Re:Live CO2 emissions of electricity consumption
by PoachedSausage on Sunday December 24, 2017 @09:48AM
(#15999741)
Don't forget dynamic pricing.
I know it is due to historic energy markets and old metering technology, but the fact that a kWh costs the same no matter the time of day is a situation that cannot continue.
Re:Live CO2 emissions of electricity consumption
by the8472 on Sunday December 24, 2017 @11:32AM
(#16000135)
And throw overcapacity at the problem. If a bad day gives you 5% renewables with the current capacity then you "only" need 20x more capacity. Combining with other solutions this overcapacity factor goes down significantly.
And once you have intermittent excess energy that is essentially free some opportunities to use it might spring up, e.g. run various electrochemical processes for free and store the products or smelt aluminium or something like that.
- distribute regenerative sources geographically to have a better average production; there's always wind somewhere in Europe
- increase storage capacity through various means; e.g. pumped storage, chemical batteries
- make electricity consumption match production through various means; e.g. have (industrial) cooling and heating work in excess if there is an excess of "free" energy, charge electrical car batteries
- reduce electrical capacity requirements through gains in efficiency; e.g. improve home insulation
It's also not just a matter of production capacities: we're throwing away huge amounts of regenerative energy because we don't have the technology to a) adjust other production sources fast enough, b) store excess production and c) we don't have the infrastructure to transport it.