The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy

[lpetrich]

Bavaria Enters Act 3 of Tragicomic Odyssey Of The Hydrogen Fleet - CleanTechnica

The hydrogen chorus is again singing, discordantly and joyfully, as Bavaria continues along the tragicomic journey which inevitably leads to abandoning hydrogen after wasting much governmental money and delaying electrification. A tiny, two-car Siemens light-rail passenger train has completed trials this week and sometime in 2024 will go into service, for a few months.

The article continued with that kind of snickering, without any detailed discussion of the difficulties of using hydrogen in vehicles.

Biofuels Vs Synthetic Fuels: The Five Points That Favor Waste Biomass To Fuels - CleanTechnica

First, the volumes required are much lower than the volumes required for current fossil fuels. Electrification of all ground transportation and much of aviation and maritime shipping, renewable generation of electricity, heat pumps for commercial, residential, and industrial heat, and other electrification of industrial heat above 200° Celsius means that the total tonnage of liquid fuels required will be a tiny fraction of today.

That's very overconfident about electrification, especially in long-distance trucks, ships, and airplanes. One needs good energy density, and it's hard to compete with hydrocarbons.

Second, there are a lot of pathways to biofuels from waste biomass. I’m not committed to any of them, and don’t consider myself an expert in the chemical engineering for them.

Everything I've seen in practice involves baking the biomass, often with water added.

Third, the sheer volume of waste biomass and collection chokepoints where automation can be applied is staggering compared to the need for liquid fuels. Waste stalks at harvest time. Livestock dung in industrial feedlots, dairy barns, and abattoirs. Food waste at production plants, distribution warehouses, and large-scale grocery stores. Wood scraps at timber mills. Separation of food scraps in urban composting schemes.

I’m completely unconcerned about efficiencies when we have 2.5 billion tons of food waste globally, and 1.5 billion tons of livestock dung in Europe alone.

World Oil Statistics - Worldometer - 35 billion barrels per year, 300 lb/barrel - that's 4 billion tons per year. Consulting  Energy density - crude oil is at 42 MJ/kg, close to liquid and solid hydrocarbons, as much as 46 MJ/kg. Fat is close at 38 MJ/kg, but sugars, carbs, and proteins are much less at 17 MJ/kg, and wood is 18 MJ/kg. So food waste is about 2.5 times worse than hydrocarbons. Dried cow and camel dung is at 15.5 MJ/kg, rather close to food waste.

So from global food waste, one gets the equivalent of 1 billion tons, and for global livestock dung, I get 15 billion tons from scaling up from Europe, or 6 billion tons of oil. Food waste won't compete very well, but livestock dung might.

Fourth, we’re already making biodiesel in sufficient quantities for all of maritime shipping in my projections.

...
Finally, all of the waste biomass I lean into is a major climate problem. At present, the volumes are so large that the stuff piles up in middens or is buried in landfills. Anaerobic decomposition occurs for the stuff that’s not at the surface, and methane ensues.

 

[bilby]

Nuclear-energy enthusiasts will like this decision, I'm sure. But when it's much quicker and easier to build wind turbines and install solar panels, I'm thinking that there might not be much of a use case of nuclear energy.

It's definitely not quicker to build wind or solar capacity than to build nuclear.



But even if it were, the primary use case for nuclear energy is based on capacity factor. Nuclear power is available on windless nights.

Storage at a scale sufficient to make intermittent renewables viable remains fictional; And even if it were available, you would require 3 or 4GW of wind turbines or solar arrays to match the output of a 1GW nuclear plant.

 

[lpetrich]

bilby, that's a big load of bull doo-doo. Those numbers only go up to 2014, nearly a decade ago. It's also not clear whether those numbers are for installed capacity or for actual energy generation. Seems like argumentum ex numeris exitis though I wouldn't call it argumentum ex bellis picturis - I'd reserve that for misleading chart design and the like.

U.S. solar power generation 2022 | Statista

For 2004 - 2014, it was about 5 kWh/person/year/year

For 2012 - 2022, it was about 40 kWh/person/year/year - an increase by a factor of 8 - may not seem much, but it's an impressive growth.

 

[bilby]

bilby, that's a big load of bull doo-doo.

That's not a compelling rebuttal.

Those numbers only go up to 2014, nearly a decade ago. It's also not clear whether those numbers are for installed capacity or for actual energy generation.

The graphic includes information on where to find that detail, should you wish to. Yes, it's fairly old; But it's better than your bald assertion with zero data (no matter how old), and zero references.

You made a claim: "it's much quicker and easier to build wind turbines and install solar panels [than to build nuclear]" . I think it's false, and have at least some basis for that. You now need to demonstrate that it is true, or accept that nobody has any reason to believe you.

And even if it is true, your conclusion: "I'm thinking that there might not be much of a use case of nuclear energy", doesn't follow, because build time isn't the only (or even the major) consideration here.

Seems like argumentum ex numeris exitis though I wouldn't call it argumentum ex bellis picturis - I'd reserve that for misleading chart design and the like.

U.S. solar power generation 2022 | Statista

For 2004 - 2014, it was about 5 kWh/person/year/year

For 2012 - 2022, it was about 40 kWh/person/year/year - an increase by a factor of 8 - may not seem much, but it's an impressive growth.

Eight times fuck-all is still fuck-all.

And regardless of how much solar capacity is installed, it doesn't generate any electricity at night.

Nuclear power is the only currently available, scalable, ultra-low carbon way to make electricity continuously. Hydropower is pretty good, but lacks scalability, as suitable sites that have not already been utilised are few and far between. No other current technology can supply reliable ultra low carbon emmissions power 24/7/365.

The time required to build stuff that hasn't even been demonstrated at scale yet might as well be infinity - certainly it's going to be quicker, easier and cheaper to just start building nuclear plants today, than to push ahead with R&D into storage systems that are currently pie-in-the-sky.

The existence of hundreds of megawatt-hours of expensive, dangerous, and highly polluting storage, doesn't imply a near future with the needed terrawatt-hours of cheap, safe, and environmentally benign storage.

It just doesn't. Not even if you close your eyes and wish really hard, like the folks at CleanTechnica do.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You made a claim: "it's much quicker and easier to build wind turbines and install solar panels [than to build nuclear]" . I think it's false, and have at least some basis for that. You now need to demonstrate that it is true, or accept that nobody has any reason to believe you.

And even if it is true, your conclusion: "I'm thinking that there might not be much of a use case of nuclear energy", doesn't follow, because build time isn't the only (or even the major) consideration here.

I think he's right on the build time. The larger the individual units of something the less it is able to be parallelized. This means a longer time until it's ready even if the smaller systems might require more total building to achieve the same result.

You are right that it's a total red herring, though.

Eight times fuck-all is still fuck-all.

And regardless of how much solar capacity is installed, it doesn't generate any electricity at night.

Nuclear power is the only currently available, scalable, ultra-low carbon way to make electricity continuously. Hydropower is pretty good, but lacks scalability, as suitable sites that have not already been utilised are few and far between. No other current technology can supply reliable ultra low carbon emmissions power 24/7/365.

This. Without some major breakthrough in storage wind/solar are only ways to save fuel--and fuel is a tiny portion of the operating cost of a nuclear plant and throttling very well may cost you more in wear than it saves in fuel. What we need are variable power sinks--energy intensive processes that can readily be turned up/down based on available power. Desalination and cracking water to make hydrogen -> ammonia come to mind.

The time required to build stuff that hasn't even been demonstrated at scale yet might as well be infinity - certainly it's going to be quicker, easier and cheaper to just start building nuclear plants today, than to push ahead with R&D into storage systems that are currently pie-in-the-sky.

The existence of hundreds of megawatt-hours of expensive, dangerous, and highly polluting storage, doesn't imply a near future with the needed terrawatt-hours of cheap, safe, and environmentally benign storage.

It just doesn't. Not even if you close your eyes and wish really hard, like the folks at CleanTechnica do.

Yup. The solar/wind guys are incredibly good at ignoring the titanosaur in the room. It doesn't fit their plans.

 

[lpetrich]

Electricity Mix - Our World in Data - I downloaded all the data in spreadsheet form from that site and I graphed it. Some trends are apparent.

Remarkably little new nuclear-energy production has been installed over the last 40 years, increasing from 1800 to 2700 TWh/yr over 1985 - 2006, then declining to 2400 in 2012 then increasing to close to that value.

Wind energy and solar energy are increasing roughly exponentially, and they have gotten close to nuclear energy and hydroelectric energy, another almost-flat source.

In Europe, wind energy has been increasing exponentially, though slowing down to its present pace in the mid-2000's. The US was slower to start, but it came close to Europe at around then, and it is now increasing at roughly the same rate.

In solar energy, Europe increased rapidly, then slowed down in 2010, and it s till exponential even if slower. The US started a fast exponental around 2010, and slowed down around 2014, but not as much as Europe did, and still remaining exponential.

 

[lpetrich]

Solar (photovoltaic) panel prices vs. cumulative capacity

Increase in capacity from 0.54 megawatts to 1.05 terawatts, drop in price from $125.83 to $0.26 in 2021 US Dollars per watt

Close to a power law with an exponent of around -0.357, from the two endpoints.

The price shows no sign of leveling off, which means that PV will continue to become significantly cheaper in the near future.

 

[bilby]

You can have as much installed capacity in wind and solar as you like, but on a still night, the amount of electricity it generates will remain 0W. At which point, you need Hydro, Nuclear, or to burn fossil fuel.

Gas companies love wind and solar, and so should anyone else who is a big fan of fracking, fugitive methane releases, and ongoing climate change.

Without the massive German investment in wind and solar power, Putin would never have been able to launch his invasion of Ukraine (or if he had, EU driven assistance to Ukraine would at least have been timely and decisive).

Wind and solar are fucking up the environment, fucking up geopolitics, and still aren't generating electricity during those long, cold winter nights when Europe sits under anticyclonic conditions, with little wind and hard frosts.

Nuclear power has none of these problems. In a comparison of electricity sources, it's literally best, or equal best, in every single measure from safety and environmental protection, through reliability, to construction cost and sustainability. The only measure it does poorly on is popularity (or measures caused by unpopularity, such as regulatory costs).

The "environmental" lobby are using their counterfactual beliefs, rooted in the appeal to nature fallacy, to support massively polluting environmental vandalism as though it were a viable alternative to actually generating useful electrical power. And their quasi-religious supporters are so damn enthusiastic and smugly self-righteous about it that it makes me want to puke.

It's like watching a bunch of medieval peasants cheering at their successful witch burnings, and believing that they have ensured a succesful harvest every year by their pious and godly actions.

 

[lpetrich]

Pro-nuclear-energy people ought to thank pro-renewable-energy people for promoting the development of new and improved energy-storage systems. Such systems will make peakers unnecessary for nuclear reactors also.

New Flow Battery Deploys Salt For Long Duration Energy Storage

Flow batteries sport several advantages over conventional Li-ion battery arrays for stationary energy storage. For starters, they can deploy non-toxic, non-flammable, earth abundant materials, which drives down costs on the supply chain end.

Flow batteries are also relatively easy to scale up or down, by strategically adjusting the size of the holding tanks.

Aquabattery describes its signature technology as an “acid-base flow battery based on reversible water dissociation.”

The company: AQUABATTERY - revolutionising long duration energy storage

It uses plain old table salt, NaCl, dissolved in water.

Charging: with electricity, separated out into separate NaOH and HCl solutions.

Discharging: the NaOH and HCl are combined, making NaCl, H2O, and electricity.

Na and Cl are very common elements, and they are the most common solutes in seawater. (10) How much table salt is produced each year, and where does it come from? - Quora with estimates like 250 - 300 million tons per year.

 Hydrogen chloride and  Sodium hydroxide are dangerous in high concentration, it must be noted. However, we make concentrated HCl in our stomachs. I've found this: The Evolution of Stomach Acidity and Its Relevance to the Human Microbiome | PLOS ONE and Gastric acid level of humans must decrease in the future - PMC and Gastric Acid in Vertebrates: Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology: Vol 27, No sup193 with Gastric Acid in Vertebrates - 135-GastricAcidinVertebrates.pdf

 

[bilby]

Pro-nuclear-energy people ought to thank pro-renewable-energy people for promoting the development of new and improved energy-storage systems.

I don't see why.

Such systems are not a requirement for nuclear based grids, and the benefits of storage for such grids are realised with existing storage technology.

In short, the only storage nuclear grids need is the storage that was available when they were established - pumped storage hydro. Which is also the only storage system that has anywhere close to the required capacity to provide load following.

Indeed, they don't even require that. Conventional un-pumped hydro can handle the rapid fluctuations, and the nuclear plants themselves can handle the rest.

The French encountered all of these issues, found solutions for them, and implemented them at grid-scale, a decade before renewable energy people even started discussing storage.

The big winners in the quest for high efficiency storage have been electric vehicles, which have benefitted hugely from improved battery life per unit mass.

The rest of this research into storage is just people with an ideological agenda desperately trying to make renewables viable, by attempting to get electron shells to match the energy density of nuclear reactions. This effort is doomed, but the politicians who control the funding don't understand physics or chemistry, so they're unaware that they're being sold a bill of goods.

No grid-scale storage system other than pumped hydro does much more than provide grid stability services - handling fluctuations measured in seconds or minutes, rather than hours or days. The big batteries are better at that than the old "big capacator" technologies, but then, they're also a lot more expensive, so how useful these batteries are is highly dependant on the real-world consitions they're working under.

 

[lpetrich]

At COP28, Countries Launch Declaration of Intent on Clean Hydrogen - CleanTechnica -- also mentioning "hydrogen derivatives", without being specific about them. No mention of ammonia, methanol, etc. or synfuels or chemical feedstocks more generallly.

Hydrogen is colorless, but hydrogen is sometimes labeled by color to indicate its origin.

Liquid Air Energy Storage Could Save The Day For Offshore Wind

Highview’s liquid air battery literally uses liquid air as a storage medium. The system deploys electricity to supercool ambient air down to -196 C, at which point it becomes compressed as a liquid. There it stays in a cryogenic state until electricity is needed, when heat is applied to restore the liquid to a gas, which is goes through a turbine to generate clean kilowatts.

Portable Solar Keeps Getting Lighter and More Compact, Fits Better In Emergency Kits - CleanTechnica

Clean Energy In Emergencies: A Getting Started Guide - CleanTechnica

Like small solar panels.

 

[bilby]

However, we make concentrated HCl in our stomachs.

What possible relevance does this factoid have to electricity generation and distribution systems?

The appeal to nature fallacy is, well, a fallacy. The axis natural-artificial is orthogonal to the axis harmful-harmless.

The problem with the proposed storage system isn't the hazardous chemicals involved; It's the sheer volume of them that would be required to have any worthwhile impact.

A 100% renewables grid would need at least a week of storage to provide reliability comparable to existing developed-world electricity grids. That's about 80TWh of capacity in the USA alone.

What volume of NaOH and HCl does that imply, and where are you planning to keep it?

 

[lpetrich]

Cleantech News — #1 In EV, Solar, Wind, Tesla News
To get an idea of how active it is, I looked back in it from the first page of each article category. The site shows 10 articles per page, so I decided on 3 pages and thus 30 articles.

• Solar energy - 2 weeks - 1602 pages
• Wind energy - 3 weeks - 783 pages
• Energy storage - 3 weeks - 643 pages
• Geothermal energy - 1 year - 77 pages
• Smart Grid - 1 year - 82 pages
• Energy Efficiency - 3 months - 380 pages
• Electric Vehicles - 3 days - 2474 pages

There is a lot of overlap in the subject matter of the articles, and I didn't try to sort that out.

In "Energy Efficiency" there was a lot of discussion of heat pumps. Everything you need to know about the wild world of heat pumps | MIT Technology Review

At a high level, a heat pump gathers heat from one place and puts it in another place. We’ll mostly talk about heat pumps in the context of heating, but they can also be used for cooling, gathering heat from inside and sending it outside like an air conditioner. Many heat pumps can actually be run in reverse, either heating or cooling depending on what’s needed.

Then explaining the details of how they work - much like A/C.

Heat pumps’ real climate superpower is their efficiency. Heat pumps today can reach 300% to 400% efficiency or even higher, meaning they’re putting out three to four times as much energy in the form of heat as they’re using in electricity. For a space heater, the theoretical maximum would be 100% efficiency, and the best models today reach around 95% efficiency.

The gulf in efficiency between heat pumps and heaters comes down to how they work. Space heaters work by transforming energy from the form of electricity into another form, heat.

Heat pumps, on the other hand, aren’t turning electricity into heat—they’re using electricity to gather heat and move it around. It’s a subtle difference, but it basically means that a heat pump can return significantly more heat using the same amount of electricity.

 

[lpetrich]

What volume of NaOH and HCl does that imply, and where are you planning to keep it?

I checked Aquabattery's site again, and I couldn't find anything about how many liters per kWh it needs. But I'm guessing that it's comparable to a battery or somewhat worse for greater dilution.

 

[bilby]

There's nothing particularly new or extraordinary about heat pumps.

Household refrigerators are heat pumps; They've been around for more than a century.

 

[lpetrich]

PNNL warns wind & solar 'energy droughts' may last a week, but storage can help - "Overall, researchers found that the longest potential compound energy drought on an hourly timescale was 37 hours (in Texas), while the longest energy drought on a daily timescale was six days (in California)." and

The researchers found that energy droughts can occur in any season across the continental United States, though they vary widely in frequency and duration. In California, for instance, cloudy and windless conditions might last several days, whereas the same conditions might last for only a few hours in Texas. Utah, Colorado, and Kansas experience frequent energy droughts both over several-hour timescales as well as several-day timescales. The Pacific Northwest and Northeast, meanwhile, seem to experience energy droughts that last several hours more frequently than several days.

Anonymously funded group stokes local opposition to Ohio solar project - "An anonymously funded group is spreading misinformation about a rural Ohio solar project, according to project backers and others who reviewed claims made at a recent event."

An early version of Knox Smart Development’s website included the text, “Our mission: Empowering America,” with a hyperlink to a page for an organization called The Empowerment Alliance. Research by the Energy and Policy Institute, an energy and utility watchdog group, has linked the Empowerment Alliance to the natural gas industry.

Dave Anderson, the institute’s policy and communications director, found a National Review Ideas Summit program guide that characterized The Empowerment Alliance as a project of Karen Buchwald Wright and her husband, Tom Rastin. Wright is the board chair of Ariel Corporation, which makes compressors for the natural gas industry. Its headquarters is in Mount Vernon.

If natgas companies love solar energy so much, why are they opposing this project?

 

[bilby]

What volume of NaOH and HCl does that imply, and where are you planning to keep it?

I checked Aquabattery's site again, and I couldn't find anything about how many liters per kWh it needs. But I'm guessing that it's comparable to a batter or somewhat worse for greater dilution.

So the volumes required are similar to the volumes of water stored at hydroelectric plants.

Sounds emminently practical as a solution to the foolish and pointless unpopularity of nuclear power.

 

[lpetrich]

Blame it on the rain! NREL says precipitation can't completely clean pollen from solar panels

Performance decreased by as much as 15% during peak pollen season, the researchers said, when most pollens come from cypress, juniper, pine, and oak trees. Although these are peak losses, researchers said the data suggests total production losses could be up to 10% without regular cleaning.

Once peak pollen season ended, the panels’ performance did not return to their “cleaned” levels, even after frequent rains.

The four pillars of effective clean energy messaging - Prosperity, Freedom, Health, Security - say how it means energy independence and lower electric bills

Battery bubble or boom? It’s complicated

New Google geothermal electricity project could be a milestone for clean energy - "An advanced geothermal project has begun pumping carbon-free electricity onto the Nevada grid to power Google data centers there, Google announced Tuesday."

 

[lpetrich]

What volume of NaOH and HCl does that imply, and where are you planning to keep it?

I checked Aquabattery's site again, and I couldn't find anything about how many liters per kWh it needs. But I'm guessing that it's comparable to a batter or somewhat worse for greater dilution.

So the volumes required are similar to the volumes of water stored at hydroelectric plants.

 Energy density - numbers are megajoules per kilogram or kilojoules per gram: MJ/kg or kJ/g

Batteries aren't very good: Li-ion: 0.36-0.875 MJ/kg, alkaline: 0.48, NiMH: 0.48, Pb-acid: 0.17

But a 100-meter-high dam is MUCH worse: 0.000981 MJ/kg

Much worse than combustion: H2 119.93 MJ/kg, CH4 55.6 MJ/kg, heavy hydrocarbons (gasoline, kerosene, wax, HC plastics, crude oil) 41.4 - 46.4 MJ/kg, coal (lignite) 10 -20 MJ/kg (bituminous) 24 - 33 MJ/kg (anthracite) 26 - 33 MJ/kg -- biological materials: body fat 38 MJ/kg, ethanol 30 MJ/kg, wood 18.0 MJ/kg, sugars, carbs, protein 17 MJ/kg, dry cow, camel dung 15.5 MJ/kg

1 kilowatt-hour is 3.6 megajoules.

So I estimate about 50 kg of battery to supply each person with electricity for a week. For a million people, this is 50,000 tons, or 37^3 cubic meters for the same density as water. So long-term storage will require a sizable volume.

 

[bigfield]

AGL to start building grid-scale battery on site of former Liddell coal-fired power plant

Company hails battery ‘another significant milestone in AGL’s decarbonisation pathway and the transition of its energy portfolio’

www.theguardian.com

https://arena.gov.au/assets/2023/12/ARENA-Media-Release_AGL-Liddell-Battery_19122023.pdf

A 0.5 GWh battery, added to a grid that supplies an average of 570 GWh per day, including an average of 350 GWh from fossil fuels.

These projects are reported as if they're big, and they are big in the sense that they cost a lot of money, but this battery is really only capable of providing FCAS. It will be a profitable asset for the owner, but it does fuck all to help us phase out fossil fuels.