Ten Years of Analyzing the Duck Chart
https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2018/10-years-duck-curve.h...
Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid
71–80 of 99 posts
Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but the Coalition will because solar gives you cancer.
> solar gives you cancer Is that hyperbole or are they seriously saying that?
Hyperbole in that specific case, but they did have an enquiry into wind turbines partly examining alleged health effects...
Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid
#73The same thing is happening in Europe. Energy markets need large reorganization for the transition and energy grid and storage technology needs to catch up big time. This takes lots of money. Wind and solar turn spot prices negative when it's sunny and windy. Existing nuclear, coal can't be easily turned off for just a part of day. In free spot energy markets, the price of electricity must jump sky-high during low su…
Just pass those negative prices to customers and they will solve the problem.
Your solution would require massive increase in carbon tax without loopholes. That would be a good and simple solution, but it's not happening.
Consumers (especially 24/7 industry) wants to solve the cost, not the problem of CO2 emissions. Steady supply contract from non-renewables is cheaper. Letting markets to decide means that industry is not going to use renewable at all.
Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid
#74The ABC had a story today on pumped hydro storage: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-07/how-does-pumped-hydro-...
The Snowy 2.0 scheme looks promising: 2 GW max power, 350 GWh max storage, A$3.8-4.5 billion. Online ~2024. Just approve the bloody thing already.
For comparison, Tesla's 'world biggest battery' aka the Hornsdale Power Reserve, is 100 MW max power, 129 MWh storage, and cost ~A$100 million. (cheaper per Watt, but about 60 times more expensive per Wh) Built in 4 months!
Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid
#75An interesting alternative to battery storage opened in the UK this week - liquified air energy storage. I wonder if this may be helpful. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jun/05/pioneering-...
>liquified air energy storage. I wonder if this may be helpful. Let me answer this: No, it would not be helpful, because on pretty much all metrics (capital and operating costs, efficiency, flexibility, size etc) this technology is way worse than battery storage. Unfortunately - today - a lot of money which could be sensibly used deploying cost effective technology such as solar and wind power (and to a lesser extent…
What do you make of the claim that this technology is better for long term storage than battery storage?
Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would think move to renewables and more decentralization (more choices for individual consumers, as it happened with almost any other industry).
Decentralized is not really the problem here: it's more about the links between each installation and the surplus. It's harder to see it with electricity, but think as if it was water for example: if people were pumping water at home and pushing it into pipes to others, and not that many water was actually needed, where would it go?
By decentralization I mean something different, decentralization of energy production. The fact that, say, a village can decide to install a solar panel array to satisfy some of their energy demands, and they don't have to rely on powerful (and often global) energy companies who mine coal or process oil, is an important game changer in terms of power relations between people.
Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Following your reasonning, there is no reason why investors should shy away from renewables. The Greens would not harm any project of additional large scale batteries, for example.
I think there are two main reasons whu investors would shy away from renewables in Australia: 1) Firstly there are no large well-known actors, so there is uncertainty around renewable energy companies are going to "win". 2) Secondly, Australia currently has a government that is hostile towards renewables. It could at any time introduce legislation that would make renewables economically untennable.
These are both true, furthermore a lot of the bigger players became big as a result of the initial round of solar rebate schemes - where a lot of low quality solar installations were put up. Now a lot of these companies are doing much larger jobs without the necessary skillsets. There's a bit of a minefield of shoddy installers still out there - look at the Crap Solar Facebook page for an insider look (there are some horrific installations).
Despite all this, I've seen a huge amount of interest in investors wanting large scale commercial and utility scale solar projects. From what I know, solar engineering consultancies are turning jobs away due to the demand being so great.
Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Horse stables were in their day a cost-effective solution to transportation, and those steam engines had no chance of ever moving a couple of meters on the rails...
I think there a physics problem there. The efficiency is way worse than charging almost any type of battery. So unless material for any type of battery becomes completely unavailable (including say Iron and sulfur or lead), the power free and you manage to build your Air Liquifier with less resources than batteries it will always be a stupid way to spend resources.
They are claiming efficiencies of 60-70% compared with batteries of nearly 90%
Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid
#79The same thing is happening in Europe. Energy markets need large reorganization for the transition and energy grid and storage technology needs to catch up big time. This takes lots of money. Wind and solar turn spot prices negative when it's sunny and windy. Existing nuclear, coal can't be easily turned off for just a part of day. In free spot energy markets, the price of electricity must jump sky-high during low su…
Just pass those negative prices to customers and they will solve the problem.
That requires "smart" meters everywhere.
Re: Rooftop solar power may be flooding the grid
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the part where someone points out why I'm completely wrong: > solar roofs should come with batteries The way I understand it, batteries tend to be bad for the environment if/when they need to be replaced, because often they are improperly recycled and/or there are no adequate facilities for that. If this is correct, do we really want to have more of them around? Wouldn't an environmentally-friendly(ish) centr…
Lead acid batteries are pretty easy to recycle. We already do this for car batteries. Lithium batteries are currently not as easily recycled, but that seems to be because there is little demand for recycled Lithium and they're not very toxic in landfills.
Stationary batteries have fewer constraints wrt to energy density, because they don't move.