News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Going 100% Green Will Pay for Itself in Seven Years, Stud... by Ericson2314 on Sunday December 22, 2019 @09:39AM (#21857317)
This an interesting a well-written post and I am learning things from it, thank you. But when I cry foul on anti-nuclear, I'm not just talking about generating power today, but all the nuclear power plants we could have built over the last 50 years. We could be 0-carbon today except for ICEs, and this would have been so much better. And all that cheap energy would have spurred research into batteries sooner we I'd bet we'd probably already be ICE free by now.

Instead of worrying about the future of this civilization, we'd just be with wind and solar a) pandering to some NIMBYs in Las Vegas after a few decades of Yucca Mountain with b) pulling imperialist foreign policy gimmicks to stop the spread of centrifuges to nations other than cold war powers. Much lower stakes!

Re:Going 100% Green Will Pay for Itself in Seven Years, Stud... by Ericson2314 on Sunday December 22, 2019 @09:56AM (#21857400)
Back to your technical points and this shitty timeline, I have a few questions:

1) if we were to eliminate ICEs completely in the US, how much would more electricity would we need to produce?

2) Is there any declining returns of renewables as we aim for that much more? (I don't think but just checking.)

3) Assuming no problem generating the energy, how much more batteries would we need? How much more rare earths and other environmentally costly resources would we need to mind, or are you proposing e.g. fluid pumping?

Re:Going 100% Green Will Pay for Itself in Seven Years, Stud... by ZeroGravitas on Sunday December 22, 2019 @11:49AM (#21858181)
1) because EVs are effectively a form of grid storage, the two transitions work hand in hand. Smart chargers will absorb excess solar and wind and get discounts as a result. The UK national Grid says no new capacity will be required as long as that flexibility is taken advantage of. The utilisation of the grid will be more consistent as a result.

2) the plan for the last 20% of renewables is a bit more murky than the first 80% which most seem to agree will be straightforward and inexpensive and using the obvious solar and wind tech. I'm fairly confident that a range of solutions will present themselves, I just wouldn't want to predict exactly what mix they'll be as it'll come down to a lot of small innovations and decisions. We have answers now but I believe we'll have more, better, cheaper answers by the time we need them.

3) Rare earths aren't rare, that's not what the name means. So they're not a fundamental blocker, though they are more expensive to extract so the market for electrical storage will naturally gravitate towards more cheap and abundant materials if they're out there.

Batteries for short day-to-day storage are already entering the market and making/saving money. As renewables expand and battery prices fall they'll expand massively (see my answer about EVs). I think we'll need something with a different model for long term seasonal storage though, but the main thing will just be building lots of cheap renewables. The "problem" will be as much about all the cheap abundant energy we have in spring/autumn as about the shortages caused by winter heating, summer cooling peaks. Storing that electrical energy as ammonia/hydrogen/whatever to shift energy is going to be a big thing I think, but only so far as it's cheaper than just adding yet another solar panel. (The current big innovation is just putting more solar panels on the back of your solar panels. It only add 1% but it's cheap, so why not?)