Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables • Hacker News Board

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#61

Post by est31 » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 1:56 PM UTC

piokoch wrote: post #35

sandworm101 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Once this comes online, wind generation will often be over 100% of demand UK wide Which is exactly what I would expect from island nations. The UK has lots of coast, which means lots of wind. That is a resource to export. The cornerstone of free trade is that some things are worth more in some places and less in others. UK has lots of wind. Maybe they can trade that for imports of luxury goods from elsewhere. If o…

Yes, the point with selling electricity is that you need to guarantee that you will deliver some fixed amount of electricity. If you depend on wind power plants how this guarantee can be given? What if wind stops. Maybe it would make sense to build huge bitcoin mining data centers and mine bitcoins in case of surplus. Hardly useful, but given current coins rush could be profitable. Better than paying producers for no…

On a wholesale level, electricity prices are highly dynamic already, and highly demand based.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#62

Post by lightgreen » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 1:56 PM UTC

danjac wrote: post #53

lightgreen wrote: post #6

Unlike most places in the world, Scotland is sparsely populated (5M) and mountainous, so they have an option of using hydro. Good for them, but let’s not jump to conclusion that their approach is for everyone. And yes, the article is only about electricity, not heating.

Oh dear. You do realize the Scots mostly don't live alone in little cabins in the mountains like in the movies, don't you? Most of the population lives in the (densely populated) Central Belt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Scotland

Power lines are built from hydro power plants in the mountains to the cities. Obviously you know that so I don’t understand what you were trying to say.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#63

Post by eldaisfish » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 1:57 PM UTC

lightgreen wrote: post #44

eldaisfish wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of Tesla's batter in south Australia? It was recently expanded to 193 MWh. Care to guess how long it'll run at full power? Around 60-100 minutes. At its rated power of 100 MW, it can power around 25% of South Australia's lowest demand. That's it. At peak demand, the fraction is lower still. Cars have a fraction of the energy storage capacity of a single battery site and not all cars are connected to th…

For the comparison, average nuclear power plant produces 1000MW around the clock. The goal of Australia batteries was to normalize short production/consumption fluctuations, not as general universal battery storage to deal with renewable uneven production.

My point was simply to illustrate that batteries are not a viable energy storage method for the scale of energy required on even a small power grid. South Australia's power grid is relatively small compared to many similar regions.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#64

Post by VBprogrammer » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 1:57 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #31

aclelland wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grid storage is such an interesting topic to me. We are all used to energy storage at a small scale (phone batteries, even electric cars) but the challenges of needing to store such vast amounts of energy seems like an almost impossible task, even the large Tesla battery in AU only seems to be used to help smooth the grid supply. It seems that the Scottish landscape might lend itself to more Hydro but that'll be an u…

There hasn't been nearly enough done on demand shaping. Rather than wondering how we can store all the excess capacity it's probably more cost effective to wonder how we can shift demand. Aluminum smelters in Germany use gargantuan amounts of electricity, for instance, but they can use 3x as much on Friday when power is cheap than Monday when it's not with relative ease. Using a powerwall to keep production steady wo…

The challenge with this kind of stuff is that capital costs are a big part of the cost for large industrial plants. A plant which is only using 25% of its capacity is going to be unprofitable.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#65

Post by xiphias2 » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

piokoch wrote: post #35

sandworm101 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Once this comes online, wind generation will often be over 100% of demand UK wide Which is exactly what I would expect from island nations. The UK has lots of coast, which means lots of wind. That is a resource to export. The cornerstone of free trade is that some things are worth more in some places and less in others. UK has lots of wind. Maybe they can trade that for imports of luxury goods from elsewhere. If o…

Yes, the point with selling electricity is that you need to guarantee that you will deliver some fixed amount of electricity. If you depend on wind power plants how this guarantee can be given? What if wind stops. Maybe it would make sense to build huge bitcoin mining data centers and mine bitcoins in case of surplus. Hardly useful, but given current coins rush could be profitable. Better than paying producers for no…

> Yes, the point with selling electricity is that you need to guarantee that you will deliver some fixed amount of electricity. If you depend on wind power plants how this guarantee can be given? What if wind stops.

Real-time bidding for prices already works at some places, but we need to modernize the whole electric system of the world. Smart grid was always part of the renewable solution.

> Maybe it would make sense to build huge bitcoin mining data centers and mine bitcoins in case of surplus. Hardly useful, but given current coins rush could be profitable. Better than paying producers for not producing energy.

It's already happening, but with all the negative conotations of Bitcoin mining, it's generally easier to listen to interviews with people working at energy companies than to discuss it on internet forums.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#66

Post by _Microft » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #34

sefrost wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read about a similar idea using abandoned mine shafts. https://www.theengineer.co.uk/abandoned-mine-shafts-energy-s...

oh I've heard about that one too actually - don't they suspend a large weight and use its potential energy as storage? I'm a sucker for these back-to-basics engineering projects. High tech batteries be damned, let's just use potential energy for storage!

There is a German company suggesting to cut a large piece of rock (think: hundreds of meters in diameter and depth) lose and lift that by pumping water beneath it. A moving mountain, it would be. Totally crazy stuff, I should check if that ever made any progress.

Here is a German article about it. As far as I remember, the real issue is that pumps/generators with the required powers are very expensive. https://www.ingenieur.de/technik/fachbereiche/energie/lageen...

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#67

Post by Toutouxc » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #45

martinald wrote: post #11

Really misleading article IMO. What this actually means is Scotland sometimes generated 200-300%+ of its demand from wind (and "exported" the rest), and sometimes low %age points and used other sources/imports. It makes it sound like Scotland is wind powered 97% of the time (only 3% more to go!), which is very different. There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices (typically when it is sunn…

>There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices It seems like an opportunity more than a crisis to me. There are tons of potential applications for "free" electricity. * Storage heating/cooling that's basically free * Manufacturing carbon neutral jet fuel * Cheaper aluminium production It could also lead to onshoring of certain industries which previously moved to locales with access to cheap…

You're not solving the problem. There are lots of applications for "free" electricity, but there aren't many applications for unpredictable and unstable bursts of free electricity.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#68

Post by missedthecue » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

Glench wrote: post #52

neom wrote: post #5

"Not only do renewables reduce the impact of our electricity use on the climate, they are also generating jobs and income for communities around the country." I wish everyone thought that way, all I hear in Canada is "oh the jobs, oh the jobs, what will happen to the jobs...???"

Yeah, great point. I like this report showing that rapidly decarbonizing will create 25 million jobs, save the average American household $2000 per year, and improve the quality of life of everyone: "How to create 25 million jobs by decarbonizing the economy" - https://www.fastcompany.com/90533448/how-to-create-25-millio...

That is like saying we can create 25 million jobs by starting a land war in Asia. I mean they directly compared it to WWII mobilization in the article.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#69

Post by bilekas » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

wcoenen wrote: post #56

pydry wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices It seems like an opportunity more than a crisis to me. There are tons of potential applications for "free" electricity. * Storage heating/cooling that's basically free * Manufacturing carbon neutral jet fuel * Cheaper aluminium production It could also lead to onshoring of certain industries which previously moved to locales with access to cheap…

It might work, but it's not necessarily going to be very profitable. The equipment that sits around waiting for low or negative electricity prices represents locked up capital, and ongoing maintenance and depreciation costs. For the same reason, it's not a good idea to have bitcoin mining equipment sitting around waiting for cheap electricity. The hardware becomes obsolete very quickly, so there's only limited time t…

> But it's not necessarily going to be very profitable.

Not paying for electricity is profitable by default.. Having a reserve for the long term that's environmentally friendly, its a benefit.. Investing in infrastructure that doesn't depend on finite fossil fuels is profitable.. So I have no idea what you're talking about.

> For the same reason, it's not a good idea to have bitcoin mining equipment sitting around waiting for cheap electricity. The hardware becomes obsolete very quickly, so there's only limited time to earn back the investment.

Its really nothing like that at all..

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#70

Post by codeulike » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 1:59 PM UTC

martinald wrote: post #11

Really misleading article IMO. What this actually means is Scotland sometimes generated 200-300%+ of its demand from wind (and "exported" the rest), and sometimes low %age points and used other sources/imports. It makes it sound like Scotland is wind powered 97% of the time (only 3% more to go!), which is very different. There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices (typically when it is sunn…

Instead of paying wind producers to stop, take the excess electricity and use it for bitcoin mining, then use the bitcoin to buy electricity when there's not enough.

(I'm joking, I think, but maybe this would actually work)