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Solar and batteries can power the world

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Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#391

Post by DavidPiper »

proee wrote: post #170

EVs are essentially a giant battery on wheels. Seems there is a good opportunity to configure them as bidirectional power banks for your local grid. You could rewire all parking slots to have a plugin that acts as a bidirectional power station. Imaging how much power could be moved around with such a grid! This would require a major investment in power transmission layouts, but a city full of batteries on wheels. Cal…

No idea why this has been downvoted. There is a lot of demand for this, and at least one company actively working on orchestrating home and EV batteries with the grid: https://www.amber.com.au/amber-for-evs

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#392

Post by cauch »

panick21_ wrote: post #347
cauch wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demand following for nuclear is possible (after all, if you produce 10X but the demand suddenly drops to 7X, what you can always do is to "dump" 3X worth of steam instead of injecting it in the turbine), but because the cost of nuclear is mainly upfront, it is not cost efficient at all. If it costs 10X dollars upfront to build a nuclear central that can produce 10X energy, then if you run it at 100%, it will cost 1 d…

No, nuclear storage needs to be optimized for 1-2h peaks, if you build a renewable system you need, much, much more. And you have much more localized peaks and valleys depending on weather and such. So basically, you can put some battery next to every nuclear plant and otherwise use the same grid. For renewable you need a much more complex grid with much more battery.

Why do you say "optimized for 1-2h peaks"? The typical electricity demand has a trough during the night for few hours, then a first peak in the morning, than a second less-deep trough in the middle of the day (sometimes with a bump around lunchtime), than a second bigger peak in the afternoon for 3-4 hours. And of course this varies with season, day of week, regions, ...

Not sure why you are saying that renewable you need "much more battery": the overlap of generation means that you already have a "baseline" of generation even with renewables (sure, I know about dunkelflaute, but they are as frequent as unexpected shutdown of nuclear site), and therefore in both case, the game is mainly to "move the peaks around" which requires about the same capacity.

Not sure why you are saying the renewable led to a much more complex grid either. Sure, with a naive simplified grid, nuclear works well. But in practice, the modern grid is complex, and adding more nuclear does not really reduce the complexity.

Also, nuclear or not, having EV or heat-pump will be needed for decarbonisation, and therefore the demand becomes even more complex. With EV and heat-pump, local solar+battery is also a smarter choice. So it means that some storage will need to be built on the consumer site directly, even with nuclear.

I'm not saying that in some situation at the end of the computation, nuclear is not the best option, but it is not at all as simple as having a clear winner. Also, the reality is that you need to work with the uncertainties, so it is not like one solution has a score of 75 and the other has a score of 70, so the first is the obvious choice, it is more like one solution has a score of 75 +- 15 and the other 70 +- 5 (or even asymmetric errors), so you cannot directly conclude the first solution is the best. I think the conversation would be way more healthy if we could just avoid over-simplify into a pro-nuclear vs. pro-renewable partisan battle.

(also not sure about "you can put some battery next to every nuclear plant and otherwise use the same grid", why is this not true for renewable too? Just compute the average production of the site, and put storage that will charge when the site produces more than the average and discharge when the site produces less, and you get the same situation as the nuclear site (they may still have period of no generation, the same way nuclear sites have unexpected shutdown). Especially that with a renewable site, the cost is lower so the site owner can invest more in storage and manage it themselves: storage is part of the black box, the grid does not need to know, stay the same and no complexity is added)

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#393

Post by asdff »

WillAdams wrote: post #378
asdff wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another commenter said this ratio is 1.3 in favor of output.

Interesting --- does that also include considerations such as oil for lubrication and fertilizer sourcing?

Not sure. But not everyone uses fertilizer. No till is being more widely appreciated, getting nitrogen in the soil using cover crops that fix it from the atmosphere. Probably everything uses oil for lube including any alternative energy. Teslas still need greasing after all. They still have bearings and other moving parts.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#394

Post by detourdog »

PyWoody wrote: post #144
detourdog wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the northwest corner of Massachusetts I converted an old school into an apartment building. I installed 2" of polystyrene on the outside and about a foot of cellulose in the ceilings. We relay on heatpumps for HVAC. I also installed a 50kW solar array. We don't start paying for heating until Nov/Dec and stop paying in Apr/May. Our Electric usage goes through the roof in Jan/Feb/Mar. Our weak point is that the exte…

Thermal curtains are a godsend. I remember reading about your journey and I hope it works out! I think it'd be money well spent. In my last house, I replaced single pane windows with properly installed, sealed, and insulated double-hungs and it practically cut my heat bill in half. I agree that modern window to modern window replacement probably won't get you much, though.

Thank you for the encouragement. I have all the units rented. I'm now trying to balance upgrades to reduce energy costs vs. maintaining a cash horde.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#395

Post by timbit42 »

declan_roberts wrote: post #9
ahhhhnoooo wrote: post #2

China understands this, parts of the EU understands this. The US is currently dead set on betting on the wrong technology, and it's going to put them so far behind. Imagine a world where people didn't care about labeling new things "woke", and instead could all sit down and say, "we're going to make major investments in next generation infrastructure to ensure our capacity and independence."

China burns significantly more coal than the USA and Europe combined and has no environmental laws standing in the way of their nuclear power plants. Imagine a world where people don't care about labeling new things as "regressive" or "anti-environmental"

China doesn't have much oil or natural gas but they have lots of coal so that's their backup until they can get enough renewables built.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#396

Post by asdff »

laurencerowe wrote: post #367
asdff wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not do both, reduce fuel consumption while shifting to a carbon neutral fuel source that is fully onshored?

Again opportunity costs. It almost always makes sense to spend the money on the most efficient means to achieve the goal. Money spent paying farmers and ethanol refiners to inefficiently produce 25% lower carbon fuel could instead be directed at other endeavours that for the same cost reduce carbon emissions more.

The difference is we already grow corn at scale beyond market need. Probably less has to be paid in that effort than starting up some other industry. Which still can be done along side the corn shouldering the load until that industry reaches the scale of the corn industry's waste product.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#397

Post by WillAdams »

asdff wrote: post #393
WillAdams wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting --- does that also include considerations such as oil for lubrication and fertilizer sourcing?

Not sure. But not everyone uses fertilizer. No till is being more widely appreciated, getting nitrogen in the soil using cover crops that fix it from the atmosphere. Probably everything uses oil for lube including any alternative energy. Teslas still need greasing after all. They still have bearings and other moving parts.

Some crops can require as much as 10 calories of petrochemical energy to get 1 calorie of food energy when one takes such things into account --- corn (well, maize) is quite calorie dense/efficient in terms of land and other usages --- I'd be curious to see a full, comprehensive crunching of the values involved.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#398

Post by tstrimple »

sillyfluke wrote: post #137
chongli wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>66F is ridiculously cold to me...I would find that very uncomfortable and elderly people would be shivering constantly and highly susceptible to respiratory illness. I know people who live in the Mediterranean and get by with no heating during the winter with indoor and outdoor tempuratures this low or lower, so it seems that one can be conditioned into doing so. Perhaps it's the presence of more sunlight on average…

My temperature tolerance has varied quite drastically over my lifetime. Born in the south, raised mostly in Iowa as one of those kids who was wearing shorts as soon as the temp was above 20 degrees. To a pathetic SoCal resident who reaches for a jacket or hoodie when it hits 65 degrees. You absolutely do adapt and rather quickly.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#399

Post by Havoc »

As enthusiastic as I am about that I'd love to see grid scale storage move more towards something like sand batteries. Stuff you can buy for dollars per ton and move with an excavator seems like a better bet than lithium batteries.

If we want flakey renewables to be the backbone (which we should)...then we needs serious scale on storage side.

Batteries for voltage regulation and quick response is good though

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#400

Post by tzs »

LogicFailsMe wrote: post #250
declan_roberts wrote: post #5

The article is just wrong. And only mentions energy used for heating in passing. Heating requires MASSIVE amounts of energy. I should know bc I have a whole house battery and solar system (almost 30 kWh battery and 24kW solar). It keeps the lights on, but not heating. I live in a mild climate. The reality is that battery/solar requires major quality of life and activity time shifting trade-offs.

My house in the bay area runs at Of course actual data like this is downvote heresy! Go for it! Also, bite me.

That power use seems reasonably believable. I'm in the Puget Sound area where we get less sunlight than you and our winters are colder, and I just made a graph of my daily electricity use for 2025 [1]. My house is all electric.

I had 219 days with under 24 kWh use, i.e., drawing an average under 1 kW. I got an EV in mid April that year which I charged with the included level 1 charger until getting a 12 kW EVSE installation in I think May. (2024, the last year with no EV charging, had 240 days under 24 kWh).

Almost every day that was over 30 kWh after that was a day when I charged the car which was typically on a Saturday which is also typically when I do laundry which includes about 5 kWh for the clothes dryer.

I was puzzled by the large number of days near or above 50 kWh in February. The end of 2025 doesn't look like it is setting up 2026 for that high a usage. I just checked the weather records and it doesn't look like that was a particularly cold time.

I just made another graph just showing February 2024, 2025, and 2026, and a third showing January of those 3 years, and both show that in 2026 I'm using quite a lot less power (except for the EV charging) than in the prior years.

I've not changed any habits...but in November 2025 I had my house weatherized. They added a lot more insulation under the house (I already had sufficient attic insulation) and did blower tests and sealed everything that was leaking, and it appears this cut energy use by somewhere in the 10-20% range.

It seems then early 2025 appears so high because the end of 2025 is showing the effects of weatherizing.

[1] https://imgur.com/a/QAnOvm7

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