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Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

rameznaam.com

171–180 of 231 posts

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#171
post #81

One of the best things about the solar/wind + storage combination is that it's decentralized and cheap at small scale. This makes serious electrification of remote and impoverished places viable. It reminds me of the wildfire spread of cell service in places that didn't have phones before, only on a larger and more important scale. Give a village cheap electricity, and awesome things will happen. This gets to another…

I am very much pro-nuclear. I argue against wind and wind alone, it is a very unreliable source of energy, I think it is crazy to rely on gusts of wind to power a population. Nuclear is the only technology which offers a base load without burning fossils. Solar I am happy with, it could be better than nuclear but the storage problem needs solving before it gets onto everyone's roof. That's another problem with solar,…

meh once the storage problem is for some value of solved it all becomes a mere optimisation problem.

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but you seemed to imply that one can only learn from certain people in certain contexts. I find that I gain surprising insight from unexpected people at unexpected times. HN is not an exception.

I wasn't implying anything, I was directly stating that the folks who are most beneficial to learn from aren't making elaborate posts on HN, and you shouldn't demand that they do. You're just being lazy by demanding someone to do your research or write an article for you. Think of it from their perspective: why would they? Any reason someone might post on HN with a comment containing original or well-thought content…

I believe you should reread the previous parts of the thread, including your own, because it seems like your understanding of the positions in this argument have shifted. melling isn't demanding that arbitrary experts make elaborate posts on HN for his or her education and betterment. Rather, melling seems to believe that people who present information as knowledge in the comments section should be able and willing to explain the source of their certainty.

You're positing that people with expert knowledge have an inherent interest in exposing that knowledge to as large an audience as possible, and that this interest is so significant that they would always preferentially invest the extra effort and resources required to write a blog post or website article that properly contextualized and presented the information.

You're positing that the prospect of writing an article or blog post would preclude the possibility of responding to the comment on HN.

You're positing that the nature of this interest implies that these experts would wish to submit their own writings to HN.

To me, it seems that these terms must imply that this interest is not so much in the distribution of information, but in publicity and the tacit validation of expertise brought by the ownership of the information as an original source.

In my experience, this does not reflect the general behaviour of domain experts, who routinely correspond on mailing lists, usenet, and comment forums, including HN. There are in fact extensive comments made by at least one electrical engineer in response to this HN submission.

There is a subset of experts who already blog, for whatever reason, and stand to gain in some way by presenting themselves as an authortative source of knowledge and thought to the HN audience. However, many such persons (patio11 comes to mind) routinely write extensive responses to comments on HN.

Personally, the specific reason I began to routinely read the comments on HN was precisely because I could read fascinating domain-expert knowledge, presented in dense paragraphs, regarding topics that interested me. I usually read the comments about a submission before reading it.

Personally, I do wish to know whether someone's thoughts on a topic reflect domain expertise, or hobby interest; I do wish to know whether an assertion is established fact within a domain, controversial, sourced from an article or a blog post, et cetera, especially if that assertion seems dubious to me; the alternative is to simply continue believing what I believe, and to disregard such statements. In my experience, however, it is sometimes I who is wrong, and the dubious assertion which is correct.

In closing, I'd like to mention that melling, as the new OP of this now detached comment thread, was censured for describing someone's assertions as 'chest beating', which I think was appropriate. However, in the course of your comment here, you have accidentally or deliberately asserted that he was both "lazy" and "wasting everyone's time." I don't think that this sort of argumentation is useful, and I doubt that it is acceptable in your team debates. dang[a moderator]'s comment in reply to melling about "jabs" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378899) is relevant, well-written, and interesting, and I think that you could benefit from reading it.

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#173
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the other poster said, lightning can be dealt with, but I'm very glad I don't have your problem. You are dealing with the worst possible combinations of landscape and expense. My honest answer is you need a specialist with the proper testing equipment measure the resistance to earth at your location. If it is very high you will likely need deep holes dug (reading about one mountain top location that needed 600'…

I'm certain there's a perfectly logical answer to this question, but I couldn't find it in 5 minutes of googling: Why can't the ocean be used as ground?

Very good question. I've posted it to Stack Exchange, let's see if someone answers.

http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/164898/can-th...

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#174
Shocked at the amount of support for nuclear here. Use the data - how much solar, wind and nuclear capacity had been installed in the last 5 years?

Nuclear is not getting cheaper, not significantly, so what does this imply for the next five years? The answers are obvious, and non nuclear.

New Zealand, where I live, declared itself nuclear free in 1984. We are currently generating 70-80% of our electricity using renewable/low/zero emission methods.

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared with the vast devastation of life which is already taking place as a result of climate change? I'll take my chances with the nukes.

Human life? Is it? Remember famines that used to regularly wipe out the peasants in most civilizations? It's been a while since disasters on those scales happened in most countries. Climate change doesn't sound so bad when you compare it to normal life a few centuries ago.

yes and no... climate change is not about having +2 degrees globally, we can handle that easily even if sea rises significantly. Not even about extinction of a lot of species, which will trash some foodchains around the world. It's more about longer perspective - some effects are cascading, and in longer uncontroleld run, we might end up with pretty much inhabitable planet (at least for mankind). Life itself will handle this easily, mass extinctions happened many times in the past for various reasons, mankind in its current level of evolution would be probably over.

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#176

Shocked at the amount of support for nuclear here. Use the data - how much solar, wind and nuclear capacity had been installed in the last 5 years? Nuclear is not getting cheaper, not significantly, so what does this imply for the next five years? The answers are obvious, and non nuclear. New Zealand, where I live, declared itself nuclear free in 1984. We are currently generating 70-80% of our electricity using renew…

Apologies for the mobile link, but [0] says that in 2014 over 50% of your energy was from oil and coal. Have you a source on your claims? I know that many of the non-nuclear countries in Europe end up importing a lot of their power from neighbouring countries like France, who's main supply is nuclear.

The big advantage of nuclear is it's relatively safe and readily available. How many people have been killed in nuclear related incidents in the past 30 years vs people killed in coal mines, for instance?

[0] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_New_Zealand

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#177
post #81

One of the best things about the solar/wind + storage combination is that it's decentralized and cheap at small scale. This makes serious electrification of remote and impoverished places viable. It reminds me of the wildfire spread of cell service in places that didn't have phones before, only on a larger and more important scale. Give a village cheap electricity, and awesome things will happen. This gets to another…

I wrote a couple pro-nuclear comments here. I'm perfectly happy with wind and solar and think we should roll it out as fast as we can, as well as nuclear. Many of the wind/solar advocates, on the other hand, are strongly anti-nuclear. Given the state of the climate that just doesn't make sense to me. All these technologies have their own advantages, and we should use each where it's most effective.

I think there are two separate dynamics here, and its worth keeping them separate.

Firstly, there is the traditional concern of the green movement with nuclear waste and nuclear weapons proliferation. Nuclear advocates say these concerns are misplaced because of nuclear technology innovations (although its not clear how close the new technology is to wide deployment).

Secondly, there is an economic and free-market concern. Nuclear power plants generally only get built in highly regulated, centrally planned electricity markets with a great deal of Government financial support.

The projects to build them, at least in modern Western states, tend to be complex, expensive and prone to overruns. These projects generally need the plants to run all the time with guaranteed rates for the business case to stack up.

This is entirely at odds with solar and wind, which are highly democratised -- your Aunty can put solar on her roof -- and even when deployed at 'grid scale' tend to suck the profits out of wholesale electricity markets, because they have the lowest short-run costs and always out bid other energy sources.

In deregulated electricity markets renewables plus gas beat nuclear on price. We need storage to push gas out of the market.

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#178
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote a couple pro-nuclear comments here. I'm perfectly happy with wind and solar and think we should roll it out as fast as we can, as well as nuclear. Many of the wind/solar advocates, on the other hand, are strongly anti-nuclear. Given the state of the climate that just doesn't make sense to me. All these technologies have their own advantages, and we should use each where it's most effective.

Technologies also have risks. If the risk of a technology is the vast devastation of life it should not be used.

I agree. How many more thousands of miners must be killed before we finally abolish coal as a fuel source?

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#179

If utilities install these batteries near the last mile, would that also cut down on power outages during storms?

Probably not since most radial power systems are not designed to support islanded operation for a segment of the system. Grid batteries will likely be designed to automatically disconnect during grid outages just like distributed generation.

but grid-edge storage does help a bit to resiliency of grid.

Re: Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap

#180
post #81

One of the best things about the solar/wind + storage combination is that it's decentralized and cheap at small scale. This makes serious electrification of remote and impoverished places viable. It reminds me of the wildfire spread of cell service in places that didn't have phones before, only on a larger and more important scale. Give a village cheap electricity, and awesome things will happen. This gets to another…

I am very much pro-nuclear. I argue against wind and wind alone, it is a very unreliable source of energy, I think it is crazy to rely on gusts of wind to power a population. Nuclear is the only technology which offers a base load without burning fossils. Solar I am happy with, it could be better than nuclear but the storage problem needs solving before it gets onto everyone's roof. That's another problem with solar,…

I think you'd benefit from looking at some actual data. In practice, wind is predictable enough.

You don't need baseload. It's a concept that makes sense when you have power plants with flat output profiles.

What you actually need is to always match the demand. Nuclear isn't some magical silver bullet here. As it turns out, it's simply far too expensive to use for fulfilling the daily peak demands.

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