An efficient, large scale global economy is only possible with incredibly high energy density (and easy to transport and convert into usage energy) energy sources.
And, to your point, even global food supply is ultimately an issue of transporting energy from the sun to human bodies largely in the form of plant based carbohydrates. Human's ability to expand around the globe is predicated on the ability to transport the caloric requirements efficiently.
Solar energy isn't the panacea that people make it out to be. Where it is abundant, it makes sense. A lot of places do not have that luxury, yet countries like Germany made foolish investments in solar power which is 10% efficient compared to its full potential in Southwestern USA.
You say that they would be 10x as efficient in Southwestern USA. But how would you transport the electricity from the USA to Germany? Isn't that exactly the problem that the previous commenter is pointing out? I.e. production is not the problem, transportation is.
This means that two different houses each with PV can support each other when one is sunny and the other cloudy.
In principle that would scale to the world; in practice that's the domain of politics rather than technology, and politics may push for one of many other solutions.
On the other hand the nuclear power station turbine generates power with a voltage of 20 KV feeding it to a high voltage transformer, which steps up the voltage to 200KV and is connected directly to the transmission lines.
Cost of energy has multitude of secondary effects on GDP and food security; the importance of which cannot be understated.
WTF does that mean?
Fundamental is core to the problem, incidental is stuff we add because of our imperfect solutions.
Care to link to some?
Might not even be wrong to have made this choice, I can't tell — economics (which is an important part of politics) is outside my domain.
Men även med så intetsägande och generiska uttalanden betyder det faktum att jag inte kan någonting om svensk politik att jag kanske saknar något som någon svensk väljare skulle anse som "sunt förnuft".
The in-topic part is for instance about p.v.: if you think a global electricity grid as a solution you dream something that seems to be logic, if you are a manager but is a totally crazy idea because we are not AT ALL a global community. Even if some neoliberals call themselves World Government [1] the reality is that we are various States with different interests and NOTHING at a certain scale can work simply because of that, any other thing aside.
Not only: the idea that we have the production capacity, substitution included, to build and run such monster is another dream, with the same realism of those who say "hey, I produce 130% of my consumption from p.v.". It's an old classic of those who "try and fix on the go", who typically create hyper-big disasters and survive thanks to those who do not work as them. If the entire world take this path such a big fail will not be solved by anyone.
We have some effective storage, like pumped hydro, yes, but we have them where we can, we do not build mountains so far, for instance. Compressed air storage prove to be possible at a certain scale, but so far is just a promise with some experiments and honestly I doubt the actual push is ONLY for environmental and economical reasons. I think we start suspecting that oil is at the end, and we have just 2 decades or so remaining so we need to rush finding alternatives...
Sounds about right.
> If I compute how it's produced, how much energy, pollution, it need to exists brand new in my home, and how so far we can't recycle...
Recycling is possible — even the absolute dumbest way I can imagine, which is grind the battery into dust and put that dust into the process used to separate rocks into their constituent elements, is still better than mining the actual rocks you'd otherwise get them from.
Recycling facilities better than that necessarily only scale to whatever battery quantity existed x years ago.
But also, the pollution mostly comes from energy, so making the grid greener makes the batteries greener which makes the grid greener etc.
However, you're missing one of the cheapest storage systems: hydrogen. The round-trip efficiency isn't great, but given how cheap PV is, this isn't bad enough to be a problem.
About hydrogen... Well... How much it costs an hydrolysis plant with relevant compression system and storage PLUS the needed fuel-cell to use it once milked? Personally I've already spent for a new house, with relevant not-that-cheap systems, heat-pumps included, who might last 10 years as well (compressor), in the near future an EV who might last 10 years but 5 to 8 seems to be more realistic... Adding the price of a smaller house to add hydrogen start to be REALLY expensive. Long story short: if the Green New Deal demand such big investments I think just 2-3% of the total population in the western countries can afford it, witch does not make anything ecological just for mere scale. If we try bigger scale... So far I see nothing really big (beside old scams). Yes, some p.v. plants pops up continuously but they are small in classic PP scale terms and just grid-connected systems. Only a handful of projects do differently around the world and seems to be in a really early stage of experimentation...
I have nothing against pay to be a pre-alpha tester BUT there is a limit for that honestly...
In particular:
> Yes, some p.v. plants pops up continuously but they are small in classic PP scale terms and just grid-connected systems.
What's "PP scale"?
And are you aware the combined nameplate capacity of all global PV is now close to one terawatt?
The typical power capacity of a gas/coal/nuclear power plant vs the typical capacity of a p.v. one. In general flourishing p.v. plants are far smaller than typical fossil/nuclear power plant. Some big projects in exotic places do exists, in early stage, like the recent Uzbekistan push (who already made unrest and armed revolts) like the old Desertec scam. But real-world active p.v. power plant offer a nominal far little mean power respect of the others.
> And are you aware the combined nameplate capacity of all global PV is now close to one terawatt?
How does it count? I can state equally that the actual uranium collected in human hands can produce far far far more, but that's just a statement simply because "nominal" count nothing. What count is that so far no one is autonomous with p.v. alone, living a normal life, running business etc and so few are partially autonomous with very expensive and little lasting batteries. I'm one of them, since I have a small p.v. with lithium storage. Oh with the artificially skyrocketed electricity prices perhaps (still unsure) it will pay back. But I still need the grid for 50% of my consumption, while some state enthusiastically that "hey you can produce 130% of your energy needs", witch is formally true, practically false because I can't shift my consumption just when the Sun shine AND use it at 100%. I call it the difference between the beancounter computed reality and the physical world reality. Seeing that, and the actual climate I suspect we have the same issue with Green New Deal claims.
Why do you consider this important, rather than the aggregate output of all of them together?
As you say later, you've got PV on your own roof. If everyone in a small city does that, it's the same output as a nuclear plant, if they do that with a battery pack each (and I add a caveat about installation costs which I'm told are needlessly high in some places such as the US) then it can also be the same cost and reliability as a nuclear plant.
(Nuclear is expensive, so batteries backing PV is not (yet) no-brainer cheap, this is part of why I suggest hydrogen and/or global grid whenever the topic comes up).
> Some big projects in exotic places do exists, in early stage, like the recent Uzbekistan push (who already made unrest and armed revolts) like the old Desertec scam.
What Uzbekistan push? What are the rioters supposed to do with any of this?
What Desertec scam? The investors backing out? Because that's just normal for business, and the organisation of that name is still around.
> offer a nominal far little mean power respect of the others.
I have no idea what this is trying to say.
> How does it count? I can state equally that the actual uranium collected in human hands can produce far far far more, but that's just a statement simply because "nominal" count nothing.
What do you mean "how does it count"? It's a significant contributor to the global electricity supply.
> I'm one of them, since I have a small p.v. with lithium storage. Oh with the artificially skyrocketed electricity prices perhaps (still unsure) it will pay back.
Given lithium batteries are the most expensive storage option, and despite that cost it's still something close enough you're unsure about, and it's still getting cheaper, why are you so pessimistic?
It's important in term of national grid design: we have a grid designed to push large amount of power from a single areas to many consumers, not ones designed to move amps around a country... It's not hyper-important especially respect with the variability of the output who impose hyper-quick generators to compensate oscillations quick enough to keep the grid on, but it's still relevant because it strain the grid significantly creating locally problematic frequency perturbation.
> As you say later, you've got PV on your own roof. If everyone in a small city does that, it's the same output as a nuclear plant, if they do that with a battery pack each (and I add a caveat about installation costs which I'm told are needlessly high in some places such as the US) then it can also be the same cost and reliability as a nuclear plant.
So far it's only in my garden, having a east-west root, but the real issue is that I'm FAR from being autonomous... To be almost autonomous (witch means no grid usage most of the year) I'll need something like 200kWh storage with the needed p.v. to recharge at least 40kWh in 3-4 hours + supply in the same amount of time enough peak power to run most home appliances like 3kW (absorption) heat-pump to quickly heat enough water to pass the rest of the day, night and new early morning in cold winter days, +5-6kW of various home appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, ...) to been able to very quickly do most high power usages in few hours of sunny days in winter dedicating the rest just to basic self-consumption to strain batteries the minimum possible and passing the night with no more than 15% daily DoD. That's means something impossible in essentially all EU cities (too dense) and possible only for some not-so-small homes around the EU south. Nothing more.
Oh, if I add H₂ to the game, something not on sale so far and then something I can't add anyway no matter how much money I put on the table, the price and needed equipment skyrocket even more... Perhaps in France just 2-3% of total population can do something like the only lithium + p.v. + hot water storage. All the rest can't economically and most of them even physically constrained by their homes and terrain sizes.
> What Uzbekistan push? What are the rioters supposed to do with any of this?
http://intellinews.com/sun-drenched-uzbekistan-on-the-verge-... or https://thediplomat.com/2022/08/solar-energy-project-leaves-...
something similar happen in Australia https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/bold-steps-needed-to-power...
Azerbaijan https://bbj.hu/economy/energy/green-energy/hungary-joins-aze... and others sunny and not much inhabited lands... All with similar plots.
> What Desertec scam?
http://www.desertec-uk.org.uk/reports/DII/DPP_2050_Study.pdf Desertec was, partially is, since partially was founded and some little PP was made, by a classic private-public mafia-aggregation ranging from major Germans banks, Siemens, ABB, Cevital, ... others from energy sectors, even the Morocco's Royal funds and others big names from Ignacio Campino, Fritzhjof Finkbeiner, Hassan bin Talal etc so far they have created some plants, mostly eolic, in western Sahara with a series of abuse on local population and polemics about the real usefulness of the project.
> I have no idea what this is trying to say.
Essentially that so far already-made and functioning p.v. plants have produced intermittent energy at rates well below the peak power in means. Like you have a 100MWp or a 5kWp plant, normal daily production is well below the 100MW or 5kW nominal power. For instance today my peak p.v. power was 4355W for few seconds. Most of the day I was below 3kW. That's what I'm try to say in my poor English: you can't count real power on the sum of p.v. modules peak power.
> What do you mean "how does it count"? It's a significant contributor to the global electricity supply.
We need to keep 50/60Hz in the grid. That means if we have let's say 5GW p.v. in a country during a sunny day that country still need at least 2.5 or more GW classic power plants on-line ready to compensate p.v. production variation. Of course they do not produce actually 2.5GW but to be ready and quick enough they need to be powered on and that's means they consume gas/coal etc or they are NPP and in that case there is no point in lowering their production to use p.v. since they cost the same used at full power or left in stand-by.
> Given lithium batteries are the most expensive storage option, and despite that cost it's still something close enough you're unsure about, and it's still getting cheaper, why are you so pessimistic?
So far they are the only realistic option on sale, except pumped hydro witch is not something domestic, and they have MANY issues and limits. The biggest is their limited operational life compared to their costs. You can't discharge daily more than 10-15% of the battery if you want to hope it will last around 10 years. You need to regularly fully charge the battery to balance cells, but in that case you need something, like the grid, to reject cyclic overvoltages when a load drops and the battery/p.v. inverters are not lower their production fast enough or you strain the battery anyway (similar problems for BEVs, you need to charge them 100% regularly but also need to consume a bit before drive or accept the loss of generative breaking (witch means in practice "the engine break" if you have a long descent for instance, and still strain the battery a bit when you lift the foot on the accelerator...). Even with 10% DoD/day, overvoltage rejects to the grid (CC included, something not very legal in some countries) etc you lost 1.something% a year of battery capacity.
Do you really think we can produce let's say 40kWh battery for let's say 5k€ maximum, for most homes (at least) of a country in few years + the relevant recycling when they EOLs + all the batteries needed for EV etc? I honestly doubt. It's far more likely to build many NPP in far less time.
So no, if you want a world that run on p.v. you need a global grid to harvest enough energy AND I doubt even if such monster can be done in a snap and work flawlessly that we can even harvest enough power at ground level.
Harvesting from orbit beside the fact it's so far mere theory have various major issues, not just in environmental terms (a catastrophic impact, probably higher than a nuclear war on ground) but in mere technical terms: without the atmospheric shield anything in orbit at a certain scale have a very short life span. Substitute them demand a very big quantity of fossils and an industrial capacity we do not have in the entire world so far.
Nuclear fusion on ground is the most promising tech but so far it's far from being ready, seen the actual status PERHAPS we can have it at an initial general availability around 2060-2070. Before we have just fission. Now if we invest in fission witch is far from cheap and simple to build on scale it's a nonsense also investing in p.v. witch is far less expensive but for what? Once a reactor is started you consume uranium anyway, producing energy from steam or not. p.v. might play a role in averaging the load, theoretically, that means "please all loads that can be run just when the Sun shine do run them only with it", but doing so for now is pure theory and at a nationwide grid scale it's already almost impossible. Beside that we have an enormous issue: climate change. Did you know how vulnerable are infra on ground?
We try the small reactor path NOT because they are safe (it's the opposite), not because they are cheap (again, it's the opposite), but because they are flexible: instead of depend on LARGE infra we can deploy small one so reducing the impact of any outage.
In the nearer future we have the nightmarish problem of replace oil and gas sparing them for the use we do not know how to do without them. In the mid-term future we need resiliency and nuclear fission, another nightmare. In a mid-long term we hope for fusion, but we do not really know and we anyway need to essentially rebuild the changing world coping with sea levels rises, floods, landslides etc that push people in altitude locally and world-scale migration in general. That's the actual sore reality for what we can see directly and read from so many sources with contrasting interest to being able to call them very likely true.
While it would take a while to build a global power grid, we have the capacity to produce approximately ten thousand times our current global power usage from ground-level PV.
I'm a bit skeptical, but in any case consider a thing: we need to count an initial construction BUT also a regular substitution of old modules, managing their disposal (witch actually is just shred and bury in most cases) and in doing so we need to count the life cycle: if we construct something slowly things reach EOL in small batches so we can keep a regular production since the initial demand is not hyper-big and the future substitution rate start BEFORE the initial demand finished and keep a slow rate. If we are quick:
- we need a monster production to satisfy the demand
- then the demand drops equally sharply and you get hyper-big factories who do almost nothing
- the the demand skyrocket again
If you think it's theoretical see actual Italy: a gazillion of CA infra was built quickly in few years after WWII, now are en equal batch EOL... There is a reason, more than one, why almost any big project end up badly while most small succeed...
1.740 × 10^17 W ≈ total power received by Earth from the Sun
1.91 × 10^13 ≈ average total power consumption of the human world in 2019
> If we are quick
I don't know about the growth of batteries other than "factories are being made as fast as they can be, and car companies are investing in mines now", the growth of PV is still approximately exponential. Also, if PV production switches from growth to fixed output at the end of this year, given how long the stuff lasts, it would end up in a steady state of about 8 TW nameplate capacity; given what the capacity factor is like, in practice that would be enough to make all electricity green but not enough to electrify everything else.
I'm not expecting the exponential to come to a sudden stop at the end of this year.
> most small succeed...
Do they, though? I think you're just not hearing about most of the small failures because they're boring.
About projects, in any field, big, complex projects normally never get done well, smaller normally succeed. That's is. Since it's valid from IT to A&D why it should be different for something else?
Off topic, but why do you consistently spell "which" as "witch"? I sympathise if it's ESL, but if so: the latter refers to pointy hats and pentagrams, not a determiner.
Sorry, I'm Italian living in France, my English is far from good...
Try a small game, put PR and the emotion they push aside: who need a war today? If you are honest you have to admit that the most in need of a war are UK first, USA second. UK need a war outside to avoid a civil war inside. Having essentially lost their "empire" status they are simply unable to live anymore. A war would compact people and if won give resource of the looser. USA need a war for similar reasons, mitigated by the fact that USA can actually live on it's own, even alone, "only" correcting it's crazy economy. Not easy at all, but technically possible, so practically when crisis really bite.
China do not need, but like, a war. They have a hyper big food issue, they need to conquer south America to eat. To do so they need to overpower the USA. To do so they need Russia's tech and natural resources, something Russia, a China's historic enemy, do not like that much to share to such a big & powerful giant.
Russia do not like a war at all. It's something that impose agreements with China, imbalanced. EU similarly do not need a war. It simply destroy EU itself due to the lack of natural resources.
So the plan is? Well. USA declare it essentially in the far 2004: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Global%20Trends_Mapping%... oh, they are formally just acritical prediction from the intelligence to the politicians. But sounds really accurate. In more modern terms: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/R...
A bottomline: saying that UK and USA need a war means their oppressive ruling classes need it, of course NOT the people, unfortunately as most people in the world those who do need the opposite of their ruling class are the last to understand they are fighting for their own enemy that's not those on the opposite front, but those who march at their head.
Russia may not like a war but Russia needs resources since it wants to be the only store in neighborhood, and unfortunately, Ukraine does have resources. War was not expected outcome of the initial scare tactic but here we are.
However both UK and USA are failed states, their extreme capitalism put too much of their population in poverty and without immigration they simply fall on their own weight.
As before they NEED a war to overthought the table and start over. And they have actually created that, it's not a secret, it's written black on white if only you read their publications from RAND to G8. They use a slightly strange vocabulary but it's clear what they state. They call themselves "the international community" or "the civilized world" but it's clear they just mean their fragmented former colonies. The same have happened in the recent past with the Korea war, as it happened their former colonies start to decide it's time to detach a bit, like SK an Japan themselves https://asiatimes.com/2022/08/japan-korea-defy-us-with-big-r... and even New Zealand https://thediplomat.com/2022/07/new-zealand-will-not-join-th... Australia itself suffering the submarines scam the UK and USA essentially have imposed to them ditching modern but limited French subs to exactly nothing since for a decade at least that's what they'll get (less than nothing since they have payed compensation for the late choice) start to falter undecided witch side to take. Only high treason neoliberal government in the EU keep the USA/UK side against their own Citizens interests.
Some in US and UK have already understood that their war is lost and they menace them to go nuclear in that case, see https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-truss-nuc... and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11110441/Henry-Kiss... but the rest of the world, the BRICS start to unite knowing that it's freedom or death for them. They have all tested the "freedom" neoliberal nazi means, to a point in eastern Europe many would welcome back Soviet Union...
The above are NOT political or ideological positions but simply facts anyone observing with honesty no matter the personal political position can't avoid to see.
Long story short: yes, is Russia that have crossed the border, but no, it's not it who start the war in reality.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroAsia_Interconnector
[2] https://www.powerengineeringint.com/smart-grid-td/td-infrast...
The electrical loss through HVDC cable is approximately 3% per 1000 km of cable, far less than with AC grids. The physics do work out, the only real barriers are economics and politics.
The physics works out just fine. Where did you get your information from?
See also:
"On the technology front we have covered significant ground in the past two decades. We have raised power capacity from 50MW to more than 1,400MW – enough to power several million households. We have enhanced voltage levels from 80kV to 525kV, thereby increasing distance capability from 70km to over 1,000km. And at the same time we have continually brought down transmission losses which are now at less than 1 percent." https://eepower.com/news/abb-doubles-hvdc-capacity-and-celeb...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331959599_A_compreh...
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/building-a-2... (2 billion seems too cheep)
The cables are designed for crossing relatively small bodies of water such as the Mediterranean or the North Sea, and can be tweaked for more efficiency if the goal is to cross the Pacific Ocean, but even without that, it would still work.
The rest of the day works though.
Electricity isn't stored, it is consumed.
Don't make us tap the sign.
Even non Battery electric trains can speed up or slow down at different points (while still staying on schedule) to act as a variable demand for the local grids. Batteries just extend that.
https://arstechnica.netblogpro.com/science/2021/11/can-we-ru...
> The analysis becomes very interesting when the researchers leave freight behind and start thinking about what could be done with many big, mobile batteries. Even without moving them, freight companies could use their capacity to provide grid stabilization services or sell back power when the price gets high. In extreme cases, this system could actually pay for the entire infrastructure.
> "Preliminary estimates of the most expensive 90 hours per year in the ERCOT [Texas] market, for example, show that batteries could be discharged at $200/kWh, potentially generating enough revenue to pay for the upfront battery cost in a single year," the study says.
> The batteries could also be moved to locations that have been struck by power outages or natural disasters, towed there by locomotives running on diesel instead of draining the batteries.
I want this for everything with a battery, it’s own internal thermal mass or things I don’t need to complete as quickly as possible.
E.g.: laptop, washing machine (clothes or dishes), dryer, refrigerator, hot water heater, hvac, etc.
It just seems so underdeveloped on the consumer side.
https://es.catapult.org.uk/project/consumer-insight-unlockin...
Such a simple design, can be used for at least heating water for 3-6 months. But nah.
Same for which the roofs. You don't have a white/silver roof on your house? Fuck you.
On that note, you like cruise ships? Also fuck you.
I am one of your fuckees. The house I bought was expensive enough as it was. I am not changing a brand new dark roof for a different one for an exorbitant price right now, because budget. A perfectly new roof going down (isn't that actually waste?) for saving, say, 10 of 30 days when the AC is really needed?
(I am also not even sure if roof colors are regulated by the local authorities or not. There are over thirty houses in the same project, with the same roofs. Maybe I wouldn't even be allowed to.)
In California, roof color isn't regulated, but reflectivity (or rather energy absorption) is by Title 24. You're basically required on new construction to have a fairly efficient roof.
[1] https://www.homedepot.com/p/Henry-4-75-Gal-Acrylic-Reflectiv...
I'm talking people building or renovating and then bitching about expensive AC. Talk about idiotic.
I'm in a town where more than half the roofs are black. BLACK! It has been over 30 degrees and sunny for two months of summer. Guess what complaints I kept hearing?
Reflective paint helps in summer much more than it hurts in winter.
But beyond that, I just hate people going "Reeee we need to do something about the climate change" who do absolutely nothing themselves.
Circumstances might not be as simple as you you think they are.
Why?
I do need heating in the winter though.
If I want to go fully autonomous I have to spend in batteries like the same price of a Lamborghini, for zero re-sale value, to be demolished in 10 years in theory, in practice more likely 7-8 years if I use them with significant daily important DOD. I also doubt we are even able to produce enough battery and panels to everyone. And I'm not alone: https://www.economie.gouv.fr/files/files/directions_services... essentially the governmental, non-interested report state: we can't run on renewable. That's is.
What I'm curious is another thing: why some on a technically sound community like HN with certain topics became totally partisan of this or that topic at fanatic levels. It's not you, it's a trend I see in the last months at least, for various topics: anytime there is a post with a neoliberal agenda hot topic such behaviors appear.
My honest review:
- I spent a very big amount of money to build a new home, witch will not pay back ever in monetary terms, only pay back in comfort terms;
- I spent more for renewables NOT because they are ecological (they are pollutant) but as a protection against future disruption I imaging we will suffer, again in economical terms money dumped to the bin;
- I'll spend more in the near future for an BEV because I expect diesel/gasoline supply issues and artificially skyrocketed prices.
The synthesis? Well: those who have done such investments will be far less wealthy then before. Those who have not done that or can't will be far poorer. Those who gain are ONLY those who push such evolution for almost pure financial reasons, not "green" at all in ecological terms, green just in dollar and stereotypical toxic waist terms. Since it's clearly NOT sustainable nor extendable on scale the obvious results will be a very big disaster and another global war.
how? considering 75 kwh tesla is ~50K. Do you really need more than 75 kwh of storage?
Did you ever try the real autonomy game? Just consider that in winter you can count on few hours of Sun let's say one day yes and one no, if you live like me in France south. In those hours you need to run anything together. You have postponed dishwasher, washing machine, you have to cook, heat both sanitary water and reserve for night and early morning home heating, recharge the batteries, car's battery included etc.
For instance to heat enough water to heat my home a single day (~2000 liters at 60℃ to get in the morning at 32-33℃) I need a powerful heat pump, let's say 3kW absorbed. I need ~2kW per home appliance (dishwasher, washing machine, coffee maker, induction for a single pot etc) I might have good enough Sun from 9.30 in the morning to let's say 14.30. Some appliance are very quick (like a coffee maker) but some are not (the dishwasher heat water few times for 8-10' a time over 90' timeframe, the washing machine normally only one time) recharging a massive battery demand both a certain amount of sustained power to avoid unbalanced cells, demand little power for a not that short time to balance them at the end of the charge etc. Essentially I need around 25kW for around 4+ hours per day. Being able to count casually passing clouds in the meantime. Not only. Such system need to be constantly managed to lower quickly and mount quickly the load following p.v. production. Some appliance can potentially and practically (for instance modern heat-pump water heaters are already made to be controlled by some modbus/mqtt automation), some can just potentially (nothing on sale do that, but it's possible), some can't.
Really try the game, including home heating in winter, NOT counting on the grid even for small loads.
Anytime you mention energy transmision issues - you get total backlash.
We wasted EU money on pointless stuff while we could have upgraded our transit cables etc.
An EV bought today will only get cleaner as the grid gets cleaner. A new fossil-fuel vehicle today will always be dependent on fossil fuels, and will always pollute at least as much as the day it was purchased.
As we can all boil a kettle (3kW), or have a shower (10kW), or cook a sunday roast (5kW), and indeed do those at the same time, it's not a problem.
We should be thinking long term, but we can't forget about the present and the path to the glorious future. I think in hindsight we'll soon admit that we botched the transition to a greener world and caused needless suffering by putting ideologies before engineering.
By reducing Europe’s dependence on imported fossil fuels, renewables are part of the solution to energy security.
Far better to just send the power via grid to an EV @95% then toss 60% or more of it to make a gallon of gas
It might make sense, for a while with aircraft, or for a classic car that rarely gets used, but would be too expensive for developing nations to use when they have other options. They'd save lots of money by using the same energy directly in newly built (or converted) EVs.
Not really for automotive emissions. The US alone accounts for almost half the world's road CO2 emissions.
there’s been a lot of media attention on how individuals need to make an effort to beat climate change, but the reality is that industry is the only sector able to make a meaningful impact.
If you call people fanatics, they won’t believe you’re making a good faith argument.
Yet it was pushed so heavily in lieu of nuclear power. Absurd.
Sure it would be better if it was a sunnier place, still...
Winter is of course a different issue
At the same time, 49% of nuclear in France is being used today and 62% of nuclear in the UK
So, it's "bad" but not everything is used 100% all the time
But that perfect day is rare, largely because of Germany’s climate.
So you have a situation where you have to essentially install over 100% of your needs in solar. You’re overspending for suboptimum results.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-failure-...
Essentially, there’s plenty of installed solar capacity but most of it can’t be utilized fully unless its a perfect day. So you have to essentially rely on backup and keep installing more and more solar capacity beyond your needs because those perfect solar days are so rare in Germany.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has ever spent even two days in Germany - the country isn’t exactly brimming with sunlight.
In particular they dragged their heels on ICE to EV transition, which I agree with.
Luckily they shifted from a conservative towards a green government and all that stuff is moving forward again.
> Politicians have ignored other elements, like industrial production, building efficiency and, especially, vehicle traffic. Involving those areas and coming up with an overarching concept, that's the hard part that must now be addressed. And it will determine whether Germany will once again become a model of sustainable economic production or whether the entire experiment will end in failure.
I wouldn't call that necessarily incompetence. Corruption and cronyism, yes.
Although corruption was probably present, I would say that this kind of politics is precisely what we would expect from pro-business parties (in this case, the People's Party). They do have a long history of eschewing environmental policies as soon as any big company has money to lose because of them.
The previous government in Spain halted lots of funding for new power plants but as far as I know there is a lots of projects going on now. I expect to see a significant increment in the next years.
Also, in the Netherlands most of solar is installed in roofs, while in Spain is almost anecdotal. The previous government made difficult for individuals to install solar at home. Now that's gone but there is no subsidies, so individuals have to pay most of the installation from their own pockets, which are much more shallow than the dutch.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_European_Un... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_European_Uni...
The "Green new deal" however is a step in that direction. But IMO its theatrics. EU money to buy green German cars and green German infra with no plan on longevity or strategic change. Truth is, that if EU wanted energy independece, they could have it many years now. Be it nuclear or Mediterranean natural gas (the same gas now Israel is going to sell to EU).
Not that the respective governments are competent. They are not, thats a given. But the "competent" part of Europe is only so in a stupidly myopic level.
You wrote: <<But the "competent" part of Europe is only so in a stupidly myopic level.>> Can you explain this more? (Zero trolling.) I don't understand what you mean.
I mean that what we call the "competent part of Europe" is only competent in a myopic level. When it comes to their own local economy as if it is operating in vacuum. I argue that most of the foreign policy decisions of these members where made with short-term view of their own country economy, completely F'ing up their long term prospects by ignoring the potential and the dynamics of the periphery.
Financing has generally been a positive for renewables.
The ability to predict output years in advance and lock in prices works well with finance to build up front.
The reason they've not built more is because the whole globe needs to work together or else one nation can save money by not bothering and just polluting instead.
If that politics got fixed (which it has slowly) then renewables would be rolled out more.
I don't know how much is from solar parks? About 20% of all houses in the Netherlands have solar panels according to some sources so that adds up.
But it failed in securing energy resilience. I hope it has learned its lesson.
Growth in Solar in Spain was negligible for 6 years from 2013 to 2019.
Italy likewise increased less than 10%
Greece has hardly any solar, with nothing built from 2013 until this year. That plant cost 130m for 350m kWh a year - that's 4c/kWh over 10 years, plus operating costs.
Painfully slow delivery that was needlessly stalled for financial reasons
The fossil fuel industry spent Billions on propaganda. Politicians had the option of fighting that, or using it to become more popular and so get rich.
This cost their countries Billions more than they ever earned. They're still doing it, but they might wake up soon. Still a total waste of time, energy and money though.
> That, in combination with the downward pressure on wholesale electricity prices, threatened the finances of the major utilities. Particularly hard hit were the 26 GW of natural gas-fired combined cycle (GFCC) plants built after 2000 in anticipation of substantial growth in Spain’s electricity demand, making gas the single largest source of installed capacity. This brand new fleet saw its overall load factor drop from around 50 percent in the mid-2000s to below 20 percent in 2011 and then continue to fall, almost to single digits in 2014
> As a result of these developments, the promotion of renewable power went, in just a few years, from enjoying broad public support, or at least tolerance, to facing substantial opposition. Particularly outspoken in their criticism were large electricity consumers and the major utilities, whose returns on investment in non-renewable generating capacity was being put at risk (Linares and Labandeira 2013). These various pressures in turn prompted similar policy responses by successive governments led by different parties.
https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=110...
So prices went down, country made money, big interests lost money, specifically natural gas wasn't being burnt enough for their liking, renewables got paused for a while.
Russia (and several other authorotarian regimes) benefitted, but it was mostly Spanish people conning other Spanish people for money.
HVDC interconnects are not hard. We have them already. Allocating land isn't hard, it's a law in the Spanish parliament.
It just requires political will to survive. Which apparently isn't a thing people have.
There was a project to pay down cable to import reliable, cheap 24/7 power from Iceland and hobernment said 'nah'. They also cancelled a 340 MW tidal project
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-she...
Just not as cost effective as wind, which got to piggyback of onshore turbine development.
The amount of sunlight your receive, however, will always be the same.
https://min.news/en/tech/30bdf6748162428883857d361132e177.ht...
A nuclear plant using sea water never stops due to heat waves, because it can dilute any amount of hot water.
It's not magic, it's a machine with design limits that extreme weather events can push up against.
It also can pollute rivers and kill fish before it gets to that level.
Sea cooled reactors have issues with jellyfish.
Having said that, the EU needs more gas in winter when it's cold, so doing the maintenance/refueling in the summer makes sense.
Still doesn't change the basic facts that a mix of solar/wind etc. is cheaper and better than nuclear and the annoying 'nuclear isn't affected by the weather' meme is wrong.
We have yet to see 80°c water in the rivers upstream. As I said earlier, the issue is never cooling the reactor, it's always about the state of the environment downstream.
Even not doing well it's better then Germany's wind and solar - it's rare to see Germany electricity polluting going below 4x France - not to mention coal whose transportation is also affected by low water levels
Fire related grid shutdowns are usually hyperlocal, meaning the few who need to charge during that time can just run a town over. (keep in mind that EVs can be charged just less than once a week for average use)
And I believe all high voltage transmission lines are above ground.
The difference is that California historically has fire prone conditions. It’s not like the rest of the country is doing something different and California has done something inherently wrong. It’s that California did what the rest of the country was doing, but without conditions to support it.
Most countries don’t have regular residential streets with power lines up in the air.
It is significantly cheaper than burying lines from an initial cost point of view, so as long as the cost of preventive maintenance is low enough, it is a viable option. Particularly if the cost to fix lines is also low.
As an added bonus, it then also becomes easier to hang other lines (telephone, cable, fiber) on the same poles. This more difficult to do with buried lines, even if the lines are in conduit.
I’d prefer my electrical lines to be buried too, but I at least understand why they aren’t.
HVDC makes transmission from state to state trivial at almost no loss. We should have a national HVDC grid so that a breeze in Texas might power a toaster in Connecticut.
Instead we have another $XX Billion for Ukraine. Another $13B here for a new carrier we’ll never need etc etc. So much waste everywhere while fundamental problems go unsolved.
Any reason to think this? Did Soviet Union form by Russia invading and conquering another country? No, it was a result of fall of the Russian empire and the Russian civil war.
The conditions now are very different. Fall of Ukraine would mean political win for Putin and his acolytes, maybe another invasion later on. But Soviet Union? More like stronger Russia, a revert to the Russian Empire.
Maybe that will come down over time?
But now that the price has gone up by such an enormous amount in the south, connecting north and south will not reduce the price in the other zones, it will likely just cause NO4 to go up to the same level as in the rest of Norway. This is mainly due to the NO4 being basically not connected to the the synchronous grid of Continental Europe, while the other regions are to a much larger extent due to underwater cables going to the UK, Denmark and Germany. This means that the price of power in Europe directly influences the price of electricity in NO1-3, but not NO4. At least not to the same extent, although Sweden makes a killing buying cheap power from NO4 and selling it to mainland Europe, or even straight back to southern Norway. As such, connecting NO4 to the rest of Norway and by extention the European grid, would not be very popular in the north, but to be fair, the price increase has not exactly been popular in the south either.
The industry in Norway is highly electrified and some sectors are very energy intensive, such as aluminium production, which due to using electrolysis, runs almost entirely off the grid. Manufacturing used almost 37% of all power consumed in Norway in 2017, with power-intensive manufacturing accounting for over 80% of total energy use in the manufacturing sector that year.[0] This is also an issue which will need to be considered when talking about increasing transfer capacity between the two zones.
I hope this gives some insight, even if I rambled a bit and touched on a lot of different aspects. I'm by no means an expert, but have become interested in the subject as so many other Norwegians have lately. I'd love to answer more questions if you have any!
[0] https://energifaktanorge.no/en/norsk-energibruk/energibruken... (Source in English and published by the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy)
Ouch! Is this not enough to push for interconnect? Or will the electricity price increases prevent such a change?
Alternatively, why hasn't more heavy industry been built in NO4 zone? Or is it not possible due to winter weather?
I also heard that in Norway, a high percentage of electricty is generated from gravity (water dams). That would make aluminium production ideal. I have heard this is one reason why Iceland, with excelent geothermal energy sources, is also a major aluminium producer.
I agree the selling of power to ourselves via Sweden seems weird, but I suppose it's better to do just that instead of having to drain the dam without producing electricity at all, and it's a solution which works at this moment instead of waiting for an interconnect to be built. I would hazard a guess that it does slightly reduce the cost of power in other regions whenever we do sell to Sweden from NO4, but I have no data. I haven't really heard much about this exact issue being discussed though, so I don't have much information regarding that. But the issue with prices jumping to European levels would be relevant here too.
There is a lot of heavy industry in the north, such as petroleum, mining, refining and others. Norway does have a large aluminium industry which does rely more or less exclusively on hydro power, and seems to be in the top ten of aluminium producing countries, just above Iceland.
The reason the southern areas have high prices is because they are connected to other markets.
Connect the northern stuff better and it'll equalise the price but not substantially. High cost low gain compared with cheap new wind generation.
Load up a truck with several tons of batteries, charge them, and ship the electricity south.
A ballpark calculation - ignoring any infrastructure and time for charging/offloading, assuming you get the batteries and the electricity for free, using Tesla batteries as an example, a MWh of them would weigh more than 6 tons; so freight truck can carry at most 2-3 MWh worth of batteries (density is likely to be an issue) and the sale price of that truck full of electricity even at the current outrageous prices is just 1000 eur, perhaps 2000 if you drive all the way across Europe. Shipping cargo on such trucks costs something like 1.5 eur/km nowadays (we don't have cheap self-driving electric trucks yet..) so if you'd have to drive more than a few hundred km (and you have to drive the batteries back!), you'd be better off using these trucks to ship something else than electricity.
https://www.skandiaenergi.no/dagens-spotpriser/
Electricity Maps has an excellent visualization showing breakdowns of each electricity zone, with imports/export to each neighbor zone etc:
https://app.electricitymaps.com/