A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by caf » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 8:22 AM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #284

caf wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

120 GWh is not what most would describe as "little storage". The largest hydroelectric storage facilities in existence are in the single digit or low double digit GWh. And this is for a country with a relatively small population. The current pipeline of utility battery storage projects in Australia is estimated to be 26GW ( https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/11/03/australias-... ). Storage ratios of announced…

Only 6.3 GWh of battery storage is actually announced in your link. Plenty of storage facilities are at ratios lower than 2: https://www.energy-storage.news/victorian-big-battery-austra... And if the batteries haven't actually been provisioned yet, it might be hard to build those without securing additional funding: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium

It says this:

Eleven months later, and new CIA research shows the pipeline of proposed storage has grown enormously, to over 26 GW of announced projects.

The individually enumerated projects in that article appear to be only a subset of those.

It's true about the Victorian battery you linked at a ratio of 1.5, so that has the 26GW representing somewhere in the range of 39GWh to 104GWh (ratios close to 2 appear to be the most common, though - presumably representing a current sweet spot of battery versus inverter pricing).

I believe the point still stands, though, which is that the suggested quantity of storage is an incremental advance on what's currently planned rather than some kind of moon shot.

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

#292

Post by laurencerowe » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 8:29 AM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #287

laurencerowe wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artisanal scale rooftop solar is only economical in Califoria due to feed in tariff subsidies. We could build out utility scale solar of the same capacity for the cost of the subsidy to rooftop solar.

Feed in tariff subsidies are a good policy instrument. Lots of green tech needed initial subsidies to get started because we currently subsidize fossil fuels and removing those subsidies was politically harder than adding subsidies. California also very sensibly, introduced net-zero house regulations that mean most new houses will have solar, making it a great deal less artisinal and just another thing you need to bu…

Solar feed in tariffs made a lot of sense initially when they helped bootstrap the market for solar panels but now panels have gotten so cheap the costs of rooftop solar are dominated by installation costs we really should reconsider where we allocate our money to achieve the highest reduction in in emissions.

I have more sympathy for the regulations requiring solar on new buildings since it is far cheaper to install while the roof is being built than to retrofit later.

But as a renter who pays for these subsidies through my electricity bill and cannot benefit from them I want to see the maximum amount of renewable generation built out for the cost added to my bill. Utility scale solar works out 1/3rd the price of residential, or roughly the cost of the residential subsidy alone.

Distribution accounts for only 5% or so of the cost of electricity. It is far more cost effective to build utility scale solar in the desert than on individual roofs.

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

#293

Post by ZeroGravitas » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 8:30 AM UTC

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 don't know if these exist on the market for consumers, but the way that the big superchargers work around this is to co-locate battery storage, so they can trickle charge from the grid and then fast charge to the car.

If you're going to need to spend 10K it feels like you could possibly better spend that on solar and/or batteries.

Here's a portable charger which claims that it costs the same as a home charger install: https://www.zipcharge.global/

And less geekily, you may just not need a level 2 charger or a full speed level 2 charger:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2019/12/11/dont-s...

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

#294

Post by Incipient » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 8:35 AM UTC

The missing piece for me in any renewable puzzle is evidence. At a grid level (either state or national) has anyone actually figured out how much storage we need? Based on say a P90 worst case, what % of power is down, for how long, and how much storage do we need to manage that?

Or any such similar study. Traditional power gen is much easier. Plonk it down and essentially it works (with various stabilisation mechanisms in place). Renewables however take a lot more planning.

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

#295

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 8:47 AM UTC

mactitan wrote: post #285

Schroedingersat wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bemoa…

I’m interested in the new phase out and the realistic time frame. It’s not this: https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/24/22898666/panasonic-4680-t... Currently recycling is very low. I think he’s focused on what’s likely in production for the near future and the real material problem of all infrastructure ( its massive)

[deleted]

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

#296

Post by ZeroGravitas » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 8:50 AM UTC

trashtester wrote: post #276

fomine3 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The effect of a lot of renewables can be the opposite, though. When the wind is blowing, all consumers may want to charge their Tesla's at the same time, meaning that the grid wil experience even more spikey load patterns. Batteries as part of the central grid can help, of course.

More spikes are good, it's the height of the tallest spike that determines the cost, so reducing that specific spike is the key. And one way to do that, is to spike at other times instead.

Think about it like roads and rush hour. The width of the road is set for rush hour, and most of the rest of the time it's empty. Any way of shifting demand away from that peak is good. You'd have to shift an infeasible amount to create a traffic jam in the middle of the night, but every extra car removed from rush hour helps.

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

#297

Post by Schroedingersat » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 8:50 AM UTC

mactitan wrote: post #285

Schroedingersat wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bemoa…

I’m interested in the new phase out and the realistic time frame. It’s not this: https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/24/22898666/panasonic-4680-t... Currently recycling is very low. I think he’s focused on what’s likely in production for the near future and the real material problem of all infrastructure ( its massive)

I'm hoping we can spend some tax money on real infrastructure rather than handouts for rich people to line elon musk's pockets. A train line, a bike lane and a handful of trolley busses take far less network upgrades than 10,000 luxury cars.

It would also help immensely if we could find our sanity and build some 400kg LEVs and NEVs with a 2kWh battery and a 150cc range extender rather than 2-5t padded ego protectors with 50-100x as much battery.

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

#298

Post by ZeroGravitas » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 9:11 AM UTC

laurencerowe wrote: post #292

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feed in tariff subsidies are a good policy instrument. Lots of green tech needed initial subsidies to get started because we currently subsidize fossil fuels and removing those subsidies was politically harder than adding subsidies. California also very sensibly, introduced net-zero house regulations that mean most new houses will have solar, making it a great deal less artisinal and just another thing you need to bu…

Solar feed in tariffs made a lot of sense initially when they helped bootstrap the market for solar panels but now panels have gotten so cheap the costs of rooftop solar are dominated by installation costs we really should reconsider where we allocate our money to achieve the highest reduction in in emissions. I have more sympathy for the regulations requiring solar on new buildings since it is far cheaper to install…

Deserts aren't good locations for solar, for several reasons:

1. They get hot, and solar PV needs light, not heat to work. Heat actually reduces the effectiveness which is why the difference in output between the best and worst places for solar PV in the USA probably isn't as wide a delta as you would think.

2. They're generally not near people, who mostly live on the coast and so have higher transmission costs. Transmission is enough of a cost factor that building solar and battery (or datacenters) on sites of old coal plants is often done to re-use transmission and save money.

Desert like conditions are required for concentrated solar, which require strong direct sunlight and heat, but PV doesn't have that requirement and can still work in cloudy regions and is generally cheaper than CSP these days even in the desert regions. So solar should be distributed more towards where people live and use electricity.

I think adding the costs to the consumers electricity bills made sense when the grid was mostly polluting, as it incentivises efficiency but as we get closer to a clean grid, it makes less sense. Shifting to time-of-use is probably a good next step to keep the incentive to not burn polluting fuels, shifting the costs to people still burning gas makes sense too.

The whole of society is rigged to give money to homeowners (due to racism and classicsm mostly), so it's not unexpected that solar would lean the same way, it's not inherent to the tech though, just how society works at the moment.

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

#299

Post by caf » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 9:20 AM UTC

biomcgary wrote: post #26

A relatively simple model that is still a reasonable ballpark. However, throughout the article I was wondering about the effect of transmission efficiencies across Australia. The author addresses transmission at the end by acknowledging that they didn't model it. Not sure how much it matters, but I suspect that lots of wires would be required.

Not sure how much it matters, but I suspect that lots of wires would be required.

Sure - the model scales up existing wind and solar generation assets, so you would need transmission infrastructure to those same areas to scale up as well (and likely inter-region interconnectors to scale up as well).

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

#300

Post by ZeroGravitas » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 9:21 AM UTC

makomk wrote: post #225

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the big developed nations have committed to phase out coal by 2030, the USA skipped it because of politics, but if you read any of the coverage of that they usually say that it would happen with or without a government commitment e.g. Why the U.S. Didn’t Join 40 Other Countries in Pledge to End Coal subtitle: Economics is already playing a large role in curtailing American coal power https://www.scientificamerica…

The trouble is, the economics only worked out that way because natural gas was cheap - it's not anymore, and countries have been rolling back their coal shutdowns as a result. There's a good chance it never will be again. The same people who were campaigning for that managed to convince pretty much all developed nations other than the US to end new natural gas investment and extraction, and without the supply there p…

High gas prices help renewables, because they are even cheaper by comparison. As shown by this model, which as well as removing the 75% of coal fired electricity, reduces the gas fired electricity from 15% to less than 5% and saves lots of money in the process.

The American move from coal to gas shows that even in places where it's still politically favorable to pretend climate change isn't happening, or that coal is clean, simple economics is a big driver of change.