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For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

theglobeandmail.com

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Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#191

Post by twelve40 »

486sx33 wrote: post #173
eldaisfish wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is complete nonsense. India is among the world’s five largest economies and is continuing to grow. Part of a growing economy is falling poverty and growing electrical demand. how exactly do you propose India meet the growing electric demands of her residents? The Russian gas and oil story is more pragmatism than evil intent. One part of your comment is accurate - India’s exports are tiny relative to its populati…

Renewables, conservation, and stop growing so many people.

> stop growing so many people

lol they did just that. China is not "growing so many people" anymore, and neither is India, really. I suppose they could cull some of the previously grown people to get under 5 million like Alberta and to make your advice actually useful. But maybe your obvious solutions just haven't occurred to them yet.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#192

Post by generic92034 »

DowagerDave wrote: post #126
generic92034 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: Is it clear that wind really could not produce more electricity right now? Depending on the way producers are chosen and the net is "congested" the wind farms might just not be allowed to contribute.

>> the wind farms might just not be allowed to contribute. Alberta uses a bid system where everyone who bids under the price that (based on demand) ends up getting set, gets to participate and get paid. Because renewable is tough to store, they almost always bid zero to make sure it gets included. The same thing happens for the renewable portion of integrated providers; they bid low on the renewable to make sure they…

In the EU the merit order principle is used ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit_order ). So, sometimes that might mean a large energy company finds that their wind farm suddenly needs a break for maintenance work, so a much more expensive source can raise the price for everyone. ;)

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#193

Post by [deleted] »

quacked wrote: post #141
akira2501 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and so they're producing emissions "for" the western nations in a sort of de facto shell game. Then the solution is to ban Chinese imports or tax them to a level that it's no longer economically viable to import them. Problem "solved," right?

I mean, it depends on what problem you're trying to solve. If you want to dramatically skyrocket the prices of consumer goods, reduce every American's individual buying power, tank the stock market, crater everyone's retirement accounts, and destabilize the current world economic order, then that would be a terrible move. I kind of want all that to happen, though, so I think it's a good move. I don't like living in a…

[deleted]

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#194

Post by ben_w »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #161
ben_w wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas would be a lot less vulnerable to such volatility if they got out of their own way and connected their grid properly to either (or both) of America's east and west grids.

"Plan to link Texas ERCOT electric grid to southeastern U.S. states is in the works." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38861358 https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2024/01/03/plan-to-...

Of the five links between this comment and the other, I can only access one of them. Interchange domain is blocked, khou is access denied, dallasnews is a paywall.

What I do hear about is this (possibly outdated, I'm increasingly noticing the references there are not kept up to date) claim on Wikipedia:

> On October 13, 2009, the Tres Amigas SuperStation was announced to connect the Eastern, Western and Texas Interconnections via eight 5 GW superconductor links, although the Texas Interconnection does not intend to connect for regulatory reasons. The Eastern Interconnection withdrew from the project in 2015, rendering the project moot. Construction was never started.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#195

Post by triceratops »

486sx33 wrote: post #168
quacked wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please cite the raw numbers you used to make your claims, and their sources. I don't doubt that on a per capita basis Canadians emit more than Chinese do; furthermore, China is the source of many of the goods that western nations consume, and so they're producing emissions "for" the western nations in a sort of de facto shell game. However, China has no interest in giving its manufacturing base "back" to the west, an…

It’s impossible for Canadians to “emit” more on a per capita basis than China does, in fact Canada is a net sink of carbon emissions in the world. The “emissions” from Canada are a net negative because of its immense forests! What does China to do their forests? They chop them down

Bit of a double-edged sword, those forests.

"Canada's Record-breaking 2023 Wildfires Released Nearly 4 Times More Carbon than Global Aviation"

Slightly unfair because climate change makes those forest more likely to burn down. But still.

https://www.wri.org/insights/canada-wildfire-emissions

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#196

Post by triceratops »

486sx33 wrote: post #171
jogjayr wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Indian immigrant to Canada, it is frustrating to see people believe it's a choice. I also hear a lot of hate for the carbon tax and rebate program in Canada. I support the program, even though it costs me money. > someone who lives in Canada and has spend so much money Which means Canada has money. India is much poorer on a per-capita basis. They can become wealthy by developing their economy. India can't spend…

India needs to focus on decreasing its birth rate, which it completely ignores. They can’t just keep making more people and expect things to world out

Are you from 1995?

India's population density (people/land) is about the same as the Netherlands. The birth rate is nearly at replacement and continues to drop, and it's still a poor country! That's nearly unprecedented.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#197

Post by triceratops »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #178
jogjayr wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Indian immigrant to Canada, it is frustrating to see people believe it's a choice. I also hear a lot of hate for the carbon tax and rebate program in Canada. I support the program, even though it costs me money. > someone who lives in Canada and has spend so much money Which means Canada has money. India is much poorer on a per-capita basis. They can become wealthy by developing their economy. India can't spend…

India needs electricity to develop their economy. The cheapest electricity is solar.

When the sun shines, no question about it solar is the cheapest. But is it still the cheapest when you account for battery storage?

Remember, poor countries can't just print dollars to buy batteries from China. If they don't have domestic manufacturing capacity, they have to spend foreign exchange reserves to pay for the imports. That gets expensive real quick.

Developing countries also often lack the technical talent available in wealthier ones. Quickly spinning up battery manufacturing can be difficult to do.

All I'm saying is: don't assume these countries haven't done the math for themselves. Saying "just use solar" might be sound advice. But it might also be a rich person telling a poor person to buy a Costco membership because it saves money. It's objectively correct but it may not be feasible for the poor person.

If anything developing countries are more open to the cheapest solution. They can't afford to get into ideological debates about whether climate change is real or worry about saving coal jobs by promoting "clean coal".

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#198

Post by pfdietz »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #180
pfdietz wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen on this scale would be stored underground, preferably in solution mined salt caverns. This is a well established technology, although it's more used for storing natural gas. These caverns are very inexpensive to build, which is why they are used. Alberta, as it turns out, is underlaid by kilometers of sedimentary rock that includes salt formations.

Still sounds more expensive than a holding pond.

If one compares the heat of combustion of hydrogen stored at 100 bar and 20 C, to the energy of water elevated by 100 meters, the former exceeds the latter (per unit volume) by a factor of 1000. So that "holding pond" is going to be much, MUCH larger than the solution-mined cavern for storage systems of equal capacity (and remember one needs two reservoirs.)

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#199

Post by energy123 »

7thaccount wrote: post #73
octocop wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wind correlation drops exponentially as a function of distance. By what principle? I'm just curious, first time I'm hearing this.

They just mean if you have geographical diversity, it helps with the availability of renewables. For example, if wind is in 5 different locations across Alberta (for sake of example), you're less likely to run into issues with losing it all at once like you would if all your wind came from a single area and the wind stopped blowing there or dropped to a very low value.

Yeah, and notably it's exponential in distance, not linear.

There's also a diversification benefit for solar due to two reasons, one reason is rainfall is less likely to impact a large land mass at the same time, second is the sunset occurs at different times so you can have a one hour window to offset the evening peak of the other side of the country and vice versa in the morning. Although I don't believe these benefits are exponential as they are for wind.

Re: For the first time in more than 150 years, Alberta's electricity is coal free

#200

Post by CMCDragonkai »

chollida1 wrote: post #74

It is frustrating as someone who lives in Canada and has spend so much money to remove coal that India and China have said FU to the world and increased their coal usage. I guess given that those two countries are keeping Russia afloat by buying their oil it shouldn't be a surprise, but its still disappointing to see those countries choosing the path they did.

I really think you should be taking responsibility over your own current and historical consumption and production patterns instead of pointing fingers at countries who have much larger populations and are much more poorer per capita. Lead the world with better technology, show everybody how it can be done. Everybody does their bit and we will all benefit.
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