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Solar and batteries can power the world

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Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#51

Post by silvestrov »

tonyarkles wrote: post #22
silvestrov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article ignores hydropower. The numbers/prices look a lot better with solar + wind + hydro + battery. Norway runs almost entirely on hydropower. Sweden has a lot. Iceland runs on hydropower and geothermal.

I’m happy to be wrong about this globally, but in my neck of the woods the readily exploited hydro resources are already exploited to 90% of their capacity and have been for 100 years. Hydro is in many ways the ultimate renewable energy, but that’s been true since electrification and we’ve been using it as part of the energy mix since then. I’d love to be wrong but my understanding is that there isn’t a huge amount o…

Hydro in Norway goes very well with windmills in Denmark.

Very simplified:

Wind blows mostly in Denmark during the day, so Norway stops hydro during the day and imports electricity from Denmark's windmills.

During night the wind is mostly still in Denmark so windmills don't produce much and Denmark imports from Norway's hydro.

In this way you can stretch the capacity from hydro using windmills even though Norway isn't a good place for windmills.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#52

Post by JKCalhoun »

toasty228 wrote: post #39
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.

People still build houses like energy is cheap and abundant. A properly insulated house in any temperate climate require very little heating or cooling. Spend 50k on insulation that will last the life of the building instead of 50k on heating and cooling devices which will need constant maintenance and replacement + fuel and end up costing 10x more over the life of the building. A modern house with modern insulation…

And never mind ground-source heat pumps [1] (although I know the topic was specifically solar).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_source_heat_pump

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#53

Post by onetokeoverthe »

PyWoody wrote: post #31
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.

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.

[dead]

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#55

Post by DangitBobby »

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."

There are influential people who make lots of money when the US Govt forces the country to rely on fossil fuels.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#56

Post by dv_dt »

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.

Beyond the other better insulation comments, pairing electric with heat pumps that are SEER 10+ goes a long way to improve heating efficiency. Old resistive heaters are 1:1 on energy to heat, while newer heat pumps operate to much lower temperatures, and give you 1:10 or 1:15 electric:heat energy ratios.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#58

Post by whynotmaybe »

mtoner23 wrote: post #34
teucris wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article specifically notes the following: >We can get far without worrying about the last 5-10%. The solutions for the last 5-10% could be fossil fuels in the short-term, long-duration storage as it matures, or easily storeable e-biofuels.

So then they are wrong. The last 5-10 percent is the hardest part and it's the one consumers complain the most about! You can't run a factory on 90% power availability

You can run anything on 90% renewable and anything else for the remaining 10%.

As my house is on hydro-energy and everything is electric, I'm currently on 100% renewable and majors factories around me are the same.

Yes, hydro isn't available everywhere, just like solar or wind isn't, but wherever it's possible, we should have it.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#59

Post by declan_roberts »

toasty228 wrote: post #39
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.

People still build houses like energy is cheap and abundant. A properly insulated house in any temperate climate require very little heating or cooling. Spend 50k on insulation that will last the life of the building instead of 50k on heating and cooling devices which will need constant maintenance and replacement + fuel and end up costing 10x more over the life of the building. A modern house with modern insulation…

Yes you're right and I don't disagree. But a 500w heater isn't going to cut it when it's 20F outside. You actually have to run the heat as hard as possible when the sun is shining so you have some thermal momentum going into the evening.

The end result is you're going to make big lifestyle changes to accommodate the energy. For example everyone sleeping in 1 bedroom and only cooking with an electric pressure cooker or low and slow with an induction range.

Re: Solar and batteries can power the world

#60

Post by chongli »

PyWoody wrote: post #31
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.

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 shuts off and the furnace kicks in to provide emergency heating. My thermostat is a modern one with full time-of-day and day-of-week scheduling for heating and cooling, but it doesn't matter because the heat pump by itself is not able to swing the temperature up (by even half a degree) on its own, so this causes the furnace to kick in every time the schedule calls for a higher temperature, defeating the entire purpose of time-of-day scheduling.

I will also add that where I live (Southern Ontario) the sky is overcast 90% of the time during the winter. Solar panels, even somehow free of snow and ice, are going to produce almost nothing on those dark days. Add in the need to keep the panels free of snow and ice (presumably with heating, since nobody is going to be climbing around on their roof in the winter), and you'd likely reach energy net-negative trying to make use of them.

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