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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

#581

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

neilwilson wrote: post #559
pfdietz wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just shows batteries shouldn't be the only storage technology, at least at high latitude. There needs to be a complementary long term storage technology with low capacity capex, even if its round trip efficiency is bad. Examples: green hydrogen, ultra low capex thermal storage. To see the effect of including such, go to https://model.energy Using a long term storage technology (in addition to wind/solar/batterie…

The most sensible solution is synthesised natural gas. Then we can use the existing LNG storage and plant. It’s a lot easier to store and transport than hydrogen and the capital items already exist. Curtailment fees should be replaced with purchases of green LNG.

The problem with that is how dispersed carbon atoms are in the atmosphere.

Another option is ammonia, which is quite nasty to deal with.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#582

Post by CraigJPerry »

owenversteeg wrote: post #300
eigenspace wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be rather misleading to to talk about renewable energy generation versus total energy usage. Most uses of fossil fuels are very inefficient. For instance, when you step on the accelerator in your car, only around 30% of the energy in the fuel you use actually is being used to propel you forward. The majority of the energy is wasted as heat. In a power plant that's more like 70% being captured and going towards…

I mostly agree. Certainly transportation is an obvious one. But of course there are still some losses; when you include all the losses in the system and cold weather you can easily get ~80% for EVs vs. ~30% for ICE cars. Heat pumps can be very efficient, but 5x more efficient than combustion/resistive heating (which is near 100%...) is not common in practice. 3x, sure, plenty of installations that get that or better…

in cold weather an ice is not close to 30%, that's an achievable warm weather figure when everything's working efficiently. Many ice journeys are so short in cold weather that efficiency never peaks above 10%

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#583

Post by nandomrumber »

korhojoa wrote: post #534
nandomrumber wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only asterisk this time is that this is electricity, not energy. … and 7.8% for Europe. Yes, the _! ONLY !_ thing is, this won’t move the needle at all on climate change. Wind and solar for electric is the lowest of low hanging fruit. No one has even proposed that they have maybe even possibly have perhaps thought of an idea to address transport and agriculture related emissions. Lithium ion batteries, or a sol…

Confident talk, but that's not at all the reality that I'm seeing. Public transport is almost completely electric powered where I live (ferries still haven't changed to electric, but it's coming.) Trucking is electrified, as in, the operators have realzed that they're cheaper to run, so they are changing over when possible. (Sidenote: with some of the heaviest loads worldwide) Very many agricultural buildings in acti…

> not at all the reality that I'm seeing.

You’re not looking hard enough, past the greenwash.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#584

Post by Gibbon1 »

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…

For an example one can look at California. Batteries deleted the duck curve.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#585

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

Moldoteck wrote: post #321
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if it the nuclear didn't need refurbished to keep running. France and Canada are currently estimating costs to refurb old nuclear that are higher then new build renewables.

Refurb costs are for the entire fleet which is 50+GW and are in fact dirt cheap. Refurbs are in 1-3bn/unit range. CF of say solar in this region is roughly 10-12%. To have same average output as a single 1GW npp you would need about 10GW solar and much more if you want to achieve firm generation. French refurbs will happen anyway. In fact, carenage is already undergoing.

In Ontario they now want to double the electricity price to 15 cents kWh to finance refurbs and ”SMR” new builds.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/ontario-utility-wants-to-double-...

New built nuclear power simply does not make any sense anymore given the costs and timelines involved.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#586

Post by jmward01 »

FrancisMoodie wrote: post #572
jmward01 wrote: post #570

Is anyone accurately predicting solar and renewable adoption? Year after year I see terrible predictions that fall way short of the reality in the world. If so, when do those models predict the death of fossil fuel based power plants? There is generally some moment where keeping the infrastructure going becomes so expensive that things just shut down. Are we close? I wonder what the graphs of fossil fuel plan constru…

I don't understand why it always has to be one or the other? Why can't we have both? More sources of energy means more reliable energy distribution, multiple fail-safes, in summer there is more solar, in fall there is more wind, in winter we probably need power plants to uphold the need for energy so everyone can stay warm. But this polarization of things, just like with politics, is so stupid. They all have pro's an…

I am a huge fan of the diversity argument. I think though that the proven negatives of fossil fuels and the massive difference in cost compared to renewables + batteries will end up making fossil fuels a niche at best in the not so near future. The goal is diversity, not maintaining every possible system. Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, nuclear and batteries give us a pretty diverse system compared to oil+coal+natural gas that has dominated so far. My point was that fossil fuels are likely heading towards a tipping point where the already massive subsidies keeping them going won't be enough and they will likely collapse suddenly. I, for one, am not willing to continue to subsidize them just to maintain more diversity especially considering how much we subsidize them already.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#587

Post by crote »

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.

I couldn't care less when it runs, as long as it's done when I want to unload it.

The diswasher will by full after dinner, so I close it and press "start". It has to be done at the latest by next dinner. Does it run immediately, during the night, or during the day? Irrelevant, let the damn thing pick the best (cheapest) time.

Same with laundry. On average I run less than one load a day, so I'm happy if it finishes either when I wake up, when I get home from work, or when I am about to go to bed.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#588

Post by crote »

danny_codes wrote: post #270
mekdoonggi wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked into sodium-ion batteries for which factories are coming online in China. The theoretical manufacturing cost of those is very very low, which will make solar + batteries very cheap. I suspect China will reach those costs ahead of schedule.

IMO this is a classic case of underestimating how far manufacturing improvements can get you on the cost scale. You see a promising technology in the lab and it’s hard to imagine a 1 million x reduction in price, yet we see that time and time again as tech gets scaled out. What’s wild to me is how the US is leaving itself in the dust. How the GOP imagines we’ll be competitive when the rest of the world can produce el…

Easy: the GOP doesn't care about future competitiveness.

They are currently getting lobbied by oil executives, who are trying to maximize short-term profit while they still can. The wider industry doesn't have the long-term vision to preemptively outlobby them, so the GOP is doing what oil wants.

Dealing with competition in a post-oil world is a problem left for the next generation: the current GOP will be long-dead by then and will have enjoyed the fruits of accepting decades of oil bribes.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#589

Post by Kon5ole »

FrancisMoodie wrote: post #572
jmward01 wrote: post #570

Is anyone accurately predicting solar and renewable adoption? Year after year I see terrible predictions that fall way short of the reality in the world. If so, when do those models predict the death of fossil fuel based power plants? There is generally some moment where keeping the infrastructure going becomes so expensive that things just shut down. Are we close? I wonder what the graphs of fossil fuel plan constru…

I don't understand why it always has to be one or the other? Why can't we have both? More sources of energy means more reliable energy distribution, multiple fail-safes, in summer there is more solar, in fall there is more wind, in winter we probably need power plants to uphold the need for energy so everyone can stay warm. But this polarization of things, just like with politics, is so stupid. They all have pro's an…

>I don't understand why it always has to be one or the other? Why can't we have both?

I basically agree with you but I think the other point here is valid too. Solar (and some other renewables) are so cheap they basically make it impossible to operate expensive powerplants, and then it kinda becomes a "one thing or the other".

To me it seems that this is a problem with the current business model, which should be adjusted. We should not expect to make money from producing electricity, but instead from consuming electricity.

Basically electricity should eventually be free, since we are in fact being sent orders of magnitude more energy than we need every day.

We have recently discovered how to harness this free energy very cheaply, but are stuck in business models from the time when producing energy was expensive.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#590

Post by Moldoteck »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #585
Moldoteck wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refurb costs are for the entire fleet which is 50+GW and are in fact dirt cheap. Refurbs are in 1-3bn/unit range. CF of say solar in this region is roughly 10-12%. To have same average output as a single 1GW npp you would need about 10GW solar and much more if you want to achieve firm generation. French refurbs will happen anyway. In fact, carenage is already undergoing.

In Ontario they now want to double the electricity price to 15 cents kWh to finance refurbs and ”SMR” new builds. https://reneweconomy.com.au/ontario-utility-wants-to-double-... New built nuclear power simply does not make any sense anymore given the costs and timelines involved.

You need to read precisely what's happening. Ontario wants to front finance all refurbs and SMRs instead of spreading the financing over years like it's usually done.

BWRX is expensive for sure. It'll cost more per GW than the failed french FLA3 or Vogtle. To me this seems a mistake considering Canada had Candus, an own authentic design that doesn't rely on enriched fuel and they did some very serious refurbs recently on time and on budget. On the other hand, bwrx is american tech and needs enriched fuel and SMRs will always have worse economics than large units, there's a reason humanity scales everything up, be it nuclear, be it wind turbines or solar fields

Again. Refurbs are extremely cheap. At 1-3bn/unit you get 1GW of firm power. That would be vastly cheaper vs deploying say solar, that would have the same TWh/y averaged even with China's costs. And this doesn't even account for firming.

Heck, even Barakah built as new by Korea is competitive vs renewables in the west. And it's understandable considering they spent per unit 1/3 of what FLA3 did cost... In under half of the time

The question is rather why they want front financing. But I have some clues considering who is their current head of govt

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