The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy

[Tigers!]

Yeah, batteries are great, as long as California doesn't need electricity after 10pm, doesn't want much electricity between sunset an 10pm, doesn't care that wholesale prices are frequently negative, making low carbon sources to fill the nighttime (and other low-solar perriods, such as cloudy days) gaps less competitive than burning gas, and doesn't mind paying eyewateringly large amounts of money to achieve this.

Batteries remain polluting, dangerous, and massively environmentally damaging to manufacture.

If you want safe, clean, sustainable energy for our future, batteries are a dreadful idea on all three counts; More so in the light of the fact that we have had a genuiny safe, clean, and sustainable option for seventy years, and have been denigrating it and refusing to even consider it for fifty.

Humans are fucking stupid.

Paricularly when they cherry pock what they think are the good attributes of a system, and consistently ignore all the myriad major problems with it, as an article of faith.

Now, now. Don't be negative.

We must smile at all times even we feel like screaming. Seems akin to a religion this renewable faith.

 

[Tigers!]

Microsoft announces largest-ever corporate procurement of renewable energy – pv magazine USA - "The tech giant signed on for 10.5 GW of renewable energy with Brookfield Renewable Partners, which may cost more than $11.5 billion to build, according to Bloomberg NEF."

How much would that power cost Microsoft per kWh? More, I daresay than what they were paying in 2020.

 

[Tigers!]

Nuclear energy? Non-hydro renewable energy passed it in 2017.

So what?

It shows how little the nuclear industry has been doing to rise up to the challenge.

Not surprising considering all the legal, regulatory, financial hurdles they have to jump and which are increasing.

 

[Tigers!]

Nuclear energy is the clear winner, but wind and solar and batteries are better than natgas, and much better than coal.

Nuclear a winner? Quick, where are the smelling salts?

 

[Tigers!]

Solar balconies are booming in Germany. Here’s what you need to know about the popular home tech | Euronews - solar panels hanging from the top edges of balconies. Installation is easier than for rooftop solar panels.

I am glad the article mentioned the considerations before installing. They claim that you can just plug the output straight into an AC socket.
If you cannot just do that for rooftop installations then how can you do it for a balcony? That cost is not mentioned.

 

[bilby]

Improved batteries will likely make that kvetching totally out of date

No, they likely won't. There's a physical limit to battery storage, and we are pretty much there with Lithium batteries.

Regardless of how good batteries are, achieving reliable 24x7x365 supply from ONLY uncontrollably intermittent sources is impossible. The required installed capacity of both generators and storage devices approaches infinity as their share of supply rises; At 30%, things look pretty good; At 60% you need massive mostly idle capacity; at 90% you need insane amounts of both generating capacity and storage, most of which is very rarely used, but all of which is expensive, and represents vast environmental harm in both the extraction of the necessary raw materials, and disposal of the end-of-life plant.

 

[bilby]

Nuclear energy? Non-hydro renewable energy passed it in 2017.

So what?

It shows how little the nuclear industry has been doing to rise up to the challenge.

What the fuck do you expect them to do, when government says "NO."?

 

[thebeave]

This thread is hilarious. Over 6 years now with lpetrich posting about the awesomeness of solar, wind, biomass, rubbing cats backwards, etc. Then bilby chimes in calling BS on 98% of it and advocates for nuclear energy instead. Pause for a couple of weeks. Then, another round of renewable energy news from lpetrich and how great things are, followed by more poo pooing about renewables and nuclear flag waving from bilby. Rinse, lather, repeat. I need to check back in here in 2030 and see if you two are still going at it.

 

[lpetrich]

Nuclear energy is the clear winner, but wind and solar and batteries are better than natgas, and much better than coal.

Nuclear a winner? Quick, where are the smelling salts?

As if I'm some mirror image of the pro-nuclear people here.

 

[lpetrich]

Improved batteries will likely make that kvetching totally out of date

No, they likely won't. There's a physical limit to battery storage, and we are pretty much there with Lithium batteries.

Energy density, maybe, but not in availability of raw materials. Lithium is a rare element, and that has provoked interest into alternatives like sodium-ion and flow batteries.

 

[steve_bank]

Looking at it pragmatically and technically nuclear combined with renewable is the way to go.

The numbers do not add up for renewables like wind and solar to cover existing demand and growth.

Alternate energy will work if everybody accepts less consumption and mobility.


In the news as the first waves of EVs have been in service for a while batteries are beginning to fail, and the costs to put a new battery in a car is high.

People are abandoning cars at a local EV service business when they see the costs.


Not like the good old days when you cold order a rebuilt VW bug engine at a parts store or mail order through JC Whitney. And put it in yourself.

 

[bilby]

Looking at it pragmatically and technically nuclear combined with renewable is the way to go.

No, it isn't.

Renewables are a pointless and expensive addition to an all-nuclear grid; They add literally no benefit, at quite considerable cost.

Because renewables are uncontrollably intermittent, you need adequate nuclear to supply 100% of demand; Once that is present, why would you not use it, and instead pay for wind turbines and solar panels that simply replace 1:1 some of your nuclear generation?

Your suggestion is compromise for compromise's sake, and has no merit whatsoever other than as a futile attempt to appease fans of wind and/or solar generation.

Isolated low power electrical installations that are not connected to the grid at all might benefit from solar and/or wind plus battery storage; but that's existing technology, and isn't relevant to a discussion of how to generate grid scale power.

 

[bilby]

Alternate energy will work if everybody accepts less consumption and mobility.

If everyone accepts less consumption and mobility, we can go back to burning wood and charcoal for everything.

It's a shit way to live though. The word "medieval" is rarely used to describe a prosperous technological society, and there's a good reason for that.

Abundant cheap energy (and the infrastructure it both implies and enables) is the reason it's nicer to live in the first world than in the third world.

 

[Elixir]

If they weren’t so busy killing each other, “medieval” would imply “wholesome” and “natural”.
Probably a good thing they were killing each other though - otherwise we’d have to put up with all the discomforts of being wholesome and natural.

 

[bilby]

If they weren’t so busy killing each other, “medieval” would imply “wholesome” and “natural”.
Probably a good thing they were killing each other though - otherwise we’d have to put up with all the discomforts of being wholesome and natural.

Wholesome is a pretty meaningless word; Natural is strongly negative. Literally everything humans have done since the Mesolithic has been an attempt to protect ourselves against the dire consequences of the natural.

A natural life is one where two or three of your twelve children survive to adulthood, and your greatest hope is not to starve or freeze to death this month.

Either way, there was precious little that was wholesome, and almost nothing that was natural, about medieval life. So you are deeply wrong, on several levels, here.

 

[Elixir]

you are deeply wrong, on several levels, here

Right, that’s the point!
(Except the ‘good thing they were killing each other’ part. That part is right, because OVERPOPULATION!!!)

Literally everything humans have done since the Mesolithic has been an attempt to protect ourselves against the dire consequences of the natural.

Yes, those nasty discomforts.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yeah, batteries are great, as long as California doesn't need electricity after 10pm, doesn't want much electricity between sunset an 10pm, doesn't care that wholesale prices are frequently negative, making low carbon sources to fill the nighttime (and other low-solar perriods, such as cloudy days) gaps less competitive than burning gas, and doesn't mind paying eyewateringly large amounts of money to achieve this.

Improved batteries will likely make that kvetching totally out of date, batteries like sodium-ion ones and flow ones. Also such technologies as compressed air.

Batteries remain polluting, dangerous, and massively environmentally damaging to manufacture.

???

There's nothing in development that's even close to good enough.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Improved batteries will likely make that kvetching totally out of date

No, they likely won't. There's a physical limit to battery storage, and we are pretty much there with Lithium batteries.

Energy density, maybe, but not in availability of raw materials. Lithium is a rare element, and that has provoked interest into alternatives like sodium-ion and flow batteries.

Energy density is important for things like automobiles. Not necessarily for power storage of PV systems.
What is needed there is cheap, long lifespan, and low maintenance.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

From the Guardian, coal power generation dead in Britain.

......
For more than half a century Ratcliffe-on-Soar has burned millions of tonnes of coal to generate the electricity needed to power the British economy. But one by one Britain’s coal power stations have closed, leaving Ratcliffe the sole survivor. In less than six months it, too, will finally power down for good, extinguishing the last embers of the once-mighty coal industry.
.....

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nuclear energy is the clear winner, but wind and solar and batteries are better than natgas, and much better than coal.

Nuclear a winner? Quick, where are the smelling salts?

Nuke has about a zero of additional safety over it's closest competitor. And it's expensive because it's required to be--the result of regulatory nonsense where competing industries are regulated to different standards. Replace the safety standards with a standard that being better than your closest competitor is good enough and you'll see the grid convert to nearly pure nuke as fast as it can. (Can't be pure nuke because nukes can't be made blackstart capable.)