Seems like we're going to need to become more diurnal and more seasonal in our approach to industry? Make hay while the sun shines, as the idiom says.
Hydrogen is hard to store, but there is sufficient space for satisfying most of our needs by itself. Hydrogen generators are also mostly made of iron, carbon, and aluminum, or alternatively a lot of organic chemicals and aluminum.
Pumped hydro has some problems to compete on the open market, but it also can satisfy most of our storage requirements by itself. Pumped hydro systems are made mostly of steel.
What kinds of resources do you expect we to run out of?
If the thesis is that electrical energy will be hyper abundant 80% of the time and deeply scarce the remaining 20% (which is the case if you use only solar and wind) and that periods of scarcity are correlated - so a "bad" day is likely to be preceded and followed by other "bad" days, then large scale hydrogen storage is quite a good match to get you through your worst week.
Yes, salt domes are quite viable. They are more the "expensive" kind of storage, and require a lot of scale. They are probably not economically viable for electricity storage as it's usually understood, but they are cheap enough that it's perfectly viable to dig them at a loss for societal assurance. They are certainly a lesser drag on the economy than nuclear power.
AFAIK the vast majority of depleted gas fields can't be used for hydrogen storage. The ones that can are obviously a major gain, but those aren't enough to sustain a society.
Storing hydrogen is perfectly viable, and won't have any catastrophic impact on electricity prices. But the "extremely easy" is a bit too optimistic.
I'm confident we'll get there. There will be lots of mitigating the damage from climate change, because that train wreck is still in motion. But we will mostly decarbonize our economies by the end of this century.
Unfortunately unless we completely decarbonize by the middle of the century, we'll reach catastrophic levels of global warming (>3 degrees warming, likely leading to the polar ice caps melting and significant ocean level rises, especially at the equator).
3 degrees is very bad, but it's quite survivable. We can of course always do better. But right now I'm quite happy with the direction things are going and the current trends but still push for trying to do more where we can.
A goal, which it is now clear, that would have been absolutely trivial to meet while making a solid profit on the deal, if we'd just started earlier, like when the problem became widely known four decades ago.
But we didn't. So we can probably still do it, and we can probably still come out richer, but some people are still trying to slow it down so they can profit from the short term chaos and impoverishing and risking our lives to do so.
There was a wide array of solutions available 40 years ago, including, but not limited to nuclear.
Notable mentions: carbon fees, preventing deforestation, not subsidizing fossil fuels, not actively encouraging methane release from oilfields, more efficient cars, trains, insulation, heat pumps and soar water heaters but really the list is very, very long.
Agreed, but that was the part that could be addressed with nuclear.
> There was a wide array of solutions available 40 years ago, including, but not limited to nuclear.
I think we're in agreement, except for the word "solution". The things you mention are not solutions, but rather mitigations, bandaids, things that slow the pace of climate change. Which still would have been extremely useful to buy us more time to decarbonize.
We emitted what the eartg can absorb (3Gteq) back in 1990. Since then, emissions trippled.
Net zero is not enough, there is still a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere, so the temperature will reach +3°C.
Assuming we follow that plan and don't hit any tipping points, we should stay under 3C, but yeah it's possible.
It's going to come down to mitigating, and that might mean different things in different places.
I think there will be some amount of geo-engineering to cool the poles and avoid some of the sea level rise and permafrost melting. There will also be some active carbon removal, but we also will not reach zero emissions either. That may mostly balance out, or reach "net zero".
There will also likely be a slow migration away from low lying coastal areas, as well as seawall construction.
We have already seen a little bit of this. It's only been a preview of what a more serious revolt would look like.
It's important to realize that anything that increases energy costs is regressive. The wealthy can afford these cost increases and their lifestyle is barely impacted. For the poor and working class increases in these costs can be absolutely devastating.
The upper classes can also afford EVs, solar panels, batteries, and can very often telework at least some of the time. Working classes are stuck with older technology that is more expensive to fuel and generally have to commute to work jobs in person with no option for remote work.
From my perspective people hate democracy and want people to be unequal by birth.
Maybe I'm cynical, but the observer who said that the problem with political power is that the worst people will do anything they can to take it (as a result, good people won't have it)
Solar and batteries are still rapidly dropping in price. At the same time, the fossil fuel industry is engaging in rampant hostage taking (Putin) and price gouging (oil is under $100/barrel. Why is gasoline 2x what it was the first time oil was at this price?)
If anything, I’d expect decentralized generation of renewable power to stabilize energy costs, eliminate wars for oil, and create well paying jobs for unskilled labor.
As for EV affordability: All EVs in the US have a 10 year battery warranty (or lose subsidies), which should create gluts in the used car market moving forward.
All of those things help the poor and working class: lower, more stable energy prices, better jobs, fewer wars to fight and cheaper used cars are each individually huge wins.
And overall, the lifetime environmental impact of solar panels is much lower than producing the same energy using fossile fuels.
Right now it seems that the social contract is "give up your autonomy and stability to capitalism and in return you get to consume lots of stuff". If we remove the "consume lots of stuff" part of the equation, then I doubt people would be happy with the "give up your autonomy and stability" part.
Do you have storage installed to smooth out the dead hours?
Unfortunately the answer is that you need days of storage for solar and wind to be anywhere near 100% of the energy mix.
The cost of that is astronomical.
[1] https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/24/BloombergNEF-Z...
Yet the vast majority of EV's don't have the ability to discharge into the grid to earn money... Most can't even charge when power is negatively priced unless you pay for a third party charger and service.
Basically, Car owners, charger owners, Utility companies, and EV manufacturers would all like to earn the money by charging/discharging your EV at times to earn the most money. But all of those people don't want someone else being able to take that sweet sweet revenue. So they put roadblocks in the way.
EV's usually have the capability to charge into the grid, but firmware that won't allow it.
Chargers (AC and DC) won't allow power to flow back into the grid, and will disconnect any car who tries.
Utilities refuse to let home users take part in the minute by minute pricing - instead the best available is dynamic pricing set half hourly a day in advance.
And users want to do this, but have three parties who've assembled roadblocks in the way. And there is no indication of that impasse ending anytime soon.
That seems reasonable considering what happened with griddy in texas.
Then if the prices go sky high, users who chose that plan at least get to use 5kWh each day. 5kWh is plenty to not freeze and to keep your phone charged and fridge going. If you want more, you can pay more.
The UK already has a system of electricity meters that have a 'balance', and when the balance reaches zero it cuts off till more credit is added. Such a scheme integrates well with that, and means a user can never rack up a massive unexpected bill if the price goes crazy high or low.
I suspect 5 kWh/day is way to little to keep the house warm and still be able to cook food. The exact number doesn't really matter here. What's more problematic is how the 5 kWh of guaranteed/insured/subsidized power would be allocated.
If it's your first 5 kWh/day, it will be you'll blow past the quota by noon, and if there was a price spike in the evening you would pay the full price of it, or shut off your breaker until prices go down.
Having it as a some sort of pool you can draw from anytime you want doesn't suffer from the above problem, but would make such a service very expensive to run for the counterparty due to adverse selection. Anyone using such a service would opt to use the market price when electricity is plentiful/cheap, and switch to fixed price when electricity is scarce/expensive. The net result is that the 5 kWh ends up always being the most expensive electricity for the day, and a service providing such a guarantee will be priced accordingly. In a competitive market, you would expect the price of a fixed price plan to be the same as the "5 kWh per day at fixed price and anything extra at instant market price" plan that you propose. You might be tempted to argue that utilities/the government can subsidize the latter plan as some sort of green energy initiative, but that would be be bad. The most expensive energy also tends to be the dirtiest, because peaker plants (power plants that can quickly turn on/off) tend to run on fossil fuels. Subsidizing such a scheme would also be subsidizing electricity consumption during peak hours, and therefore subsidizing fossil fuel plants.
Then you can hear the beep and either decide to turn off a few things, top up your balance, hit the 'emergency 1 kWh' button, or just sit in the dark for 15 minutes.
This benefits the grid operator because they get to massively overcharge for curtailed energy. It benefits the EV manufacturer because they get to greenwash. And the consumer doesn't get a say because they don't actually own their DRM'd remote controlled car and charger.
>Stop for lunch, plug in car to recharge
>Cloud passes in front of sun
>Grid empties car
People won't want to put their plans at the mercy of a fluctuating grid. There will never be a time when people are happy to plug in their car and come back to find it empty, electricity spot price be damned. It's my car, not your grid storage system.
But I also think we'll never get to the point that everyone has solar installed. There are plenty of situations where it doesn't make sense, such as properties with lots of taller trees around short buildings.
Also, generating 120% generally doesn't make sense because the payout from the electric company for the other 20% is pitiful.
A battery makes sense for a lot of people for a few reasons, too, so the power company doesn't necessarily have to be the one to do all of that, either. We did it mainly for relief from power outages, but it also works well for places with prices that change by time of day.
Panels are like $1 per nominal watt
This idea that you need to have your lights on all night is rather recent. For a very very long time people survived by following the natural rythms of daylight. Some people even think this is healthier, and suggest special apps to adjust screen brightness to follow natural light patterns.
A good fridge/freezer should hold its cold overnight, especially if you aren't snacking at midnight.
So while it might be true that your current lifestyle is based on 24/7 electricity, but what makes that lifestyle sacrosanct? You'll probably change it over the next few years anyway, and odds are it is different today than it was 5 years ago.
People have used fire, candles for a very very long time to provide light at night.
If we built our houses right, we could drastically shift energy usage requirements for heating and cooling to daylight hours (utilizing thermal mass storage like https://www.steffes.com/ets/ )
I think the idea of people sleeping as soon as the sun is down and not just doing low-light activities even 3000 years ago as ridiculous despite being a pervasive idea.
He’s found that for the NEM grid in Australia at least, just six hours of storage can bring us to over 99% of demand being provided by renewables and storage over a month, almost every month. On a weekly basis, some weeks it’s 100%, but worst case will be something like two or three percent being provided by something like gas turbines over the week.
We have more pumped hydro coming online and will have more in the future, so not all those six or so hours worth will be chemical batteries.
Part of what makes this work is because on the eastern seaboard, often it might be, for example, windy in northern Queensland while it’s calm in South Australia, so being interconnected helps a lot. At this point we really don’t have (and it’s not simulating) any kind of serious demand management (apart from in emergencies, but I’m talking everyday kind of management), which could potentially remove some of the need for gas peaking. We also don’t have any offshore wind yet (legislation only legalised it last year and there are some early projects). As some of that offshore generation comes online with better capacity factors than onshore, it will likely make things more consistent.
Primary energy replacement obviously will require more than that, but it won't be so bad as people make out, since electrification can drive massive efficiency increases - electric cars are 3-4x as energy efficient as ICE cars, and there are very few places in the parts of Australia that get decently cold that are too cold for air source heat pumps, so that's a 3x efficiency increase over gas space and hot water heating (even as much as 5x for CO2 hot water heat pumps!).
Here in Norway the electricity prices this summer and fall were up to 100x higher in the south compared to the north, due to lack of interconnect capacity between the north and south.
Building hundreds of miles of high-capacity interconnects ain't done in a weekend either.
It's like saying, this remote town in the hills has cheap housing because it takes so long to drive to it so lets build a high speed express train right to the city. Then we can have cheap housing and access to the city.
Except you can't, because as soon as you have access to the market demand, the price goes up to match the market price.
Interconnects are useful, but people wanting to build interconnects so they can access the cheap power from places that only had cheap power due to a lack of interconnects is upside down thinking.
But better internal interconnects between south and north would certainly have contributed to averaging out the prices across the country, avoiding the extremes we saw this year.
After all, there were hydro plants in the north which halted production due to the low prices at the same time as we had prices >10x normal in the south.
Obviously that's missing commercial power, utility-scale storage, heavy industry, electric vehicle charging, etc., but it seems like factoring those in would give you a big yet feasible cost, especially if storage gets cheaper over the next decades.
That strengths your point.
However, 30kWh isn’t quite enough for heating and cooling an all-electric off-grid house, unless you carefully monitor battery capacity, etc.
Here is 30kWh of LFP batteries for $9,000. Now that doesn't include the inverters or installation or anything but LFP batteries have excellent longevity, in this case 7000 cycles to 80% depth-of-discharge. That means charging and discharging the battery every day for 19 years and at that point, you still have 80% of the remaining capacity.
How much of an impact did this actually make, though, since heating was probably the majority of your emissions to begin with?
Solar may be sexy, but depending on your heat source you possibly could have done better by installing a heat pump on grid power.
Granted, that would change somewhat if we get a super harsh winter here, but otherwise: I consume much more electrical power than heating.
Everything here is electric except the heating and I work from home all day (with an energy-drinking PC set-up).
I live in The Netherlands - the same panels will generate about 2x as much energy a year if they were in Spain or North Africa.
I wouldn't be surprised if we could run our houses and light industry for 6 months a year purely on solar panels if we put them on every roof top in the country.
Then you look at wind: we have a huge potential for wind energy especially off-shore (and in our big lakes).
Like most of the EU the main problem is heating in winter - that requires a reduction in energy usage through insulation and heat-pumps combined with energy import from countries which have high potential for solar and wind (North Africa has huge potential here).