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How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

nytimes.com

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Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#231

Post by coryfklein »

magduf wrote: post #228
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating a power plant in the middle of the World's largest ocean, then transmitting the power 4500+ miles (7000+ km) across that ocean would be one of the World's major engineering undertakings, and vastly more expensive than any current method of generating electricity.

Agreed. The ocean is just too deep there. I have a better idea for a megaproject: build a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar, and lower the water level of the Mediterranean. You could get an enormous amount of power from a hydroelectric dam in this location (and later another one near Sicily, after the Mediterranean's level is lowered), plus you'd have a huge amount of new land in the area.

Queue the next crypto fancy: Gibraltarcoin! Decentralized electricity monetization transfer something something profit.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#232

Post by imtringued »

NullPrefix wrote: post #121
emiliobumachar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard that crypto mining hardware has to have decent-ish (80-90%) uptime to be profitable. That would make it infeasible to have it on standby waiting for excess energy on the grid.

Isn't the number 80-90% based on electricity price?

Electricity prices matter but lower prices give diminishing returns.

Going from $0.20 per kWh $0.05 to per kWh only increases profits by 50%

http://whattomine.com/coins/151-eth-ethash?utf8=%E2%9C%93&hr...

vs

http://whattomine.com/coins/151-eth-ethash?utf8=%E2%9C%93&hr...

and going from 0.05 to -0.05 only increases it by 20%

http://whattomine.com/coins/151-eth-ethash?utf8=%E2%9C%93&hr...

By the way, these mining calculators are very "optimistic" but for relative comparisons they are sufficient. In practice you will get significantly less because of increasing difficulty and hidden costs like motherboards, CPUs, etc.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#233

Post by jimktrains2 »

vidarh wrote: post #217
jimktrains2 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're quite getting this. There are times where there is excess demand, even when removing these stores. What's so hard to understand? Prices go negative in the US at times and in Germany more often. That is exactly when something like this would be used: to store that capacity.

The point is that you have a given supply and demand. As long as they are in the right positions in the grid that transmission capacity is not the limiting factor, then you can fix that by reducing supply, or by increasing demand - apart from the issue of transmission those options are equivalent from the point of view of bringing the supply under control. They may not be equivalent in terms of cost, but that is a se…

> Having a reservoir as the potential to significantly increase the reduction in excess supply you can handle, that is true, but the lack of that option does not change the benefit of shutting off generating capacity.

The point is to not turn off generation capacity that we don't control the start of, like wind. Why should we not generate if the wind is blowing at night?

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#234

Post by sharpercoder »

coryfklein wrote: post #133

Selling solar back to the grid has one major problem that, fortunately, doesn't plague windmill installations: The Duck Curve [1]. The problem is that peak energy usage now occurs after sunset . So no matter how many solar panels you stack on your home, around 6-7 PM the coal, oil, and gas power plants all have to spin up to their max capacity. Your solar panels are new less likely to _replace_ a coal power plant, al…

The market should be able to handle this. Thus, the government should create the curcumstances this can occur, which means in practice that timeslot-based tarifs should be enabled.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#235

Post by philipkglass »

Retric wrote: post #219
philipkglass wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of yet there is nowhere in the world where the installed cost of a 50 kWh hour battery system is only $10,000. I don't think you can even get that much storage for that little money even if you're qualified to install it yourself and are just paying for the hardware. Are you perhaps just looking at wholesale cell costs?

I don't think there is any reason for a home use to install a battery pack without solar power, and with solar power they already need an inverter. https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/25kwh-48v-LiFePo4-bat... Now this is Alibaba so we are talking about dubious quality still it's showing 2,000$ for 25kwh battery pack when buying 2 or more. 50kwh is 2 so that's 4,000$. That's for Lithium iron phosphate battery which…

If that's not a scam or something that fails in 2 years, it's pretty amazing. At a lifetime of 3500 full-depth cycles it works out to a lifetime capital cost of only 2.2 cents per kWh. In sunny regions, with instantaneous solar generating costs already below 2.5 cents/kWh, it means that you can supply power around the clock at costs lower than fossil combustion.

In a March 2018 report, BNEF put 2017 utility-scale battery costs at $209/kWh:

https://about.bnef.com/blog/tumbling-costs-wind-solar-batter...

And that report was already taking into account global supply chains. That's why I am skeptical about the low Alibaba price. If EPCs can get reliable battery packs at $78/kWh (sans inverter) just by ordering from China, I would expect utility scale battery installation rates to soon go from "brisk" to "breakneck."

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#236

Post by macmac »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #22
macmac wrote: post #7

Wind turbines, they are not milling anything. One would have hoped that a paper like NYT would something as basic as that right.

Windmill is a defacto synonym for wind turbines in most english speaking countries

Not in the industry.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#237

Post by rsynnott »

gehsty wrote: post #146
TeMPOraL wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's precisely the thing I was referring to. Wasn't sure about the correct terminology (not an EE) so I didn't try to make the comment sciency-souding :).

I work installing these cables and never heard this discussed, maybe at the voltages / transmission subsea cables work at (220kV, 1000s of amps) makes this effect negligible?

Are they AC? My impression was that practically all vaguely modern undersea cables are high voltage DC.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#238

Post by rsynnott »

DanCarvajal wrote: post #57

Also killing birds and bats though....

If you’re concerned about this, you should be a lot more worried about cats, tall buildings, cars, electric transmission lines, and farming, all of which kill orders of magnitude more birds.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#239

Post by skookumchuck »

coryfklein wrote: post #133

Selling solar back to the grid has one major problem that, fortunately, doesn't plague windmill installations: The Duck Curve [1]. The problem is that peak energy usage now occurs after sunset . So no matter how many solar panels you stack on your home, around 6-7 PM the coal, oil, and gas power plants all have to spin up to their max capacity. Your solar panels are new less likely to _replace_ a coal power plant, al…

The solution is straightforward - lower consumer electricity rates when power is cheap, and raise them when it is expensive. Consumers will naturally shift the elastic part of their electric demand to when power is cheap.

For example, charging the car when power is cheap.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#240

Post by skookumchuck »

magduf wrote: post #228
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating a power plant in the middle of the World's largest ocean, then transmitting the power 4500+ miles (7000+ km) across that ocean would be one of the World's major engineering undertakings, and vastly more expensive than any current method of generating electricity.

Agreed. The ocean is just too deep there. I have a better idea for a megaproject: build a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar, and lower the water level of the Mediterranean. You could get an enormous amount of power from a hydroelectric dam in this location (and later another one near Sicily, after the Mediterranean's level is lowered), plus you'd have a huge amount of new land in the area.

Would you want to live below sea level and trust the dam? Not me.
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