838

Solar and wind are the fastest-growing sources:

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/

The largest increases in U.S. electricity generation in our forecast come from renewable energy sources, mostly solar and wind. We expect renewable sources will provide 22% of U.S. generation in 2022 and 24% in 2023, up from 20% in 2021.

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

#154

Post by zo1 »

mattferderer wrote: post #81
syncsynchalt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar can be decentralized, wind less so. I don't know what wind looks like in Australia but in the US it heavily favors places like the Front Range and the Wyoming Divide: https://california-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com/77/87/8... EDIT: Looking at the same map for Australia I see that wind power potential tends to be strongest coastally, which matches population density (nice!) I'll still say that overall you c…

That map doesn't take off shore into an account though. Lots of potential in the oceans & Great Lakes.

Am I the only one that's kinda off put or frankly disgusted by the thought of ruining our nature by peppering it with giant wind turbines? At what point does it stop?

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

#155

Post by s1artibartfast »

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…

Us coal production is at 22% down from 39% in 2014. That's a 17% reduction in 9 years with 22% to go.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_power_in_the_United_Sta...

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

#156

Post by [deleted] »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #149
sremani wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.scientificamerica…

[deleted]

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

#157

Post by [deleted] »

Retric wrote: post #115
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that renewable hydro is unlikely to grow much in the USA, while wind and solar will be growing exponentially. Hydro is cool, and works well with solar/wind/nuclear to help match supply and demand, but ... If you look at global renewable output, the big chunk of hydro production that's been flat for decades, somewhat obscures the recent sudden rise of solar and wind.

Swapping hydro from 24/7 power to a backup for wind and solar goes a long way to eliminate the need for storage. We don’t need more total kWh per year of hydro we need to be able to more flexibility get those kWh.

[deleted]

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

#158

Post by SlickNixon »

kkfx wrote: post #76
snek_case wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot of cynicism around renewable energy and electric cars and I frankly don't get it. The typical cynical approach is to point out one potential problem, and dismiss the entire solution as if it was worthless, which is obviously false. As others have pointed out, there are now HVDC lines that can go over thousands of kilometers (transcontinental scale!) with reasonable losses. There's no reason to believe tha…

Did you consider how strategical targets became such networks? How much geopolitics nightmares they represent?

As opposed to fossil fuels, famously free of geopolitical nightmares.

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

#159

Post by scarby2 »

epistasis wrote: post #143
insane_dreamer wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

The data doesn't include SMRs and MSRs which could be extremely compelling both from a cost and time to build perspective (or they could be a dead end).

Current gen LWRs are problematic for all sorts of reasons but i wouldn't rule nuclear out of the fight just yet. Especially when you take into account china's track record of delivering nuclear plants at a competitive price.

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

#160

Post by s1artibartfast »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #103
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…

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'm not all in on nuclear, but nameplate comparison is meaningless. Solar might hit the name plate for a few hours a day with suitable weather while nuclear can run 24/7 or on demand.
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