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Solar and batteries can power the world

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Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#311

Post by rootusrootus »

a_paddy wrote: post #299
cogman10 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For full house backup, it sort of sucks right now. They are all charging a premium over what you can otherwise get if it's not specifically a whole home product. What I've done and would suggest is right now looking for battery banks for big ticket important items that you'd want to stay on anyways in terms of an outage. A lot of those can function as a UPS. You can get a 1kWh battery pack for $400 right now. A compa…

In the EU €1800 gets you a 10kWh battery (ex install)

That's on the high side, I would guess. Depending on what brand you want, you can get 10kWh of LFP for under a grand right now in the US.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#312

Post by fhn »

bb88 wrote: post #184
germandiago wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So here I go: if it is so stupid, why it is not done yet? Try not to blame anyone. Do it rationally if you can, from your message I understand your opinion. I say this as a person that has lived in a developing country the last 15 years. It is not that simple IMHO...

1. Solar panels need a huge capital expenditure up front. 2. Wind power works better for farmers and provide a smaller footprint. Drive on I-80 in Iowa on a clear night and you'll see the wind farms blink their red lights in the distance. Farmers can lease their land for wind turbines, and the generation companies take on the regulatory / capital / politcal risks, etc. 3. Farming is more or less free market based, an…

In California, PG&E charges you for putting solar on their grid and they'll pay you a penny for your extra electricity.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#313

Post by jillesvangurp »

While I'm pro renewables and the article is technically correct (it could work), I don't think this is optimal. What's optimal is using a mix of mostly (>90-95%) renewable technologies for generating power supplemented by gas (short term) and nuclear (long term).

Additionally, there's a lot of stuff that can be done with cables and batteries that we aren't currently doing to over come daily, seasonal, and weather related variation in power output of wind and solar. Put cables north-south to compensate for seasonal drops in solar output. Put them east-west to have solar power in the evenings/early mornings. Off shore and on shore wind can produce a lot of power and the way high pressure and low pressure systems (aka. weather) work, if the wind is not blowing locally that just means it is blowing elsewhere. Having a lot of solar and wind all over the place and cables to move the power around evens out all the peaks and dips. The rest is just using batteries, pumped hydro, and other storage to add enough buffers.

That gets you quite far. Another point here is that people think in rigid "must cover everything 100% of the time", which is valuable but we actually do have a lot of flexibility. You can choose when to charge your car (at night, or at noon), when to run your dishwasher, etc. And does a data center need to be at 100% capacity 100% of the time no matter the cost? Flexible load is a thing. And we can use automation to control it, flexible pricing to incentivize when there are surpluses or shortages, etc. This btw. also neuters the whole "baseload" argument. Baseload power is non flexible power that becomes a problem when we have too much of it. Flexible power is power you can turn off when there's too much of it. The reason energy prices are high in a lot of places is that we have too much of really expensive base load that drives the pricing even if the wind and sun shines for free and gets curtailed. That lack of flexibility is a problem.

That's how we could get to 90% over the next few decades. The remaining 10% is harder / more expensive. Gas peaker plants make a lot of sense to fill that gap. Replaced by nuclear long term. Nothing against that but it's just stupidly expensive and slow to realize. There's no need to build new gas plants for that; we have plenty already.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#314

Post by sumea »

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…

Modern heat pumps can heat efficiently at -25 degrees Celsius or even lower. Not sure if they are available in Canada, but in Scandinavia (similar climate) they are pretty common.

I also agree that 66F (about 19 degrees Celsius) is not comfortable during day time. It is fine for sleeping temperature. During winter homes in heating dominated climates typically have higher indoor temperatures. One advantage of lower inside temperature is that relative humidity stays slightly higher when it is very cold outside.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#315

Post by mr_toad »

declan_roberts wrote: post #40
Epa095 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the actual effect you get out of that? Even half, 12 kW, would be an absolutte beast of heating (for a home), even with 'dumb' convection heating. With heat pumps 2-3 kW should really be enough.

There's simply not a lot of sunlight to go around during the winter and the battery capacity isn't large enough. Keep in mind we WFH and homeschool so our house is used 24/7 and I think it's a good approximation for OP's goal.

> the battery capacity isn't large enough

This. You have enough generation to keep a mansion toasty, but you don’t have enough storage to last a long winter night.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#316

Post by mikewarot »

It's important to note that electricity is 21% of the World's energy demand, according to the IEA[1]. This implies that if we could 10x solar, and figure out how to convert some of that to liquid fuels with decent efficiency, we could become sustainable for all energy.

[1] https://www.iea.org/world/energy-mix

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#317

Post by gpm »

rootusrootus wrote: post #311
a_paddy wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the EU €1800 gets you a 10kWh battery (ex install)

That's on the high side, I would guess. Depending on what brand you want, you can get 10kWh of LFP for under a grand right now in the US.

With a BMS and inverter? What brand should I be looking at?

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#318

Post by KaiserPro »

pydry wrote: post #278
KaiserPro wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear power is not dispatchable. I mean it is, its just slower. but if you have batteries, then you can divert the power to the batteries to keep them topped up.

While technically possible, given that the vast majority of the cost is capex and not fuel and given that it is already five times the cost of solar and wind when producing at 100% 24/7 , setting literal piles of cash on fire might be more economic than using it to dispatch electricity. If you're using it to charge batteries it's just five times more expensive than equivalent solar or wind.

French nuclear stations are roughly as fast as combined cycle gas (to turn off at least)

The point is, with enough battery, you don't need fast despatch for things like water/gas/nuclear, because the battery does that for you. In the UK the 11gwhr we have (about 1/2-1/3 of one hours consumption) is more than capable to do the balancing.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#319

Post by jakewins »

coryrc wrote: post #203
jakewins wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, 30kWh is not much in this context. In 10 years every modern 2-car home will have 200kWh on the driveway just from the EVs; add a 100kWh whole home battery at a price point close to a 10kWh battery today and the calculus changes in most of the world. The cost of materials going into modern batteries easily leaves room for another 10x reduction in price, IMO where this all is heading is obvious. Zero marg…

I bet you didn't even see the tragic farce when writing your solution. Land development requiring ”2-car homes" is the driver of the problem! An apartment only has to heat one or two walls facing the outside instead of 4. That's 50-75% right off the top of your energy usage, with the mean closer to 75%.

No reason to be rude or hyperbolic - I agree with you that cars destroy communities and we should strive to reduce the need for cars and parking.

For solar powered homes specifically though, multi-story buildings are much harder to run solar powered from the simple ratios - even if you reduce energy use 75%, at 4 stories you are break-even in roof-ratio-to-energy-need. I’ve worked in this space a while, and it’s now pretty straight forward to run single-family homes 24/7/367 on solar in most of the world, but multi story buildings are much harder.

Nothing is ever simple or one-dimensional :)

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#320

Post by morphle »

RobinL wrote: post #301
morphle wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I build off-grid electrical campers (Mercedes eSprinter) with extended 600kWh batteries (11 times more battery capacity than the default model) and charge them from solar panels at home. I disagree with your negative mindset, people who ride in my eCamper quickly learn you can go 100% solar and use you camper at home to store all neighborhood solar and even charge other EVs from our eCamper battery. We make our own p…

Wow, that's big! I'm curious, how much does the 600kWh battery cost nowadays? Amazing that the tech has got to a point this is even possible

15kWh 48V LFP battery around $1800 with low quality battery management system in metal box on wheels. Car batteries need more expensive inverters if you want to fast charge them (150kW-950kW) and super fast discharge them while driving fast (>100 kW). Thus my 600kW extender comes to almost $62000 for vans and small trucks. Cheaper if installed as house battery. The Mercedes eSprinter 56kW van costs around $80000 new but we sell 3 year old vans like this for $4000 without battery. So refurbished and converted to eCamper with 1800 mile range you pay $6700. You can drive 3000 km (almost 1860 miles) with this battery in the eSprinter and eCamper. A normal size car would go twice as far with this battery but it's big and heavy enough that you need to tow it in a trailer.

The crucial point though is the charging/discharging inverter (converter) that I purpose built (printed circuits boards) and a change to the car firmware. Without it the car will reject the battery, your acceleration would be less and it also would not last the same amount of discharge cycles. My battery electronics works fine for cars, trucks, boats, house and neighborhood batteries (up to 6mW per shipping container).

We build entire smart grids around the batteries, solar panels and tiny houses. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Merik-Voswinkel/publica...

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