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The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy

A 20 km deep hole in 25 days by vaporizing rock using a Gyrotron. Work from MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center is being commercialized by a company called Quaise Energy. Quaise plans to be drawing energy from their first pilot well by 2026. If this works, any existing coal or gas power turbine can be retrofitted and turned into a clean geothermal power plant.
news.mit.edu

Tapping into the million-year energy source below our feet

MIT spinout Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells made from the world’s deepest holes in order to repurpose coal and gas plants.
news.mit.edu news.mit.edu
www.thecooldown.com

Scientists make significant breakthrough utilizing unlimited power source found deep in Earth: 'Has the potential to replace fossil fuels'

Scientists have made a significant breakthrough in tapping into an abundant, largely untapped energy source using powerful microwave-emitting drills.
www.thecooldown.com www.thecooldown.com
 
Renewable Energy: safe, clean, sustainable energy for our future

Cuba's clean energy push - CGTN - "Cuban officials highlight the importance of the relationship the country has with China, the world’s main producer of renewable energy."

Producer of renewable-energy hardware, yes, the energy itself, no.

Solar energy’s extraordinary, forecast-defying growth, revealed in a new report | Vox
As a result, photovoltaic panels have cropped up like dandelions across fields and rooftops at a stunning pace. Yet even the people most plugged-in to the energy industry and most optimistic about solar power continue to underestimate it. In fact, it’s a long-running joke among energy nerds that forecasters keep predicting solar will level off as it continues to rocket up to the sun.

“Solar does continue to surprise us,” said Gregory Nemet, who wrote How Solar Energy Became Cheap, in an email. “It seems like it shouldn’t at this point. It’s been roughly 30 percent growth each year for 30 years. And costs continue to fall so new users — and new uses — continue to emerge.”
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Two years in, US clean energy manufacturing boom is… | Canary Media
A sodium-battery plant in North Carolina, a solar-panel manufacturing facility in New Mexico, and a factory building electric sports cars in Virginia are among the $2.4 billion worth of new U.S. clean energy manufacturing projects announced in August. These investments are just the latest in the ongoing, multibillion-dollar wave of clean energy manufacturing activity spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act.
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Sodium batteries? Alternatives to lithium are very welcome.
 
81% of New Renewable Energy Capacity Added in 2023 Was Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels | OilPrice.com - worldwide

Coal is losing to natural gas, and natural gas is now losing to renewable sources.

Italy deploys 4.2 GW of solar in January-August period – pv magazine International -- capacity. Actual output is likely 1/4 - 1/5 of this or 1 GW. Italy's total is 34 GW -  List of countries by electricity consumption
Overall, Italy added 5 GW of renewable energy capacity from January to August, bringing its total clean energy capacity to 67 GW. The GSE said it expects around 9 GW of new renewable energy capacity to be deployed this year.
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Spain sets new 2030 solar target of 76 GW – pv magazine International
The Spanish government has set a new 2030 solar target of 76 GW in an energy strategy submitted to the European Commission. It aims to cover over 80% of national electricity demand with renewable energy.
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Huawei unveils world’s largest microgrid – pv magazine International - "China’s Huawei has built a 400 MW/1.3 GWh solar-plus-storage off-grid facility in Red Sea New City, Saudi Arabia."
 
Solar-plus-storage dominating future U.S. power grid – pv magazine USA

This Chart Shows How California Is Massively Extending Solar Use Into The Evening - CleanTechnica

By installing several gigawatt-hours of battery capacity.
“Several countries already have battery storage or plan to have in the coming years. In California, batteries reached a record power discharge of 7 GW on 30 April 2024, meeting about 33% of net load peak, contributing significantly on top of imports and natural gas. In Italy, the National Climate and Energy Plan relies on batteries to meet decarbonisation targets for 2030. While batteries accounted for 2.3 GW in 2023, these were spread across 300 000 installations. Italy aims for 15 GW of battery capacity by 2030, with 11 GW of utility-scale installations,” the IEA writes.
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First Solar opens 3.5 GW solar factory in Alabama – pv magazine International

Greece adds record 337 MW of solar power in July
With the new power plants, the total installed capacity in Greece reached 13.47 GW, of which 7.57 GW was solar power, and wind farms accounted for 5.2 GW.

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HELAPCO: We expect close to 20 GW of photovoltaics by 2030
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Solar levelized cost of electricity 56% lower than lowest-cost fossil fuels – pv magazine USA
The International Renewable Energy Agency shared that in 2010, solar was four times as expensive as the lowest-cost fossil fuel. Today, generating electricity from solar is less than half as expensive as the lowest-cost fossil alternative.
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That's a worldwide average.

Solar power generated even at night using breakthrough device
That seems like a thermodynamic impossibility, but that team has a way out: radiating energy into outer space as infrared light. The team's device has a semiconductor chip that extracts energy from the flow of heat to its radiating surface.
The efficiency of this new technology is currently low, but the research team is optimistic about future improvements.

The amount of power was small, 100,000 times less than that supplied by a solar panel, but it was an ‘unambiguous demonstration of electrical power,’ said Professor Ekins-Daukes in the press release.
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lpetrich said:
81% of New Renewable Energy Capacity Added in 2023 Was Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels | OilPrice.com - worldwide
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We don't consume "Energy capacity" though. We consume energy.

And cheap energy when prices are low is not as valuable as moderately priced energy when prices are high.

Indeed, cheap energy when prices are negative is worse than useless. But is profitable as long as governments subsidise it.

Ultimately new uses will be found for that worthless energy, but as the old uses of energy will still exist, this has exactly zero benefit for the environment. It's probably good for "the economy", but the corrollary to that is that a booming economy means more fossil fuel is burned.

After over 2,000 posts on "Remarkable Progress", I note that global carbon dioxide emissions have yet to fall; Or even to significantly reduce their rate of growth.

It's not "progress" if you are further from the goal than you were to begin with, even if you are able to rationalise the benefits by inventing new goals that don't have any particular relationship to the primary objective.

Or are we no longer interested in carbon dioxide emissions?
 
lpetrich said:
Solar power generated even at night using breakthrough device
That seems like a thermodynamic impossibility, but that team has a way out: radiating energy into outer space as infrared light. The team's device has a semiconductor chip that extracts energy from the flow of heat to its radiating surface.
The efficiency of this new technology is currently low, but the research team is optimistic about future improvements.

The amount of power was small, 100,000 times less than that supplied by a solar panel, but it was an ‘unambiguous demonstration of electrical power,’ said Professor Ekins-Daukes in the press release.
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Five orders of magnitude less than "inadequate" is quite impressive; Even remarkable.

Particularly in a world where we already have a full scale 24x7x365 technology to generate carbon emission free electricity that is cleaner, safer, and cheaper than any of this new technology is ever likely to be.

Reinventing the wheel is remarkable, if only for its futility.
 
bilby said:
After over 2,000 posts on "Remarkable Progress", I note that global carbon dioxide emissions have yet to fall; Or even to significantly reduce their rate of growth.

It's not "progress" if you are further from the goal than you were to begin with, even if you are able to rationalise the benefits by inventing new goals that don't have any particular relationship to the primary objective.

Or are we no longer interested in carbon dioxide emissions?
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Emissions grew in 2023, but clean energy is limiting the growth – CO2 Emissions in 2023 – Analysis - IEA
Total energy-related CO2 emissions increased by 1.1% in 2023.

...
The percentage growth of emissions was substantially slower than global GDP growth, which was around 3% in 2023. Last year therefore continued the recent trend of CO2 growing more slowly than global economic activity.

...
Clean energy is at the heart of this slowdown in emissions. Global capacity additions of wind and solar PV reached a record almost 540 GW in 2023, up 75% on the level of 2022. Global sales of electric cars climbed to around 14 million, an increase of 35% on the level of 2022. Clean energy is having a significant impact on the trajectory of global CO2 emissions.

...
Without the growing deployment of five key clean energy technologies since 2019 - solar PV, wind power, nuclear power, heat pumps, and electric cars - the emissions growth would have been three times larger.
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If installation rates continue to increase at exponential rates, then the amount of CO2 emissions will level off in the next few years, and should show a noticeable decrease by 2030.

I am confident that this increase will continue, because of  Experience curve effects - that article mentions the precipitous drop in the cost of solar panels from $100/watt to $0.20/watt as installed capacity went from less than 1 megawatt to around 1 terawatt.
 
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bilby said:
Five orders of magnitude less than "inadequate" is quite impressive; Even remarkable.
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This is an experimental technology.
Particularly in a world where we already have a full scale 24x7x365 technology to generate carbon emission free electricity that is cleaner, safer, and cheaper than any of this new technology is ever likely to be.
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???

The article mentioned some possible use cases for this technology: "From wearables to satellites – Potential applications"

Wearables? Devices powered by our body heat instead of needing batteries.

On a larger scale, the team is actively working on adapting the technology for use in spacecraft. Satellites in low Earth orbit experience frequent eclipses, relying on batteries during periods of darkness. The thermoradiative diode offers a potential solution, generating power even in the absence of sunlight.
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U.S. installs 3 GW / 10.5 GWh of energy storage in Q2 – pv magazine USA - "The United States continues to set quarterly records for energy storage installations across market segments, said a report from Wood Mackenzie."

Average U.S. residential solar project breaks even at 7.5 years, said EnergySage – pv magazine USA - "A report from marketplace operator EnergySage noted that average system costs are declining, and payback periods are improving. It highlighted a recent market share capture from Tesla in the inverter and energy storage market."

50 States of Solar – pv magazine USA

Huge New Jersey offshore wind project approved for… | Canary Media - "The 2.8 gigawatt Atlantic Shores project aims to start construction next year and connect to the grid by 2029. It’ll have to beat legal challenges to get there."

Heat raises prices; solar and storage lowers them - "New studies show that heat — and broken-down gas & coal plants — were the two biggest drivers of high power prices in 2023, while solar & storage (and lower temperatures) helped lower costs this year"
 
What happens when solar panels die?
If a panel has survived its birth and installation, then the biggest thing that kills solar panels is the weather. Heath said a common cause is extreme weather events damaging the panel, or even just regular, aggressive weather causing things to degrade. Sadly, once a panel is broken, it’s often not worth the effort to repair.

...
The key issue is efficiency loss, which is when panels aren’t able to generate as much power as they did when first installed. Most solar panels are made with laminated adhesive layers that sit between the glass and the solar cells to hold them together and aid rigidity. Sun exposure can cause those laminated layers to discolor, reducing the amount of light that can reach the cells. That diminishes the energy-generation capacity, which is a problem for large commercial farms.
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Then getting into disposal or recycling of old solar panels.
 
Solar and Wind Energy Prices Plummet to Record Lows | OilPrice.com

Why $0.25 per kWh electricity makes off-grid solar & batteries a smart investment – pv magazine USA - "Once electricity prices hit $0.25/kWh, disconnecting from the grid with residential solar-plus-storage starts to become financially viable, with sunny places making strong financial arguments. With recent drops in battery prices, the case for leaving the grid has grown even stronger."

Solar Updraft Towers: A Solution for Clean Energy and Water - Everyman Science
One of the most intriguing and often overlooked technologies is the Solar Updraft Tower (SUT). Unlike conventional solar power plants, SUTs combine the principles of convection and solar radiation to produce electricity in a unique way—by heating air and driving it through a massive chimney, where it powers turbines. But that’s not all. Modern SUTs are being designed to do something even more groundbreaking: produce clean water.
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How it works:
icture a giant greenhouse, known as the collector, with a vast area of transparent or translucent material, covering several square kilometers. This collector heats the air trapped underneath it using the sun’s rays. In the center of this massive circular collector stands a tall chimney—sometimes towering up to a kilometer high.

As the air in the collector heats up, it becomes lighter and starts rising towards the chimney. The temperature difference between the ground-level air and the cooler air at the top of the tower creates a continuous updraft. This upward flow of air drives turbines placed around the base of the chimney, generating electricity.
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Desalination?
In recent years, engineers have proposed integrating desalination technology into SUTs. By using waste heat from the tower to evaporate seawater, the rising air can be saturated with moisture. As the humid air ascends, it cools, and the water vapor condenses, producing clean water. This makes SUTs not only a source of renewable energy but also a potential solution to water scarcity in arid coastal regions.
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A form of distillation.
 
bilby said:
lpetrich said:
By installing several gigawatt-hours of battery capacity.
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...which requires several giga-tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions to manufacture, and which extends solar electricity availability "into the evening", which is not quite "until the next morning".
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Please don't burst their bubble
 
bilby said:
lpetrich said:
By installing several gigawatt-hours of battery capacity.
Click to expand...
...which requires several giga-tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions to manufacture, and which extends solar electricity availability "into the evening", which is not quite "until the next morning".
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Economically at least batteries are negative value--in it's lifetime a battery won't deliver power worth what you paid for the battery. Their only value is in delivering power when you otherwise wouldn't have it.
 
bilby said:
lpetrich said:
Solar power generated even at night using breakthrough device
That seems like a thermodynamic impossibility, but that team has a way out: radiating energy into outer space as infrared light. The team's device has a semiconductor chip that extracts energy from the flow of heat to its radiating surface.
The efficiency of this new technology is currently low, but the research team is optimistic about future improvements.

The amount of power was small, 100,000 times less than that supplied by a solar panel, but it was an ‘unambiguous demonstration of electrical power,’ said Professor Ekins-Daukes in the press release.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Five orders of magnitude less than "inadequate" is quite impressive; Even remarkable.

Particularly in a world where we already have a full scale 24x7x365 technology to generate carbon emission free electricity that is cleaner, safer, and cheaper than any of this new technology is ever likely to be.

Reinventing the wheel is remarkable, if only for its futility.
Click to expand...
Yeah, you can use the night sky as a radiator. Consider the small temperature differential, though--there's a theoretical limit on the energy you can extract from heat differentials. And for a block of warm vs a night sky the efficiency is going to be quite low.

Use your block of warm for climate control of your building. Concrete dome, polyurethane insulation outside, something over that to protect it. You get the mass of the dome acting to smooth the temperature. You can figure the R-value of the insulation but real world performance shows that it's pretty close to perfect--ignore the walls and roof when doing your thermal calculations. Losses due to doors, windows, and air exchange dominate. Polyurethane can be cast so there are no gaps between adjoining pieces of insulation, you get a far better result than R-values indicate. Yes, polyurethane has some unpleasant properties in a fire, you absolutely do not want it on the inside of your structure. Just sitting there it will not support combustion, but if you get it hot enough (say, wrapped around a fire...) it will burn very violently. (What's going on is that pretty much solids do not burn. The heat of fire drives off flammable vapor from the solid and that burns. For something to actually take fire the incoming energy from the fire must be sufficient to produce enough additional vapor as was burned. That's why you need multiple pieces of wood on your campfire--one piece will tend to lose too much energy and go out. Multiple pieces each is also heated by the fire on the nearby pieces.)
 
lpetrich said:
If installation rates continue to increase at exponential rates, then the amount of CO2 emissions will level off in the next few years, and should show a noticeable decrease by 2030.

I am confident that this increase will continue, because of
wikipedia.png
Experience curve effects - that article mentions the precipitous drop in the cost of solar panels from $100/watt to $0.20/watt as installed capacity went from less than 1 megawatt to around 1 terawatt.
Click to expand...
Anyone expressing confidence that exponential growth of anything will continue for the long term hasn't understood exponential growth.
 
lpetrich said:
Particularly in a world where we already have a full scale 24x7x365 technology to generate carbon emission free electricity that is cleaner, safer, and cheaper than any of this new technology is ever likely to be.
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???
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Two words: Nuclear Fucking Power.
 
A Massachusetts town uses batteries to help its grid — and its schools | Canary Media - "Batteries can serve double-duty, shoring up the grid and providing backup to buildings when the power goes out. This project shows how."

Rooftop Solar on Mexico City Market to Power 300 Transit Buses | Planetizen News - "A solar project atop a massive food market will provide electricity to Mexico City's public transit buses."

Lambscaping: Sheep to graze Ohio solar farm, support agriculture economy - agrivoltaics, agriculture and solar panels coexisting

A high-renewables grid with faster transmission buildout can save $270 billion or more – pv magazine USA

Energy storage is a solved problem – pv magazine International - proposing pumped hydroelectric storage combined with batteries

Brazil adds 609 MW of solar, wind capacity in Sep 2024
Solar: 491.83 MW -- wind 117.20 MW -- fossil fuel (?) 102.30 MW -- total 711.33 MW -- "On October 1, Brazil had 205,722.5 MW of total installed power generation capacity. The agency noted that 84.74% of the total is produced from renewable energy." Mainly hydroelectricity.

Massive global growth of renewables to 2030 is set to match entire power capacity of major economies today, moving world closer to tripling goal - News - IEA - "With solar leading their rapid deployment, renewables are on course to meet almost half of global electricity demand by the end of this decade, new IEA report says"

"According to the report, China is set to account for almost 60% of all renewable capacity installed worldwide between now and 2030, based on current market trends and today's policy settings by governments."
 
Amid Australia’s chaotic climate politics, the rooftop solar boom is an unlikely triumph | Adam Morton | The Guardian - "It’s difficult to overstate how rapidly Australians have embraced solar power – there’s now more rooftop solar than coal-fired power. The key question is what policymakers can learn from its success"

UK loses 1.4GW of power in interconnector trip, battery storage keeps lights on - Energy-Storage.News

Buoyancy-driven hybrid energy platform moves to full-scale pilot - a wind-wave-solar floating platform

China's self-developed airship harvests wind power at record height - Chinadaily.com.cn - by getting above the surface to steadier and stronger winds

California crosses 10 GW utility-battery storage threshold - Energy Storage

India is finally becoming a clean energy superpower - The Economic Times

Toyota's swappable hydrogen fuel cartridges offer unlimited EV range
Nothing on the cartridge's energy capacity, nothing on how far one can drive an electric car with each cartridge, and nothing on the weight of each cartridge. It seems like this cartridge is a pressurized storage tank.

 Energy density - hydrogen is over 100 times better in usable energy per unit mass, but the cartridges' empty weights will reduce that number by some sizable amount.
 
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