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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

#261

Post by theluketaylor »

dont__panic wrote: post #249
theluketaylor wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New England and upstate NY don't generate nearly enough power for their own needs and buy excess power from Ontario and Quebec. Quebec in particular as Hydro Quebec has a terrifying amount of hydro generation and always has tons of excess. A big chunk of the clean energy in the northeast US comes from Canada. Super cool tool that shows the CO2 intensity of various grids and where power is flowing: https://app.electri…

Very cool site, thanks for linking. Does most of Quebec's hydro power come from dams on the St. Lawrence river? (this would make sense to me, considering the St. Lawrence is the outlet for the largest reservoir of fresh water in the entire world) Or is there another source I'm not thinking of?

Tons of their dams are in northern Quebec in the middle of nowhere. People who have never been to the Canadian Shield have a tough time imagining just how many rivers and lakes there are. It’s basically endless.

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

#262

Post by pfdietz »

galangalalgol wrote: post #259
pfdietz wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can back up the entire grid with combustion turbines burning hydrogen or some other e-fuel. A simple cycle combustion turbine power plant costs $500/kW, 20x cheaper than a nuclear plant ($10,000/kW).

Then don't you have to store the hydrogen somehow? Aren't we still working on that too?

It can be stored underground, just like millions of tonnes of natural gas already is.

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

#263

Post by theluketaylor »

wyager wrote: post #254
theptip wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Transmission losses would eat any benefit, unfortunately. Big “citation needed” on that assertion. HVDC is a widely proposed option and it’s an oversimplification to dismiss it with a single sentence. For example the old DeserTec made a feasibility analysis for HVDC interconnects across EU and into Africa; the problem with that one seemed to be more about geopolitical issues and upfront investment costs, rather tha…

> Big “citation needed” on that assertion. My knowledge of power markets. > HVDC is a widely proposed option I'm sure it's widely proposed by fictional utopian scenario enthusiasts. I will consider it seriously when there's an actual HVDC grid we can use, or even just a successful HVDC interconnect.

There are tons of HVDC interconnects and transmission lines in place, many of which are already over 1000 km long. Many of these projects have been in place for decades. Breakthroughs in solid state HVDC are making it easier and cheaper all the time, but it's not some fanciful science fiction technology. It's a key element of existing power grids already.

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

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

#264

Post by pfdietz »

klyrs wrote: post #221
r00fus wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this surprising. I specced out an L2 charger and it did cost me $2K for the install + charger a few years ago (in an expensive market). The install required a new 100A line pulled to my garage as I had no existing washer/dryer there. What else would you need to support L2 than an extra breaker entry for a 100A?

We'd need to upgrade our panel, as it's already maxed out. On top of that, we'd also have to pay the power company to upgrade their distribution box and the wiring that's buried in a trench that runs under the garage. And, joy of medium density, we'd need about 10 other households to get in on the action and the price I quoted is per unit. Basically, the problem that we're experiencing is that everybody in the neighb…

Maybe you should install some PV? Not because it could produce cheaper power (although it might), but to get around the supply constraint.

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

#265

Post by gpapilion »

klyrs wrote: post #192
throwaway894345 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that electrification of fossil fuel applications is going to significantly increase the demand on our grid. So it’s not enough to get to parity in renewables, but we have to go far beyond our current capacity in order to accommodate a world in which almost every car is electric (whether electric hybrid or green hydrogen) and almost every home uses electric rather than natural gas for heating (not to me…

I'm real bullish on electrification of everything, but the necessary service upgrades for me to get a level 2 charger on my property would cost on the order of $5-10k. Edit: typo corrected, I said level 3 previously

I’m assuming you live in an old house with 100amp or below service. Doesn’t this apply to adding any high current appliances as well?

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

#266

Post by thayne »

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…

The US is a lot more than just California and Texas.

Where I live isn't anywhere close to being fully renewable. And home solar is much less economical than it is in California or Texas, largely due to having less sunlight.

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

#267

Post by fomine3 »

trashtester wrote: post #219
epistasis wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to increase the amount of energy flowing through the grid, but there's plenty of excess grid capacity to accommodate that. The grid is a technological marvel, but one weakness about it is that it has never included storage except small amount of hydro (which I've heard some claim is because nuclear needed it so that the reactor could stay always on, but I have my doubts on that origin story) Without storag…

> Electrification has enormous potential to reduce grid cost, and overall energy cost, IMHO. This sounds a bit strange. I'm pretty sure that electric cars and replacing natural gas for heating will require quite significant investment in electric distribution infrastructure. Also, if you want to be able to transfer a significant fraction of power generated from wind and solar across the country, transmission capacity…

Most infrastructures are built to handle maximum load. If the load become nearly flat (by utilizing idle time) thanks to electrification, it makes easy to collect grid cost.

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

#268

Post by Schroedingersat »

mactitan wrote: post #241
ParksNet wrote: post #169

Its unclear if we even have the metal mining capacity (or the ores in the ground) to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc

A very compelling case and the material for 100% renewables is staggering. How this can be ignored is bewildering. A discussion at: https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/wuc4vg/assoc_prof... Simon Michaux presents the deck of data showing details of where his calculations are coming from that show even the first generation of renewables to replace fossil fuels is going to outstrip our capacity to source the mine…

Right from the introduction he assumes all EVs will be using Li ion which is already being phased out of everything but top performance luxury vehicles, then goes on to double count the storage asking where one could possibly find a few trillion Wh of batteries. Then blindly asserts that recycling will be impractical when recycling facilities already exist and are fighting over access to dead batteries.

He then bemoans the lack of a better solution which, as the people who have been promoting renewables for half a century have been saying the entire time while the infrastructure was torn down, is trains and ebikes (or just bikes in most areas).

Every single statement is fractally wrong and I'm only a paragraph in.

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

#269

Post by fomine3 »

dougmwne wrote: post #150
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.

The US also has plentiful natural resources vs. population size. It seems that Europe would be the least naturally blessed considering high per capita energy use and less solar resources. China has a high population to support, but also owns all that renewables manuring capacity. Other countries do not have such large and energy intense populations.

I feel Europe situation is by far better than here in Japan. Here, land is small, 75% of land is mountains (so hard to bring wind parts), suitable sea (shallower) for cheaper offshore wind is rare than it looks, much area heavily snows, grid is smaller and divided for 50/60Hz, and almost zero natural resources exists. Even if HVDC connection to foreign grid is possible solution, closer bigger lands (China and Russia) are obviously no one want to rely on.

Hydro is a thing thanks to mountains but building new is unpopular to protect naturals. Geothermal is a thing and should be encouraged more, but it seems that it's not enough. Perhaps South Korea is in similar situation but they are still fine to operate nuclear plants.

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

#270

Post by Koemul »

wiz21c wrote: post #77

120GWh of storage is needed (5hours). A MegaPack of Tesla has 3 MWh capacity, so we'd need the equivalent of 40000 of them... Ouch!

According to [1], there were about 20 million cars registered in Australia in 2021. If we turn them all electric, with an average battery size of 50KW/h, we'll get about 1TW/h of storage that can be charged during periods of overproduction and feed part of their capacity back to the grid when needed.

Electric car sales are currently low in Australia, with ~2% of new cars sold in 2021. But they are growing exponentially: ~2000 electric vehicles were sold in 2018, ~7000 in 2019/2020 and ~20'000 in 2021. [2][3]

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/632547/australia-registe... [2] https://electricvehiclecouncil.com.au/wp-content/uploads/202... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/31/new-elec...

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