Re:The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without in...
by Retric on Saturday June 20, 2020 @01:02AM
(#23581827)
Natural gas costs more than solar power under 50% utilization. As in the fuel it’s self costs more than solar power plants that waste half of all power produced at current prices. This means a vast over abundance of supply is part of any rational minimal cost strategy. Storage costs are so high it further makes solar tracking arrays cost effective for mitigation of the duck curve.
Also, hydro is a massive part of the energy mix going forward and excluding it gives meaningless results.
Re:The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without in...
by hairytrog on Saturday June 20, 2020 @01:27AM
(#23581925)
since hydro is basically constant, any analysis can just subtract it from the total demand. the dynamic analysis can proceed without considering hydro.
Re:The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without in...
by hebrox on Saturday June 20, 2020 @01:55AM
(#23582047)
Reading the description on Wikipedia, I would say it can be part of the dynamic analysis. "With a dam and reservoir it is also a flexible source of electricity, since the amount produced by the station can be varied up or down very rapidly (as little as a few seconds) to adapt to changing energy demands." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity
Re:The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without in...
by Retric on Saturday June 20, 2020 @10:03AM
(#23583990)
Exactly, large scale hydro is extremely flexible, shifting production not just on a hourly basis in many cases across months. Hydro’s rapid response is why pumped storage was initially developed.
Environmentally, rivers need variable flow rates to minimize silt buildup so doing so is actually good for the environment. Comparing the costs of constructing a dam with the cost of extra generating capacity, this flexibility is also extremely cheap. They do maintain a minimum flow at all times it’s generally a low fraction of average let alone maximum capacity.
Regarding the immense capacity required for wind/solar: see Figure 10 of https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S25424.... They essentially optimize the renewable mix to minimize cost while considering different scenarios for storage costs. The optimization must meet 100% of the demand at 100% of times for the grid in a few different states over the last decade of real data. Plot shows the levelized cost of power or LCOE (the color) in the storage energy vs storage power capacity space. In Arizona, it's no problem, renewables are for sure gonna work out even without a storage miracle. Not so much everywhere else, although I bet most people are so climate woke they wouldn't have a problem paying double for power. I don't want to though.
There are flaws here as well. First, how will they enforce the optimal mix of solar and wind? Will they set quotas of how much of each can be built? As soon as you fall out of the optimum, prices go up. And then there's the material/engineering issue. This kind of storage production is out of this world. Yes, Tesla is going to make 100 $/kWh batteries and they will have dozens of giga factories, but we'd have to produce more than we have ever made. That scares me, and even then, the cost is not lower than natural gas. Gentlemen, natural gas is king - it's so cheap, and easy, and dispatchable.
For resiliency, the key is distributing your power and not depending on others to get things to work. So don't rely on solar plants in another state, or gas pipeline, or whatever. Get it done locally. The paper averages the nationwide demand and production which requires a national grid, and this is not resilient. Grid failures tend to cascade and everyone is affected. Some literature on terrorist or weather based grid vulnerabilities (might not be accessible since this enters sensitive info):
- https://www.wsj.com/articles/assault-on-california-power-sta...
- Lanza, R. Fragility of Energy Networks. in INTERNATIONAL SEMINARS ON PLANETARY EMERGENCIES AND ASSOCIATED MEETINGS- 47thSession (2014). doi:10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004
- Wang, S. et al. An Optimization-Based Adaptation Framework for Coastal Electrical Infrastructure Resilience To Climate Change.
PS. Love the character attack with insinuation of conspiracy theorist. Nicely done. To be clear, I get paid by nuclear lobbyists to troll sites like these.