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Solar and batteries can power the world

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Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#191

Post by coryrc »

juleiie wrote: post #76
PyWoody wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? They store the surplus in their batteries during the day and use it at night. I genuinely do not understand why people are so afraid of solar. It's baffling.

Solar generates like 1/10 in the northern countries for half of the year. No batteries currently can solve this. The problem with global ecological regulations is they never differentiate between countries on the equator or 30th parallel with countries around 60. They expect everyone to only run on sun and wind. It isn't possible. There has to be at least nuclear which is ridiculously expensive. It's generally not an…

There's a solution that costs less than fossil fuels, but it's a coordination problem and the USA is structurally unable to solve those anymore. I guess the Soviet Union wins the last laugh?

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

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#192

Post by pingou »

proee wrote: post #170

EVs are essentially a giant battery on wheels. Seems there is a good opportunity to configure them as bidirectional power banks for your local grid. You could rewire all parking slots to have a plugin that acts as a bidirectional power station. Imaging how much power could be moved around with such a grid! This would require a major investment in power transmission layouts, but a city full of batteries on wheels. Cal…

Just charging your car when electricity is cheap and avoiding times when it is scarce would solve most of the issues, provided there is a dynamic pricing system in place.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#193

Post by zozbot234 »

DangitBobby wrote: post #46
mtoner23 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then they are wrong. The last 5-10 percent is the hardest part and it's the one consumers complain the most about! You can't run a factory on 90% power availability

But you _can_ run it on 90% solar plus 10% fossil fuels to achieve 100% power availability, which is what GP and the article suggest.

That's not carbon neutral. You can use synthetic fuels to make it fully carbon neutral (way easier to store than the often-proposed H2) but that's really just another battery.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#194

Post by chrisBob »

chongli wrote: post #60
PyWoody wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a northern climate and I know multiple people who are net zero with solar+basic battery. Proper insulation and good windows go a very long way. For instance, I set my heat to 66F during the day and 60F at night. When I wake up in the morning, the register is usually still above 60F.

66F is ridiculously cold to me, and I live in Canada where it can reach -40(F or C) in the winter. I would find that very uncomfortable and elderly people would be shivering constantly and highly susceptible to respiratory illness. I have a modern cold climate air source heat pump which essentially needs to run 24 hours a day to maintain a stable 20C when the outdoor temperatures reach -15C. Below that, the heat pump…

People acclimatize pretty well if you let them. We keep our house at 65F all winter, and set the AC for 85F in the summer and everyone is pretty happy. The payback period on a good sweater is not very long.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#195

Post by jwr »

j23n wrote: post #107
jwr wrote: post #49

No, they can't, not unless we get rid of the fossil fuel lobby, which pretty much runs the world these days. Which isn't surprising, given that fossil fuels are the largest industry ever created by mankind. If you compare it to anything else which was actively harmful and yet big money tried to convince you it wasn't (like tobacco, alcohol, or really anything else), there is nothing that huge. So it isn't surprising…

I think this sells the German energy mix short - fossil fuel has been on a steady decline in the energy mix for about 2 decades now. Comparing 2020[^2] to 2025[^1]: - renewables (solar+wind) went from 181 TWh to 219 TWh - fossil (coal+gas) stayed constant (177 TWh and 179 TWh) So I'd say we switched from nuclear (60TWh in 2020) to renewables & imported nuclear - but the long-term trend is towards renewables. [1]: htt…

I realize there is a lot of verbal gymnastics going on around this issue, and the word "renewables" is being used a lot, but my point still stands.

Another way to look at your numbers is that had the nuclear plants not been turned off, fossil (coal+gas) could have been reduced by 60TWh.

But they weren't reduced. They remained the same.

From the point of view of the fossil fuel industry: WIN!

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#196

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #78
tenthirtyam wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC nuclear doesn't really work well as the last 5-10%. Start-up and shut-down for nuclear reactors is a slow process. When it's generating, it needs to just keep on generating. Not so quick to dial down or up just because the wind is(n't) blowing.

It's not that slow. They can ramp up and down over hours, and those demand patterns are known in advance. Combine with battery, pumped storage, or synfuel generation to soak up excess power during low demand times, and use that to provide peaker capacity during high demand times.

The problem is the economics. They’re just horrifyingly expensive to build. The equivalent to each new large scale reactor in GWe requires tens of billions in subsidies.

The next problem comes from incentives. Why should anyone with solar or storage buy this expensive grid based nuclear electricity?

Why should their neighbors not buy surplus renewables and instead pay out of their nose for expensive nuclear powered electricity?

EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for the existing french nuclear fleet. Let alone the horrifyingly expensive new builds.

And that is France which has been actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, and it still leaks in on pure economics.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#197

Post by pingou »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #185
DangitBobby wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you _can_ run it on 90% solar plus 10% fossil fuels to achieve 100% power availability, which is what GP and the article suggest.

The issue is that to achieve that you can't just build 90% solar plus 10% fossil fuels. You would need to build 100% solar + 100% fossil fuels for the 10% of the time solar doesn't work.

Good thing it's already built then! Well, of course it cost money to maintain though.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#198

Post by pishpash »

brianwawok wrote: post #65
toasty228 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People still build houses like energy is cheap and abundant. A properly insulated house in any temperate climate require very little heating or cooling. Spend 50k on insulation that will last the life of the building instead of 50k on heating and cooling devices which will need constant maintenance and replacement + fuel and end up costing 10x more over the life of the building. A modern house with modern insulation…

In the short term the math is usually bad. Can be a 20, 30, 40 year payback on insulation. For the builder? It’s almost for sure a loss unless he can play the green card. For any individual owner? They are likely to leave before they recoup a project like this. Appraisals on houses are price per square foot with a bedroom and bathroom modifier. Until people start pricing in energy efficiency in homes, say a price mul…

That's an appraisal problem. Even cars are valued on more things but they do have mpg plastered everywhere.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#199

Post by opo »

balderdash wrote: post #91
mbesto wrote: post #41

Fun fact, 12 million hectares of land of used to produce corn used for ethanol which is used to produce gas. I'll let you draw the conclusion. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/04/trading-some-corn-e...

I’d rather people went rooftop solar, and put that land to producing food.

The consumer rooftop solar cost is usually one of the most expensive ways you can generate electricity - often several times the cost of utility solar installations. The high rooftop solar price is usually hidden (at least in the USA) because no power source has been as subsidized as rooftop solar. Besides direct subsidies, wealthier home owners have often been paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid. This causes higher electricity bills for those in apartments and those who can't afford to put panels on their roof. Also, in almost all cases, the home installation doesn’t have enough battery power to actually last through inclement weather and so is free riding on the reliability provided by the grid, putting more costs on the less well off. The whole thing is sort of a reverse Robin Hood scheme.

Rooftop solar is good but it shouldn't be a gift to the wealthier residents paid for by those less wealthy. Any subsidies for solar power should go to utility grade solar. Money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much, much, further than a dollar spent subsidizing wealthy homeowners who install panels on their roof.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#200

Post by pydry »

aidenn0 wrote: post #134
pydry wrote: post #4

>We can get far without worrying about the last 5-10%. The solutions for the last 5-10% could be fossil fuels in the short-term, long-duration storage as it matures, or easily storeable e-biofuels. I think a lot of people truly dont get this . Those days when the wind isnt blowing, the sun isnt shining and the batteries and pumped storage are depleted can be easily handled with, e.g. power2gas. It's pretty expensive…

And nuclear is already in the 5-10% range in the US, so if we just maintained that level, we could get carbon free.

No, you couldnt. Nuclear power is not dispatchable.
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