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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

#361

Post by trashtester »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #357
trashtester wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (china is provably much more cost efficient at doing large projects than anyone else albeit at a high human cost) Tesla and SpaceX is proving that with the right leadership, western countries can also do large projects. Anyway, I think we should let international corporations compete for such projects, kind of like ship construction or more remotely, the car industry. > Ending the day with half of that production i…

> With all due respect, this is a fantasy number. When you're not including the storage and/or distribution needed to provide stable supply, this number means nothing. (Or rather, it's only relevant as long as only a small fraction of the power comes from such a source.) Distribution will dominate at some point, you are correct. This was more meant to be illustrative of how current battery and solar prices look from…

> Green hydrogen is scalable at about $400/MWh presently and this is decreasing rapidly. This was a wakeup call that doing so is needed. Ammonia is not far behind. Realistic projections for the next 8 years are around $100/MWh.

The present price is obviously too high. I fully support any investment into this kind of tech, including from the government(s), though in my experience, even when tech is available, it takes time to roll it out.

Maybe by 2050 we will have the ability to provide stable, fully renewable energy at $50/MWh or below, without being limited in how much we can roll out due to some rare mineral or industrial capacity.

But we KNOW we have the tech to produce nuclear at such levels (or below) already.

In my opinion, we should do both, and if, 30-40 years from now, some nuclear plant companies go bankrupt, so be it.

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

#362

Post by olddustytrail »

thrown_22 wrote: post #348
olddustytrail wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you buy expensive electricity at night and cheap solar during the day. You were about to explain to me how buying the expensive electricity all the time worked out cheaper than that. Have you thought it out yet?

Where do you store the electricity? The world's largest battery can run the grid it's attached to for about 10 minutes.

Who said anything about storage?

And battery storage on a grid is not for running the whole grid for any time.

Seriously, you don't understand any of this. Stop assuming you do and try asking some intelligent questions instead.

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

#363

Post by Schroedingersat »

trashtester wrote: post #361
Schroedingersat wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With all due respect, this is a fantasy number. When you're not including the storage and/or distribution needed to provide stable supply, this number means nothing. (Or rather, it's only relevant as long as only a small fraction of the power comes from such a source.) Distribution will dominate at some point, you are correct. This was more meant to be illustrative of how current battery and solar prices look from…

> Green hydrogen is scalable at about $400/MWh presently and this is decreasing rapidly. This was a wakeup call that doing so is needed. Ammonia is not far behind. Realistic projections for the next 8 years are around $100/MWh. The present price is obviously too high. I fully support any investment into this kind of tech, including from the government(s), though in my experience, even when tech is available, it takes…

Re. French nuclear saving the day:

https://www.eex.com/en/market-data/power/futures#%7B%22snipp...

Look at the quarterly tab.

And these claims that the prices can go down are contingent on serial production. 30-40 years is the time window at which significant capacity starts being made, not finishing.

What matters is Joules before 2050 not starting at 2060, and even the most optimistic projections have them costing on the order of $200-500/MWh with nuclear.

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

#364

Post by caf »

pydry wrote: post #353
caf wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but you were talking about options to avoid the crisis before it happened.

Fair point. I still doubt that it'd be enough, though. It just changes the bottleneck from port capacity to shipping capacity.

Japan manages to run on LNG imports. If Germany had the import infrastructure and started waving it's chequebook around, the ships would come.

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

#365

Post by trashtester »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #363
trashtester wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Green hydrogen is scalable at about $400/MWh presently and this is decreasing rapidly. This was a wakeup call that doing so is needed. Ammonia is not far behind. Realistic projections for the next 8 years are around $100/MWh. The present price is obviously too high. I fully support any investment into this kind of tech, including from the government(s), though in my experience, even when tech is available, it takes…

Re. French nuclear saving the day: https://www.eex.com/en/market-data/power/futures#%7B%22snipp... Look at the quarterly tab. And these claims that the prices can go down are contingent on serial production. 30-40 years is the time window at which significant capacity starts being made, not finishing. What matters is Joules before 2050 not starting at 2060, and even the most optimistic projections have them costing o…

> Re. French nuclear saving the day:

When supply cannot meet demand, prices do not represent production costs.

Building a nuclear plant takes about 5 years. In situations with sufficient sense of urgency, construction speeds can be ramped up surprisingly quickly.

From 1940 to 1944 US federal spending went up about ninefold (while GDP almost doubled as a result)

The liberty ships were the most obvious example. Initially it took 230 days to build them (in 1941), in 1943 it took 39 days.

A more modern example is the number of cars built by Tesla each year. From 2013 to 2023, the number of cars built per year will have increased by a factor of about 100x.

Similar economies of scale are available for energy plants, if we choose to. For solar panels and batteries, we're already seeing this.

If the political will was there today to vastly expand the amount of nuclear power, we would be able to produce A LOT within 10-15 years.

The same goes for renewables, of course, as long as raw materials and technologies are available.

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