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In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

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Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#411

Post by KaiserPro »

IshKebab wrote: post #396
pranavj wrote: post #113

The most underreported part of this story is the battery piece at the end. Batteries are beginning to displace natural gas in evening peak hours - that's the exact window where solar critics have long argued renewables fall short. If this trend accelerates (and battery prices are dropping faster than most models predicted), the "intermittency problem" starts looking more like a solvable engineering challenge than a f…

The problem with solar isn't the night. Getting enough batteries to cover that is totally doable. The issue is the winter. And not even because of fewer daylight hours - on sunny winter days there is usually still a good amount of solar. The problem is its often very cloudy in the winter. In the UK in winter we regularly have periods of 5 cloudy days in a row where solar output is virtually zero. I don't know what th…

> In the UK in winter we regularly have periods of 5 cloudy days

True, but then for the UK solar power isn't the right thing for winter, hence why we need a massive mix of other stuff.

Also we have the advantage that france isn't that far away.

In the UK battery is about grid stabilisation, as in making sure that it hums at 50hz rather than 49.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#412

Post by bee_rider »

epolanski wrote: post #409
bee_rider wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intermittence really has always had the flavor of an engineering problem instead of a physics problem (it is about putting the energy when/where humans want it, rather than having enough of it). IMO load shifting seems like a cleverer and more engineer-y solution. Imagine a giant smart system where all of our appliances talk to each-other and can optimize the timings of their workloads. It’s a magnificent society-wid…

I ain't gonna use the dishwasher when the system wants me to, but when I can or want. I pay low energy prices during night than day, that's normal, but I'm still not gonna do laundry at 9 pm, I'd rather pay the 10/20 cents more during the day.

If I had a combined washer/dryer and could just load the clothes up and say “do it whenever” I’d go for that. But that’s very dependent on only needing to do one load per day.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#413

Post by jojomodding »

mekdoonggi wrote: post #174
WarmWash wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every country on Earth benefits from the chips that come from Taiwan, and not just the governments, the people using pretty much anything that does computation. That includes China.

Yes I am aware. Which means that if China takes over political control of Taiwan and says, "We will still sell chips just like normal to everyone except the US". Would the rest of the world decide to go to war with China for the political freedom of Taiwan?

What makes you think the Taiwanese will hand over the chip producing facitilies to the invader?

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#414

Post by bluGill »

margalabargala wrote: post #366
triceratops wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The generation is distributed. That only benefits the people who have panels on their rooftops. If we want them to share the excess with others during a power outage it requires further grid investment. I think homeowners should install solar panels and batteries where it makes economic sense. If there's money left over after funding utility-scale solar then it should be used for EV incentives and/or funding electrif…

You absolutely do not want them sharing the excess with neighbors during a power outage, this is how you get dead linemen. Solar panel grid tied inverters generally will refuse to function if there's no external power coming in. The benefit from the distributed generation means that if your local area has large loads added you don't necessarily need to upgrade the HVDC lines from the power plant to accommodate.

This is not as big a problem as it sounds - you cannot provides enough power for you neighbors and so your breakers (fuses) will cut power long before the lineman gets there.

though linemen are trained that they are working on a live line unless they have personally shorted it out. There are many other ways a seemingly dead line can be live so they don't take a chance.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#415

Post by jojomodding »

Moldoteck wrote: post #297
canucktrash669 wrote: post #231

WW3 called and said solar is harder to disrupt through bombing than massive power plants. Seems like a great deal even if it was more expensive.

disrupting the grid will still be easy. And cluster bombs can heavily impact land solar

It might be, but to disrupt the solar array on my rooftop you need to bomb it specifically. Times a hundred million, it becomes infeasible.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#416

Post by bluGill »

coryrc wrote: post #346
embedding-shape wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because you get far higher ROI for the large-scale installations. Right, but as always, ROI is hardly the most important thing in life, there is more considerations than just "makes more money". For example, as someone affected by a day long country-wide electricity outage where essentially the entire country was without electricity and internet for ~14 hours or something, decentralizing energy across the country s…

Grid-tied solar is fragile. If the grid is not nearly-perfect, it won't generate. It will not help society as a whole. If you personally have battery backup, that helps you personally and you should pay for it, just like you might pay extra to turn up the heat while I keep it lower to save money.

In Canada (or the US) the grid is reliable and so you can ignore when it isn't working. This doesn't apply everywhere in the world

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#417

Post by Moldoteck »

jojomodding wrote: post #415
Moldoteck wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

disrupting the grid will still be easy. And cluster bombs can heavily impact land solar

It might be, but to disrupt the solar array on my rooftop you need to bomb it specifically. Times a hundred million, it becomes infeasible.

that's true, but hardly relevant for the grid, especially considering many ppl dont even have a battery and have grid following solar panels which shut down the moment grid is down

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#418

Post by KaiserPro »

nxm wrote: post #14
flexie wrote: post #6

But Trump explained to us yesterday, how wind and solar is for losers. Surely, we should be looking in to how we can transition back to fossils.

At the end of the day, the retail cost of electricity in many EU member countries can be two to three times the cost of electricity in the US. Ultimately that’s what matters to consumers and businesses. Also, Trump called out the idiotic decisions by greenies such as shutting down nuclear power plants and make long your industries less competitive as a result.

> in many EU member countries can be two to three times the cost of electricity in the US.

Yup, I wonder why that might be, perhaps its due to our main supplier of gas and oil invading a country. Not sure though, if only the price graphs reflected that. oh wait.

> shutting down nuclear power plants

Germany fucked up there. but france and Finland haven't done that.

Spain has cheap electricity because of solar power its wholesale price is currently lower than the US, in winter.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#419

Post by JuniperMesos »

testing22321 wrote: post #170
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians. >Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan. This very well may be true, but taken at face value Canada seems to be paying you around $7k to install solar panels on your roof (that's 8k interest free loan is losing out to inflation + any interest it would have earned). D…

> if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however. As a non car owner are you annoyed everyone gets subsidized roads? Are you annoyed corn farmers get subsidies for growing corn? Would you be annoyed if people got subsidized life saving health care? It feels like the US can’t have nice things because people are hell bent on others not having nice things. What a shame.

> Are you annoyed corn farmers get subsidies for growing corn?

Yes we should immediately end these subsidies.

> It feels like the US can’t have nice things because people are hell bent on others not having nice things.

The US as a whole has lots of nice things. And sometimes the things the US has are not as nice as they could be because an unwise subsidy is paying for something inferior, and a small group of people who financially benefit from the subsidy advocate politically against changing it.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#420

Post by Analemma_ »

throwworhtthrow wrote: post #352
triceratops wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is true. But it's a rug pull for people who spent money on their panels expecting an RoI. Were existing installations grandfathered in?

Yes, existing installations get 20 years of grandfathered rates [1]. Which makes it more of a ladder pull than a rug pull... [1] https://www.sce.com/clean-energy-efficiency/solar-generating...

The first round of people paid way more for their solar panels though, and those higher prices helped bootstrap the industry. Should people who paid much less for panels get the same reward? I'm having trouble getting outraged about this, it seems to be incentives working exactly as they should.
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