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Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

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Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#271

Post by nottorp »

sarchertech wrote: post #74
simonhorlick wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know that tidal energy is actually not renewable? Harvesting tidal energy slightly slows the rotation of the planet over time. Here's a quote from the relevant paper by Liu: > Based on the average pace of world energy consumption over the last 50 years, if we were to extract the rotational energy just to supply 1% of the world's energy consumption, the rotation of the Earth would lock to the Moon in about 100…

That paper assumes that the worlds energy will keep increasing at the average rate from the last 50 years for 1000 years. That’s a terrible assumption. First because the rate has been slowing (even before Covid), and second because the end result of that extrapolation is more energy than we could every hope to produce without building Dyson spheres around stars. If you do similar calculations we’d cause severe proble…

Hmm have you asked intel and nvidia about that?

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#272

Post by hef19898 »

adev_ wrote: post #257
kawhah wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My proposal would be to use combined cycle gas turbines to peak renewables until over-installation and storage make that no longer necessary. Gas is the cleanest fossil fuel. Modern gas turbines are by far the most efficient way of generating electricity from fossil fuels. Replacing fossil fuels burnt in ICEs and for heating with electricity generated using gas will drastically reduce emissions quickly. There is plen…

> Gas is the cleanest fossil fuel. Modern gas turbines are by far the most efficient way of generating electricity from fossil fuels. The "Cleanest" is around 400g/kwh which is still very far from clean. It is around 20x more emissive that what Nuclear would give you. But congratulations, you just described what was the German strategy for the previous 20 years. With a lot of pipelines connected directly to Russia (B…

Oh dear... Germany, and Europe, got gas from the USSR since the 70s (go on wikipedia and read about the state of affaires between NATO and the Warsaw Pact back then). Besides having a reliable, save, and cheap source for gas, this agreement kept incentives aligned and communications open. That startegy worked, until Putin decided to say "fuck it, I want Ukraine".

Since the war in Ukraine happened a year ago, and isn't over yet, the rest cannot be history. The problems with green houses gas emissions and enegry are souch older so, with the first measures being taken 20 odd years ago (too little, but better than nothing).

As always, people cry over spilled milk, what happened happened. Now we have a ton of options to deploy, nuclear power is not a feasible one (cost, time...). Organizations active in nuclear power agree, new projects aren't launched anymore. And the last one to be launched are delayed, and come in above cost, when planned cost already wasn't competitive.

Funny so, it took quite a while to reach the point of "Germany bad because gas financed Putin, nuclear power would have prevented that".

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#273

Post by apex_sloth »

natmaka wrote: post #256
RandomLensman wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fission is too expensive. The good real reasons from a cost perspective for reactors are weapons, medical and industrial applications as well as research. Why would you want to use battery storage instead of pressure or gravity, for example? You can do gravity by moving stuff around underground, not just classical pumped storage. Digging big and deep holes is something people know how to do quite well, same goes for…

A major piece here (electricity storage) is V2G ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid ). Reducing emissions related to transportation leads to electrical vehicles, and therefore to a vast amount of batteries, most not used at any given moment and therefore ready to store overproduction or release needed electricity. Batteries' performance are quickly progressing, and their prices history is clear: https://o…

car batteries aren't great for storing and retrieving energy for grid usage. to expensive for too few cycles.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#274

Post by vasco »

wtcactus wrote: post #265
louison11 wrote: post #97

Meanwhile many Portuguese cars are 25+ years old and a portion of them have black exhaust fumes that stink from a 100 meters. As in: proper black smoke coming out of the exhaust as it drives. I don’t know if there are SMOG tests, and if there are, they’re clearly not enforced. The reality in poorer countries is that pollution reduction is not as much a priority as saving money. So yeah, I mean, I always find it funny…

Why do I need a new car if mine is working just fine? I don't get it how common sense went so much out of the window when discussing these issues, that people are now effectively arguing that's more environmentally sound, to build an whole new car, then to use an older one. It's just blatant propaganda.

With most items it's blatant propaganda (env friendly clothes when you already have clothes, throwing away plastic bags to use reusable ones, etc), but with cars while there's also propaganda it heavily depends on usage.

Replacing commercial fleets that are involved in shipping, deliveries, mass transporation etc will be net positive for the environment very fast.

Buying an electric car if you have an existing car and don't drive a huge amount per year might never pay off as a private person though. Again it really depends on how much you drive and what the difference is between old and new. I'd bet for most regular people it doesn't make sense to replace a car before it's useful life is up, while for companies it probably makes sense to replace ASAP.

Probably not hard to create a calculator with car models and miles driven per year and establish which models make sense to replace and how soon.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#275

Post by KingOfCoders »

labster wrote: post #259
mplewis wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second best time to build nuclear is today.

The third best time to build nuclear is in about 20 years, when we develop fusion.

If fusion is nuclear than solar is too ;-)

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#276

Post by adev_ »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #117
adev_ wrote: post #75

Meaningwhile, today 17/11/2023 the same Portugal is back to the normal and emitting 170g CO2/kwh [1][2] - This is 6.8x the emissions of Sweden (25g) running on Nuclear and Hydro - This is 4.1x the emissions of France (41g) running on Nuclear, Hydro and Gas - This is 2.8x the emissions of Switzerland (59g) running on Nuclear and Hydro But still much better than "Green" Germany that reaches 647g CO2/kwh.... with 22GW o…

`Nuclear "just works"` No it doesn't. Nuclear power plants are nowhere near insured to risk and nuclear waste is not paid for. So nuclear operators are freeloading on society for decades making billions of profits [0]. To make nuclear "work", one would need to adjust insurance and establish a trust to pay for nuclear waste facility operation for the next hundres of years. But then, no one would operate them nuclear p…

> [0] Fukushima is around $80B-$200B, the US nuclear insurance coverage is $15B. Chernobyl was around $200B.

So you speak about $400B, lets consider it upper bound and even up to $500B by adding the cost Three Miles island incident and the various minor ones around the world.

Spread over 60 years of the humanity nuclear power usage, that makes us an insurance cost of 8.3 billions dollar per year at world scale.

So the risk cost $8.3B per year at world scale for a source of energy that generate 25% of the world low-carbon electricity [1] and make us save around 470 millions tons of CO2 per year [2].

To put things into perspective: the US spend $150B in natural disaster cost coverage per year alone [3]

The EnergyWende of Germany alone cost around $40B per year.

And the cost of the death related to fossil fuel emissions in modern history is estimated at $1.7T in the OECD alone [4].

So I think it is fair to qualify $8.3B/year for a nuclear energy insurance cost to be pretty cheap deal at humanity scale.

I would even qualify it to be ridiculously cheap.

Your sentence "Nuclear power plants are nowhere near insured to risk" is pretty typical of the anti-nuclear argumentation: Mainly based on feelings not on facts.

Based on facts, it is currently plain wrong.

[1]: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu...

[2]: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu...

[3]: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2022...

[4] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/d1b2b844-en.pdf?expi...

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#277

Post by adev_ »

hef19898 wrote: post #272
adev_ wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gas is the cleanest fossil fuel. Modern gas turbines are by far the most efficient way of generating electricity from fossil fuels. The "Cleanest" is around 400g/kwh which is still very far from clean. It is around 20x more emissive that what Nuclear would give you. But congratulations, you just described what was the German strategy for the previous 20 years. With a lot of pipelines connected directly to Russia (B…

Oh dear... Germany, and Europe, got gas from the USSR since the 70s (go on wikipedia and read about the state of affaires between NATO and the Warsaw Pact back then). Besides having a reliable, save, and cheap source for gas, this agreement kept incentives aligned and communications open. That startegy worked, until Putin decided to say "fuck it, I want Ukraine". Since the war in Ukraine happened a year ago, and isn'…

>Organizations active in nuclear power agree, new projects aren't launched anymore

Nuclear power plants projects are ongoing everywhere around the world [1].

Do note generalize Germany fanatical behaviour to the entire world, this is not representative.

[1]: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu...

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#278

Post by louison11 »

vasco wrote: post #164
louison11 wrote: post #97

Meanwhile many Portuguese cars are 25+ years old and a portion of them have black exhaust fumes that stink from a 100 meters. As in: proper black smoke coming out of the exhaust as it drives. I don’t know if there are SMOG tests, and if there are, they’re clearly not enforced. The reality in poorer countries is that pollution reduction is not as much a priority as saving money. So yeah, I mean, I always find it funny…

I could say the same about country side France, Spain, Italy, all of the Balcans including Greece and keep going, including the USA as well. This feels like typical intra-euro "they are poor" so we must be dirty stereotypes reminiscent of the times when we got called PIGS. For your information the EU average fleet age is 11.8 years, Portugal stands at 13.2 and France at 10.3. Perhaps not the story you're trying to te…

Bom dia meu vizinho.

I understand that you disliked my comment. I live in Portugal, and I have lived in France and US as well. I’m sorry to say that people trashing stuff in nature is far worse here than these other countries. You don’t see people dumping fridges or old bathtubs in nature there. I see it in Algarve, Alentejo, outside Lisbon… that + the poop everywhere on the street, I’m sorry man but people don’t have the same standard for respecting nature and keeping the streets clean. Doesn’t mean anything about the people themselves, people are very nice and considerate to each other. I think that’s alright to recognize flaws though.

I mean, 13.2 vs 10.3 is quite a big difference - and that doesn’t address the fact that a lot of these old ‘95 trucks or weird scooter-truck things have pitch dark exhaust fumes and are driving around like nothing’s going on. I’m pretty sure you’d get pulled over by cops and forced to fix your car in France or US. It’s not legal in these countries to drive cars like that. Again, I get that people don’t have the money to get a newer car, I’m not blaming them. Just noting that while the electricity is clean, a lot of progress remains needed in other parts of the economy.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#279

Post by adev_ »

natmaka wrote: post #263
adev_ wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is does not. LCOE is a metric from the Lazard institute has been debunked many time alreayd because it does not take into consideration the cost of the capacity guarantee of the grid. If you had that, Nuclear become competitive. If you had that and tax properly coal and Gas plant proportionally to the emission they really do. Nuclear become even incredibly cheap, specially if we consider its hydrogen co-generation…

LCOE (cost of produced electricity: the difference between nuclear and renewables is huge, and growing. Therefore it offers financial resources to build what is needed for a renewables-based system to provide most of the time: continental grid interconnections (many already done, most already planed because they are useful even without renewables), green hydrogen backup, V2G and smartgrid (also planed whatever the ty…

> Therefore choosing to produce H thanks to nuclear instead of renewables is only useful in order to bump up their capacity factor (reducing their total cost) and may prove to be a bad deal as electrolysis equipment doesn't like (breaks sooner) when using an intermittent electricity input.

Which is entirely ok.

There is one thing people mis-understand often about Nuclear power: The cost of fuel is close to zero. Consequently running a powerplant at full charge or half-charge is exactly the same (It can even be inverted).

So using co-generation as a load regulation is only an economical benefit from a Nuclear perspective.

> may prove to be a bad deal as electrolysis equipment doesn't like (breaks sooner) when using an intermittent electricity input.

The problem is exactly the same than for electrolysis done associated with intermittent renewable. It is quite laughable to see the "full renewable church" bringing Hydrogen as the solution to every grid capacity problem and at the same time bringing that as an argument against Nuclear.

Re: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row

#280

Post by numitus »

simonhorlick wrote: post #26

Note that since about 2021 renewables have overtaken fossil-based sources of energy on price. New installations of utility scale wind and solar PV are now cheaper than their alternatives. Not to mention protection from price fluctuations in the cost of fuels needed to power fossil fuel plants.

what about flucation of solar radiation and wind force?
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