Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

sciencemag.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 432 posts

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#41

Post by anonuser123456 »

stupidcar wrote: post #10

I wonder what the wider economic effect will be if the price of solar continues to improve and the fossil fuel industry can't find a way to remain competitive. Since some places are far more suitable for solar power generation than others, will those areas end up with a significant advantage in the cost of living? Could that in turn lead to a major migration of people and economic activity to those areas?

The Saudis can still make money at 20$/ barrel oil. Oil is just a commodity, so the decline in oil consumption will be a gradual process, not a step function.

W.r.t. power production in good solar areas, modern transmission tech can send power 1k miles w/less than 1% loss. Those regions will likely export power, not import people.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#42

Post by ravedave5 »

ed_at_work wrote: post #38

So, that's cool and all. I love green tech. And I hate fossil fuels. Buuuuuuut, aren't we going to have the same issue with supplies of lithium that we are having with fossil fuels? Unless we have a dramatic shift in renewable battery tech, we're still painting ourselves into a corner with the giant battery trent.

Once you burn a fossil fuel it's gone. When a battery stops charging properly you can recycle the lithium in that cell.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#43

Post by [deleted] »

ivanhoe wrote: post #18
Animats wrote: post #7

$0.02/Kwh for the solar part is pretty good. A reasonable short-term goal: get 100% of US peak air conditioning load south of 37° N on solar. That's the line from the Virginia/North Carolina border west to central California. Peak solar power output and peak air conditioning load line up pretty well, so that doesn't need storage. Storage is more of an issue for wind, which varies about 4:1 over a day over large areas…

There should be also more focus on proper thermal insulation of houses in warm climate, which is something that is not often mentioned. Lots of energy gets lost on AC simply because heat easily enters the houses.

[deleted]

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#44

Post by CydeWeys »

Animats wrote: post #7

$0.02/Kwh for the solar part is pretty good. A reasonable short-term goal: get 100% of US peak air conditioning load south of 37° N on solar. That's the line from the Virginia/North Carolina border west to central California. Peak solar power output and peak air conditioning load line up pretty well, so that doesn't need storage. Storage is more of an issue for wind, which varies about 4:1 over a day over large areas…

Why only south of 37° N? Solar makes a lot of sense north of that line in many places too.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#45

Post by cmoscoe »

Animats wrote: post #12
bobthepanda wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydro can be extremely disruptive to ecosystems, and you also need a suitable site for it. It's very situational, from what I understand.

very situational Yes. You need a mountain lake and a low level lake close to each other, and the lakes aren't useful for much else because the water level goes way up and down every day. The US has 10 pumped storage plants bigger than a gigawatt, and few attractive sites for more.

I've hear the Hoover Dam proposed, and theoretically any existing dam could be converted? Just need to pump some water back upstream when there's excess load in the system.

Here in Canada a lot of our energy is hydroelectric and I know there's a lot of talk about this sort of solution in Quebec.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#46

Post by darksaints »

I know someone who has gone fully off the grid via sailboat and is currently on his way around the world. He converted his sailboat to a hybrid setup (electric engines powered by the same batteries that power his stovetop, refrigerator, etc.). His power sources keeping those batteries charged are solar (1200W) and sail regeneration [0]. He has an 18kw diesel generator as a safety measure.

His story is particularly interesting to me because he doesn't give a shit about climate change. His views are best described by George Carlin [1]. And yet, he has the lowest carbon lifestyle of anybody I know. In the 15,000 nautical miles he's sailed, he has burned a grand total of 5 gallons of diesel. And that was only because he stayed for a few weeks in Palau without sailing around, and there was a stint of a few days where there was little solar energy due to storms. He now thinks his decision to buy a diesel backup generator was just a waste of money. If you ask him why he did it, these are his answers: It's cheaper, it's quieter, it's less smelly, and it's more reliable. Not a single mention of carbon emissions or resource depletion or pollution.

At this point, I feel like the only reason fossil fuels are used anymore in new projects is inertia. The costs and performance of renewables+batteries has come so far in the last 5-10 years, and I think we're finally at the point where the intrinsic costs will guarantee adoption.

[0] https://oceanvolt.com/solutions/hydro-generator/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#47

Post by the8472 »

asdkhadsj wrote: post #33
krferriter wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm renting a house in central NC and May-September our power bill skyrockets from AC. The windows are not insulated at all and we have a lot of them. Even the floors, walls, and ceilings leak heat like crazy, you can feel it just putting your hand close to the wall or ceiling. We run AC to get it down to 76F and it's still crazy expensive and using a lot of unnecessary power. We need to encourage insulation, es…

> The US needs to heavily encourage these sorts of improvements to buildings, it's good for everyone. Is it though? I imagine your landlord doesn't think it's good for them. It's not bad for them, but why would they spend hundreds or thousands of dollars improving your apartments insulation when it costs them nothing to keep the poor thermal in place. I too lived in rentals that had terrible thermal protection. It wa…

> Not sure what can be done here

Tax based on efficiency. Tie permits for building renovation to insulation upgrades.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#48

Post by astazangasta »

codesushi42 wrote: post #40
Animats wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because E To get energy from heat, you need a hot end and a cold end. The more difference between the two, the more energy you can extract. Extracting energy from small temperature differences is very inefficient. Temperature is measured from absolute zero for this.

Exactly, this is why steam boiler engines became obsolete, because you can burn gas at a much higher temperature than boiling water. Lower temp can only be viable if you reduce the work needed to run the engine, and can still output the needed work/energy. This is related to why work and heat are both measured in joules.

No, this is not right. Most power generation is done by steam in the US (85%). Steam can get much hotter than boiling water, and it is cheap and makes no waste.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#49

Post by CydeWeys »

ed_at_work wrote: post #38

So, that's cool and all. I love green tech. And I hate fossil fuels. Buuuuuuut, aren't we going to have the same issue with supplies of lithium that we are having with fossil fuels? Unless we have a dramatic shift in renewable battery tech, we're still painting ourselves into a corner with the giant battery trent.

The big difference is that fossil fuels are burnt, lithium is not. Lithium can also be recycled once batteries hit end of life.

But lithium is just one of many possible battery chemistries. And you're not even limited to chemical batteries; potential energy ones work at grid scale too; all you need to do is pump water uphill.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#50

Post by amluto »

krferriter wrote: post #23
ivanhoe wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be also more focus on proper thermal insulation of houses in warm climate, which is something that is not often mentioned. Lots of energy gets lost on AC simply because heat easily enters the houses.

Yeah I'm renting a house in central NC and May-September our power bill skyrockets from AC. The windows are not insulated at all and we have a lot of them. Even the floors, walls, and ceilings leak heat like crazy, you can feel it just putting your hand close to the wall or ceiling. We run AC to get it down to 76F and it's still crazy expensive and using a lot of unnecessary power. We need to encourage insulation, es…

If the window is in the sun, your major problem is unlikely to be window insulation. It’s solar heat gain. Sunlight carries a lot of power — about 1 kW per square meter. If your window lets all of that power in, then your AC needs to consume a couple hundred watts to send it back out again. What you need are windows with low solar heat gain coefficients (SHGC), which is mostly independent of insulation. Or you can get window treatments that are shiny on the side facing the window.
Post reply on HN