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The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy

Elixir said:
Loren Pechtel said:
The problem with pumped hydro is the cost of the container.
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That’s the geographic constraint. Where I disagreed with Bilby is about whether pumped hydro storage has already been fully deployed. I think it could be downscaled, not necessarily to portability, but to improving life in places with zero infrastructure but lots of sun, serving small populations in small villages, providing a little power for after dark. I’m sure smaller locations that are close to ready-made, are more plentiful than large ones.
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It's a severe geographic constraint. Very few places have suitable terrain and enough water available to be pumped around without causing problems.
 
Wireless charging double-decker buses
Seattle will be one of the first cities in the US to use electric double-decker buses with wireless charging. The buses will charge wirelessly during the day when electricity rates are more favorable, and only plug in at depots at night. The goal is to reduce carbon footprints and fuel costs, and enhance the use of renewable energy.
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Washington State Ferries (WSF) is transitioning its fleet to hybrid-electric power to reduce emissions, save money, and improve reliability:
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We have hybrid busses that work on overhead power cables on some routes.
 
When you think about it the demand for energy began when ancient humans learned to control fire and what they could do with controlled heat.

As uses for heat grew so did the demand for fire. Smelting and forging metals. Aluminum and copper. Production of steel.

Steam engines for water pumps in coal mines helped produce large quantities of cheap coal energy.

Nuclear power is in the end is just a source of controlled heat.

The Internet, Bitcoin, and search engines are all based on controlled heat.
 
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thatoregonlife.com

Amazon To Build Four New Nuclear Reactors On The Columbia To Power AI

Amazon has announced a partnership with Energy Northwest and X-energy to build four new nuclear reactors near Richland, Washington, aiming to power its growing AI models. This "more sustainable
thatoregonlife.com thatoregonlife.com
They wanted some in Oregon, but there is a law against such development.
How does AI pay for this?
Bitcoin?
 
Borobotics drill is just 135mm wide and 2.5m long. It is an autonomous drilling rig that comes in the back of a van, needs about a parking space of land to operate, and runs on household 240V. It take about half a day to set up. From there, it will run itself, adjusting to soil composition and shutting down and sealing the hole if it detects water or methane. This brings the cost and installation time for ground based heat pumps down and makes them more competitive with air sourced heat pumps. In much of Europe the Earth temperature is a constant 14C at 250m, making it ideal for ground sourced heat pumps. In the US with our centralized electric utilities, there would be much pushback for such an off the grid setup.

IEA Report on Geothermal

And on the "drill baby drill" front, word I'm still hearing from the drillers is, "we don't want to". We're fine with the price of oil just where it is.
 
Rosendin Electric Deploys Custom Robots to Install Solar Panels | Engineering News-Record
Installing panels on large solar farms is tough work, requiring multi-person crews to lug 80- to 100-lb panels into place on preassembled mounting racks—with some holding a panel steady while another worker screws it into place. Large solar farms can easily have 1 million of such panels, each of which has to be lifted and secured in place individually. This is strenuous work for anyone, and workers who start the day fresh tend to be exhausted by shift's end.

Confronted with this backbreaking labor and a shortage of workers in the remote locations where projects are sited, Rosendin Senior Vice President David Lincoln wanted to see if some of this repetitious work could be automated.

...
smari and his team looked at every task involved in placing and mounting the panels before coming up with their robotic approach. The basic robotic platform, a treaded robot with an articulated arm similar to the road excavation robot, has been adapted to several tasks. A robot with an arm capable of six degrees of movement uses a vacuum-based suction cup attachment to lift a panel from a stack into place on the mount rack. Then, human operators can confirm the panel is positioned properly and drive screws to secure it in place.

Two other robots serve as panel carriers, working in tandem to ensure there is always a fresh stack of panels for the picker robot to grab one. Typically panels are delivered on pallets to the end of each row of a solar installation by a skid steer, and workers had to carry them over uneven ground down the lane to install them. Now, the carrier robots can be loaded from the end of the row and bring the panels down as they are installed. Each panel carrier robot can carry 30 to 35 panels at a time.
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These robots still need some human assistance, but they can install solar panels at 3 to 5 times the rate of a human installer team.
 
Energy Companies Turn to Robots to Install Solar Panels - The New York Times - "Energy companies say a labor shortage is one big obstacle to installing more solar power. They’re turning to machines to speed things up."
Getting machines to do the job isn’t easy, however. Unlike the robots that work on assembly lines inside factories, robots that operate outdoors have to withstand rain, dirt and mud while dealing with uneven terrain and other surprises.

To overcome those hurdles, AES is counting on advances in artificial intelligence that allow its robots to recognize and adjust to different types of solar modules and difficult outdoor conditions.

“One of the biggest issues we had to deal with was glare,” said Deise Yumi Asami, who founded the company’s Maximo project. When the robot moved from New York to Ohio for testing, it suddenly faced different angles of sunlight reflecting off modules and the company’s engineers had to train the robot to adapt.

...
Other solar companies are also exploring automation. Built Robotics, a San Francisco-based start-up, is using pile-driving robots to build the foundations for solar farms. By automating some processes, a task that typically takes 6 to 7 workers can be done with two workers up to three times as fast, the company said.

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Terabase Energy, a start-up based in Berkeley, Calif., has developed a small mobile factory that uses robots to assemble solar modules on-site and install them on racks. The technology has already been used to install 17 megawatts of panels at a solar farm in Arizona and the company says it has made construction 25 percent faster.
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Robots are also being developed for wind-turbine maintenance.
One of these robots is BladeBUG, a six-legged robot with suction cups as its feet, a robot that walks on wind-turbine blades. Aerones also has legged robots, and it offers drones, flying ones. Robots can also crawl inside of hollow wind-turbine blades.

These systems still need human technicians to operate them, but these technicians stay on the ground.
 
Florida reverses energy transition by cranking fossil fuel use | Reuters - August 21, 2024 - 11:52 AM PDT - I doubt that Florida reversed it as much as let itself lag behind.

Storing solar power through aluminum-rock composite – pv magazine USA - some more thermal storage: heating up rocks with electrical coils, then extracting that heat to power a steam engine to generate electricity.

Are California’s electricity prices rising because customers are installing solar panels? – pv magazine USA - "Electricity rates are rising in California. Utilities say rooftop solar is to blame. Grid expert and economist-at-large Ahmad Faruqui comments."
First, stop pointing the finger at the solar cost shift as creating high electric rates. Instead, identify the role being played by inflated utility overhead costs, managerial inefficiencies and excessive executive compensation. ...

Second, recognize that solar panels generate clean energy right at the source. ...

Third, understand that solar panels, by lowering electric bills for customers, improve the odds that they will electrify. ...

Fourth, seek to make solar panels affordable for all customers, which is exactly what was happening before the Net Billing Tariff was enacted on April 15, 2023. ...

Fifth, accept that solar customers with batteries dramatically reduce strain on the grid during peak periods and lower electric rates in wholesale markets. ...
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Renewable Energy: safe, clean, sustainable energy for our future at Reddit

Building the world's largest electric ferry - ABC News
This is no ordinary ferry. Weighing in at 2,000 tonnes and spanning 130 metres, it can host 2,100 passengers and 225 cars.

And its beating heart will be a giant system of batteries.


Hull 096 as it’s currently known, is being built by Incat in Hobart, Tasmania, a long way from its final destination in South America.

It will eventually carry passengers across the Río de la Plata, between Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires and Uruguay.

The journey across the river is about 30 nautical miles (55 kilometres) and will take just over an hour.

That’s going to require some serious batteries, that are able to keep Hull 096 running for 90 minutes.

Superfast chargers will be installed on both sides of the river, with a full recharge taking 60 to 90 minutes.
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One of South Dakota's largest wind farms just got the green light | Electrek

California off to a strong clean electricity start with solar up 33.8% – pv magazine International - "Forty-eight days into 2025, CAISO gas use for electricity is down almost 28%, while battery use is up 78%, and solar has already met 100% of demand in the midst of winter."
Mark Jacobson, a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering, has been diligently tracking electricity generation trends from wind, water, and solar (WWS) over the past year. His research aligns with a significant uptick in periods when 100% of the state’s grid demand is being met by clean energy. This increase is largely due to rapid storage expansion, which has started to take over portions of the evening demand peak from gas, reducing solar curtailment and improving grid stability.
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Trying to catch up? Duke Energy Florida invests $521 million in four new solar sites - energynews - almost 300 megawatts
 
Egypt rushes to catch up on solar energy as gas prices soar | Reuters
With few clouds, vast empty deserts and a well-developed electricity grid, Egypt has all the elements for a huge expansion in solar power generation. But it is only now moving to exploit them, after the cost of natural gas imports jumped.

A sharp decline in domestic gas production combined with growing consumption caught authorities off-guard last year and led to rolling blackouts over the sweltering summer.
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The Global South’s Cleantech Revolution in Five Charts - RMI - "Global South countries are rapidly adopting clean energy, seizing the fastest and cheapest path to prosperity in history."
First, let us set the scene. The Global South — which we define as Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia — needs much more energy, and it needs it as fast and as cheaply as possible. The Global South uses five times less energy per person than the Global North. Yet, on aggregate, the region has already become a net importer of fossil fuels. Given low domestic reserves on average, the cost and risk of fossil fuel imports could rise to painful heights.

In stark contrast, these countries are endowed with 70 percent of the world’s renewable energy potential. This renewable resource keeps getting cheaper and cheaper, outcompeting fossil fuels on price. When incentives are clear, markets move — and cleantech is moving.
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"Exhibit 1: The Global South has pivoted capital expenditures (capex) to clean energy" - in Latin America, it is now something like a factor of 8 or 9 more investment. In SE & S Asia, the two crossed over in 2016, and the region now has a ratio of 5. Africa had its crossover in 2018, and now has a ratio of 6.

"Exhibit 2: Renewables are also following an S-curve in the Global South" - like the capex S-curve. Different regions have different rates of renewable-energy growth, however, with Latin America passing S Asia in 2017.

"Exhibit 3: Most Global South regions are outpacing the Global North" - S Asia is growing at about the rate of the Global North, with Latin America growing twice as fast, with China not far behind.

"Exhibit 4: Solar is supplying in years what took old energy decades"

"Exhibit 5: We must overcome barriers to support the most vulnerable nations" - Middle-to-high-income Global South countries are growing steadily in renewable-energy development, while low-income ones had a burst over 2011 to 2015 to 2% of total consumption, and then slow and erratic progress. The richer ones are now at around 9% of total consumption.

One can think of some reasons for that, like poorer countries having greater dependence on the whims of aid donors, richer ones having more available capital or greater political pull, ...
 
Battery storage: a ‘quiet revolution’ in the energy industry at the Financial Times

Battery Storage Powered The Super Bowl, And It Will Fuel The Future

Global Cost of Renewables to Continue Falling in 2025 as China Extends Manufacturing Lead: BloombergNEF | BloombergNEF - the Las Vegas one back in 2024

Carbon capture more costly than switching to renewables, researchers find

Not surprised, since it is an extra cost, and since we don't have much ability to use this captured carbon on a large scale.

China Hits Clean Energy Goal Six Years Ahead of Schedule | OilPrice.com

GOP think tank that tried to stop VA offshore wind now says ‘go ahead’ | Canary Media - because there is not much sense in trying to stop the project now.

Middle East becomes fastest-growing renewables market outside China - notably Gulf states like the United Arab Emirates
 
‘Rising star’: EU made more electricity from solar than coal in 2024 | Europe | The Guardian - "Report reveals solar power generated 11% of bloc’s electricity, surpassing coal at 10%"

Wind energy beat coal over 2020 - 2023, when they were neck and neck. It also beat natural gas in 2023. The biggest source continues to be nuclear power.

World's first 300 MW compressed air energy storage facility commences operation - Chinadaily.com.cn
Compressed air energy storage is an emerging technology that is gaining traction due to its advantages, including short construction periods, high power output, long duration, safety and longevity.
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Why some of the US's largest solar farms are replacing lawn mowers with sheep | AP News - agrivoltaics

How Chile engineered the developing world's fastest coal phaseout - from 43.6% in 2016 to 17.5% in the first half of 2024.
 
lpetrich said:
Rosendin Electric Deploys Custom Robots to Install Solar Panels | Engineering News-Record
Installing panels on large solar farms is tough work, requiring multi-person crews to lug 80- to 100-lb panels into place on preassembled mounting racks—with some holding a panel steady while another worker screws it into place. Large solar farms can easily have 1 million of such panels, each of which has to be lifted and secured in place individually. This is strenuous work for anyone, and workers who start the day fresh tend to be exhausted by shift's end.

Confronted with this backbreaking labor and a shortage of workers in the remote locations where projects are sited, Rosendin Senior Vice President David Lincoln wanted to see if some of this repetitious work could be automated.

...
smari and his team looked at every task involved in placing and mounting the panels before coming up with their robotic approach. The basic robotic platform, a treaded robot with an articulated arm similar to the road excavation robot, has been adapted to several tasks. A robot with an arm capable of six degrees of movement uses a vacuum-based suction cup attachment to lift a panel from a stack into place on the mount rack. Then, human operators can confirm the panel is positioned properly and drive screws to secure it in place.

Two other robots serve as panel carriers, working in tandem to ensure there is always a fresh stack of panels for the picker robot to grab one. Typically panels are delivered on pallets to the end of each row of a solar installation by a skid steer, and workers had to carry them over uneven ground down the lane to install them. Now, the carrier robots can be loaded from the end of the row and bring the panels down as they are installed. Each panel carrier robot can carry 30 to 35 panels at a time.
Click to expand...
These robots still need some human assistance, but they can install solar panels at 3 to 5 times the rate of a human installer team.
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This is what I've seen in automating our production--humans shifting from actually doing the work to being the assistants for machines that do the actual work. The machines are far better at doing a controlled task, the humans are far better at being flexible.
 
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