I know, right? Why build a solar farm in 6 months or a wind farm in a year when you can spend five times as much and have a nuclear plant ready in 10-15 years?
Because the solar farm is going to saturate the energy market on sunny days, and fail to produce energy at night and on cloudy days. There's diminishing returns on intermittent energy sources once peak production is saturated. Comparing intermittent sources of electricity to dispatchable sources of energy is comparing apples to oranges.
It's insane to fret about saturating the energy market when 40% of electricity is produced by gas on a sunny day and electric car drivers are gagging for differential pricing tariffs.
Intermittent electricity produced now is worth more than baseload in 14 years later.
40% of electricity may be produced by gas on a given day, but that 40% is being produced mostly at night - which is is not going to be displaced by further investments in solar. "Base load" isn't a reference to generation, it's a reference to demand. Base load refers to the load during the lowest period of energy demand in a 24 hour period. Unfortunately, load peaks when solar is producing no energy and load at its base when solar is producing the most energy [1]. Without storage, these excesses of solar production when load is at its base cannot be shifted to the time when load is at its peak.
Renewables look great if you just look at generation. But the goal isn't simply to generate clean energy, the goal is to displace fossil fuels. This is why non-intermittent sources like nuclear and hydroelectricity are, contrary to your assertion, far more valuable for decarbonization.
I live in NYC, and about 50% of energy coming to my apartment comes from nuclear and hydro sources, according to the energy company.
But NYC has a few gas-fired peaker plants, and during summer they are fired at the hottest time of the day, when AC load soars.
More solar power would certainly help this specific problem. I suppose that somewhere farther from ocean, where day and night temperatures vary more, a solar plant should have an even bigger effect in the summer.
Unfortunately the solar potential north in New York is pretty bad. It's not just the weather, it's the angle of incidence with the sun. The further away from the equator you go, the less light per square meter of land you get.
Actually, Europe's renewables - besides hydroelectricity - are mostly wind precisely for this reason. Wind is 12% of the EU's electricity generation as compared to 6% for solar [2]. Nuclear power is more than both combined at 25% [3].
Aren't you quoting numbers on grid electricity production?
In Europe many household solar installations are connected to batteries, and don't feed directly into the grid. You won't see such use in production statistics, only indirectly as a reduction in demand.
Some of those also don't produce electricity, but use solar for heating.
Maybe I'm wrong (either the numbers encompass that, or the difference isn't substantial). But it seems to me that you'd get a bias against solar if that's correct. Wind installations are usually more centralized, and feed into the grid.
Europe's renewables are mostly wind because they have good wind resource and terrible local weather for solar. 40 degrees latitude makes very little difference to output and the 10% CF during mid winter available for fixed utility solar in new york still makes the energy considerably cheaper than nuclear.
Most of what's south of switzerland or north of estonia has decent local weather for it. Finland's resources are quite good compared to even some equatorial places like PNG, just with higher seasonal variability. It's more the central part + UK. The point being that latitude is less important than weather, and as such claiming that solar is untenable in northern US or southern canada because it's merely okay in england is an obvious lie.
All of which is not to say solar won't be more important than gas, coal or nuclear in central europe going forward. Just that wind will take the front seat.
Finland has good weather for solar? You realize how far north they are? They gave good weather for solar in the summer when they don't need electricity for heating anyway. How much solar are they getting right now?
In case you aren't aware latitudes reduce solar energy collected per square meter of land. This can be motivated by tracking solar panels. But what can't be mitigated are shorter days in winter that get more extreme the further your are from the equator. In Helsinki right now the sun rises at 9:30 and sets just after 3pm.
If you lack the critical reasoning ability to understand how that could be useful or to understand that adding a thing that's biased towards summer to a thing that's biased towards winter gives you energy all year around, then we shouldn't really be listening to your energy infrastructure advice.
How many gigawatts of sand storage have been provisioned (in terms of electricity output, not thermal output)? How many years of operational experience do we have? In fact I'm not aware of any project using thermal sand for electric storage, only for district heating. Finland uses about 87TWh electricity annually, working out to about 230 GWh daily. I'd be a lot more convinced of it's viability for seasonal storage if they're able to provision at least a day of storage.
I don't doubt your critical reasoning ability, but I do doubt the wisdom of treating the challenge of provisioning and operating massive seasonal storage on the order of terawatts as a solved problem because of a few district heating projects.
> How many years of operational experience do we have?
Yes. Huge problem. Very nice and good faith objection to something that can be done incredibly simply with a few dollars per kWh. What if some hot water or sand leaks out and contaminates an entire country?
Indeed so! But I suppose there may be enough slanted surfaces facing approximately south. If solar were cheap enough to depoy, it could help. But possibly it may be not, due to labor costs.
I still see some (tall, multifamily / office) houses in Brooklyn and even on Manhattan adorning their roofs with solar panels. I know only one house that incorporated them right from the start though, it's on Coney Island, facing the ocean.
I think when someone comes up with translucent solar panels which can work as window shades on a skyscraper while looking good from the outside and not requiring a fortune to deploy, that will change the face of metropolises around the globe.
Right, but then how do you displace the remaining fossil fuel use? It's only a matter of time until the "other places" are also saturated. How do you get from 40-50% decarbonized energy to zero?
The solution is non-intermittent energy generation. Hydro and geothermal are great for places that have the right geography and geology. But nuclear is the only other non-intermittent form of decarbonized energy we have*.
* Some would point to biomass, but I don't consider them decarbonized: the biomass could have been a carbon sink if it wasn't burned. It's emissions by virtue of opportunity cost. An it's not a very scalable form of energy anyway.
But nuclear is a terrible complement to intermittent power sources. Nuclear wants to run 24/7 - not intermittently.
IMO, gas is going to be around for quite a while as a peaker for renewables - and the more renewables come online, the less necessary it is as a peaker, but it will still be needed.
>Right, but then how do you displace the remaining fossil fuel use?
The cost effective way would be with wind farms, pumped/battery storage and demand shifting.
(this would be a nice problem to have, by the way, but we are STILL churning through terawatt hours of gas while the sun is shining and the wind is blowing all over).
Nuclear power isnt dispatchable. It's not just 5x more expensive. It would overproduce during times when we don't need electricity and underproduce when we do.
You do exactly what Australia is doing and build PHES and dispatchable loads like electrolysis for fertilizer and smelting as well as adopting EVs.
Also your SA example is cherry picking a time when a bunch of transmission infrastructure has been destroyed because it was built to sub par standards and hit by a storm. When this happened last time there was only large centralised fossil fuel generation and there were weeks of blackouts and other problems. Seems like a pretty good case for more rooftop solar.
Unfortunately nobody has figured out how to deploy enough storage to make intermittent sources viable. Hence why plans for a renewable grid assume that compressed air, heated sand, or giant flywheels will deliver storage at orders of magnitude better than the existing battery and pumped hydro systems. Australia is not a big success story: Fossil fuels still comprise over 60% of electricity sources for Australia - it's no better than the USA. They are not using renewables for chemical and metallurgy industries. And this is despite Australia having some of the best weather and geography for solar power.
Sweden is the country making the most progress into green hydrogen, but it's still experimental at this point. Sweden also gets 40% of it's electricity from nuclear and 40% from hydropower, too. It's hardly a poster child for the success of wind and solar over nuclear power. Intermittent sources need to be backed by a dispatchable source. For countries that don't have widespread hydroelectric potential like Sweden, intermittent sources are not viable except as a supplement to fossil fuels.
> Unfortunately nobody has figured out how to deploy enough storage to make intermittent sources viable.
They're viable even without storage as evidenced by installing new capacity at a rate of net generation of about 20% of the entire cumulative nuclear fleet per year. And getting enough storage is well understood, it is just not a priority in most places until around 70% penetration and progress towards decarbonizing transport is met.
> Australia is not a big success story: Fossil fuels still comprise over 60% of electricity sources for Australia - it's no better than the USA. They are not using renewables for chemical and metallurgy industries. And this is despite Australia having some of the best weather and geography for solar power.
Australia has languished under a government that was openly hostile to renewables for years. South Australia has been operating at over 90% gross renewables for a week and this is after only a few years of large scale effort with insignificant storage and limited ability for interstate transmission due to storm damage.
> Sweden is the country making the most progress into green hydrogen, but it's still experimental at this point.
Looks like about the same level of investment for similar targets to me. Could it be that was another example of blatant lies?
> For countries that don't have widespread hydroelectric potential like Sweden, intermittent sources are not viable except as a supplement to fossil fuels.
Yes. 90% for a week right near the beginning of the transition is a 'suppliment'. Very sound conclusion from the evidence at hand.
This constant lying must be exhausting. Just sell your coal shares.
Where are you getting the idea that 90% of South Australia's electricity is coming from renewables? Fossil fuels still account for ~35% of the state's generation [1]. You mention "for a week", so it sounds like this was under ideal conditions in the middle of the Australian summer. I could also cherry-pick data from the middle of winter to show a particularly bad week. The only state that has more renewable generation is Tasmania, and they produce it mostly through hydropower. Again, the constraints of intermittent sources energy continue to surface themselves. Australia has not found a way to escape this.
> Looks like about the same level of investment for similar targets to me. Could it be that was another example of blatant lies?
As per your links, Australia merely has targets while Sweden has actually produced and delivered green steel. In fact, again as per the link, Sweden has made the world's first delivery of steel produced without fossil fuels. I'm struggling to see how you conclude this is a lie when your own sources explain how Australia has no plants or production, while Sweden has actually produced green steel.
It should be said that until the entire European energy supply is carbon free, green steel is not only incredibly expensive, but also bad for the climate.
It would be much better in both ways to feed that energy into the electric grid to replace fossil fueled power.
Norway has a similar initiative to produce carbon free ammonium, but that, too, depends on dirt cheap electricity supply to be rational.
In both cases, Hydrogen is used, and I suppose if large amounts of hydrogen becomes available and very cheap (for instance due to excess wind power supply), it _could_ be good to already have this tech available.
But based on what I can see from electricity flows from Denmark and Germany to Norway, it is still very rare for the European grid to have excess power due to good wind conditions.
Norway can still absorb a lot more wind power on such days by temporary pausing hydro production. (Max hydroelectric electricity production in Norway is around 20GW, or about 4KW per capita).
Sweden and Norway both have 100% decarbonized electricity. Makes sense that they're the ones that are starting to make progress on decarbonizing chemical and other industries besides electricity.
Sweden and Norway are both part of the European grid, so excess power can be exported to Germany, the UK, Denmark, Poland etc where it can replace coal/gas based power. (In fact Norway and Sweden are required to do so as part of the ACER agreement.)
For now, that makes a lot more sense economically AND it replaces more carbon emissions per kWh.
> Where are you getting the idea that 90% of South Australia's electricity is coming from renewables? Fossil fuels still account for ~35% of the state's generation [1].
You're still making the point for me here. After only 5 years or so of actually supporting renewables and meaningful growth, and around two years of solar being the cheapest option, they're meeting 65% of the total electricity.
> As per your links, Australia merely has targets while Sweden has actually produced and delivered green steel. In fact, again as per the link, Sweden has made the world's first delivery of steel produced without fossil fuels. I'm struggling to see how you conclude this is a lie when your own sources explain how Australia has no plants or production, while Sweden has actually produced green steel.
Ah, so you're back to claiming that things that aren't already finished are impossible and irrelevant. Really working hard to find somewhere you can put those goalposts.
Also Lulea is in Sweden's north so your pathetic attempt at a gotchya of a single load from a demo plant was powered with hydro and wind, not Nuclear.
And what powers the turbopumps that make your plumbing work? What powers the streetlights? Or datacenters that run your internet services and cell phone networks? Or the smelters, factories, and chemical plants essential to a developed society? If we're going to load shift (read: turn off the power) to these industries, then the cost of reduced industrial output needs to be included. If you only run your smelters half the time, then your steel output is reduced by half, and the cost of steel increases along with any products that use steel.
The world uses 60,000 GWh of electricity per day. Global battery production is only ~400 GWh of batteries per year. A day's energy storage amounts to over a century of battery production. Storage is nowhere near as simple as "buy a battery".
Right and China is also set to produce 80% of the world's batteries. Emphasizing "China alone" seems strange shen china alone produces the vast majority of the world's batteries. Between that and the lockdowns in China, I'll be interested in seeing if the final figures for lithium batteries are even close to the 1,000 GWh global production figures that people had predicted. Moore's law unfortunately doesn't play out in heavy industry.
And again, the question is how do you move the water around when the wind isn't blowing? Or do you think citizens are just going to be okay with plumbing that only works on windy days. The point is that household energy use is hardly the only kind of thing that needs to be backed up by a storage system. Energy demand cannot easily be cut without making significant sacrifices in standards of living and industrial output.
Yes, people have used wind pumps to pump wells in villages and homesteads. But that's because they didn't need that water on demand, it's just a labor saving device used opportunistically. But it's a lot harder to pump water to the top of a skyscraper, and to a city of millions of people. This kind of pump [1] is not a drop in replacement for this [2] kind of pump.
In conclusion, we'd need a way to provision massive amounts of storage to get renewables and o become a reliable source of primary energy. It's costs are being measured in the context of opportunistically replacing fossil fuel power. But in a context where fossil fuel use is not permitted, it would be highly impractical without an incredibly performant form of storage. Perhaps heated sand, compressed air, electrolysis, etc. will deliver that. But thus far they haven't, and in the absence of such a storage system nuclear power would be a more reliable path of decarbonization.
> I'll be interested in seeing if the final figures for lithium batteries are even close to the 1,000 GWh global production figures that people had predicted
Oh no, storage might only be buildable at a consistent 4x the peak rate of nuclear additions instead of 8x. Guess we better give up and use fossil fuels for 20 years while the nuclear industry starts up.
Not only are there a host of ways of covering constant energy demand with VRE, but you still don't seem to be able to comprehend the idea that water can go downhill. Why would we listen to energy advice from someone who doesn't understand ideas that are millenia old like a water tower or that bricks can stay hot for a day or two?
If you think the NIMBYism for renewables is bad, imagine trying to build a nuclear plant in your backyard. In fact, the majority of problems with nuclear being slow to build boil down to "the NIMBYs wont have it".
This is probably a place where nuclear and renewable advocates could come together and fight back against the NIMBYs who would rather you just built more coal plants next to the poors. Because NIMBYism is just lower-case c conservatism with extra steps.
If your only concern is radiation exposure, coal plants actually emit more radiation than nuclear. And that's deliberate, everyday emissions, not the accidental once-in-a-decade megaevents like Fukushima or Chernobyl.
Please do share the total cumulative activity of all bioacumulative elements present in all non-filtered fly ash ever released and compare it to the Cs137 that Sellafield poured into the ocean as part of normal operation in 1975 or the Kr 85 that La Hague releases on an average year.
If I build an IKEA bookcase, do I time the build from when I throw the instructions away, or when my significant other decides to buy it between mouthfuls of meatballs?
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