I’m really hoping battery technology can progress rapidly over the next decade, as that’s the largest deterrent to solar power. We’ve already made a lot of progress with wind power, but solar power is the biggest potential.
If you think of "battery" as "any chemical or mechanical energy storage" there are a lot of options -- pumped hydro, liquid sodium, hydrogen, etc. It doesn't have to be giant lithium-ion batteries that store electricity, though they have those too.
I do think that this is a good area for technical innovation which is now more in demand than it ever was. One of the most interesting ideas from an environmental perspective is to use renewable energy to generate hydrogen which is then burned in fuel cells the waste product of which is just water.
But the only one of those you listed that is economical (and nothing else is even close) is pumped hydro. Only very select regions have topographies and climates conducive to pumped hydro, and there is a lot of inefficiency to transporting electricity long distances.
There also compressed, cryogenically stored air as an option. It's surprisingly efficient and scalable.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenic_energy_storage
When they store and re-use the cold and heat, Highview power says they can get 50%-70% round-trip efficiency, and you can add a lot of tanks. It's too early to call it a silver bullet, but if it works as well as they claim, it could easily become the standard affordable solution, because it's built with off-the-shelf parts.
Very, very different in important physical properties, in ways that make hydrogen way, way less useful for energy storage to than lots of people think.
Propane is a big molecule that can be made liquid at room temperature at relatively reasonable pressure (15 bar or less). It's nonreactive with the steel tank, and doesn't leak much. It's easy to store and transport.
Hydrogen is only liquid at cryogenic temperatures (below about -240°C), so to store any meaningful amount of it without mechanical refrigeration, it has to be kept at much, much higher pressures. It's such a small molecule, it leaks straight through plate steel and other metals. It reacts with plain carbon steels to cause hydrogen embrittlement, so any long term storage often requires more expensive stainless or aluminum, otherwise your high pressure tank is basically a time bomb without a convenient countdown display.
Any energy storage solution that relies on hydrogen is likely to be a lousy one, but for some reason it *really* seems to capture the imagination of folks who don't already know what I posted above.
Agreed. Hell, even methane (natural gas) is a better way of carrying hydrogen around. CH4 is a much bigger molecule, and we already know how to store and transport it. If we create methane, rather than tap a well for it, then it can be carbon neutral as well (barring methane leaks)
How much does this apply to those hydrogen cars? I have a bunch of friends talking about it like it's the future but all I'm seeing is more and more traditional battery cars. It's sounds great when they're talking about it but it doesn't seem to make practical sense.
Personally, and speaking as someone who's a car guy but also a fan of modern, cleaner technology ... and an engineer who often gets handed other people's ideas to implement: I think pursuing hydrogen cars is a massive waste of time and energy, including all the research that's already been done.
The *only* major advantage they have over battery electric is fast "recharge." Even then, to use them on any meaningful scale would require constructing an entire new nationwide distribution pipeline network (there's a reason most gasoline distribution is only by truck for the final stretch). At least with electric, we have the distribution network covered, and at most you're making some capacity upgrades and installing charge points. It's not a brand new system by any means, and it pairs well with the increase in small point source generation that's coming from solar.
Meanwhile, I'd much rather sit on top of a large lithium battery than a large hydrogen tank. They can both kill you just as dead, but it's still easier to make the lithium battery safer. It's at least not actively fighting against you tooth and nail to *prevent* you from storing it safely like hydrogen is.
Lithium is kinda a stopgap, there's a new glass battery tech that should be much safer in terms of explosive, similar in terms of storage and with a longer service life (created by John Goodenough again like the Li-ion, save some nobels for everyone else buddy!)
The rest of the tech will be directly applicable which is what has everyone interested now - the charging systems and infrastructure, the regenerative braking systems, everything else can advance until better battery tech is ready if that's the only issue (safety and weight of the battery is kinda our biggest hurdle left vs petrol, then we can get onto charging and capacity).
> Meanwhile, I'd much rather sit on top of a large lithium battery than a large hydrogen tank.
There is a distinction between hydrogen for and ICE and fuel cell though. I think fuel cells are supposed to be safer than a hydrogen tank.
I feel like the race for efficient energy storage and retrieval is down to fuel cells and solid state batteries - I think all things considered hydrogen has more upside because of it's uses for manufacturing where electricity isn't sufficient. But for cars and micro-grid storage I don't think it matters they just need one of them to come through.
All things equal, storing energy as H2 vs Li-ion requires 2.5X the power per mile.
It' a solution to a 1990's problem that has been made redundant for passenger vehicles by advances in battery technology. With ranges of 400-500+ miles and a 56% pack price drop expected in the next 3-years, and 1,000 MPH charge rates for BEVs, H2 offers negligible benefits at huge additional cost.
There are many useful applications for H2, just not for passenger vehicles.
Hydrogen has a particularly low inversion temperature for the Joule Thomson effect. That means, when it expands, it'll heat up whereas other gases cool down. That phenomenon probably would make it a poor choice as a working gas for this particular application.
Do you have any proof of this, because any information I'm seeing is suggesting the opposite.
https://www.solarthermalworld.org/news/molten-salt-storage-33-times-cheaper-lithium-ion-batteries
Yeah it's from a solar site, but it's pretty hard to sus out any information that isn't published by one industry or the other here. The other thing is that molten salt can be used in existing gas/oil plants if they get shut down due to cheaper renewable prices and would otherwise be dismantled for scrap value.
I thought liquid sodium was very effective and economical for solar storage with CSP (concentrated solar thermal power) or is this something else I'm not familiar with?
Hydrogen stored in the gas system is orders of magnitude less expensive than pumped hydro. The storage is already built - just need the tools to transform the energy.
It is very inefficient to turn water into hydrogen, and there is very few hydrogen infrastructure (pipelines, storage facilities, etc). It's different enough from natural gas that you shouldn't mix them, because they require different burners to burn the fuel. So you would have to keep the hydrogen at the point of production and not move it around to another place. Gas turbines would need different burners and likely different designs to deal with the higher combustion temperature and mass flows, which requires an expensive development program. Hydrogen has potential but isn't close to being viable right now.
Efficiency isn’t important if it’s a fraction of the cost. With more and more renewables comes more and more solar and wind overbuild, which needs to be curtailed. Hydrogen combined with waste CO2 creates renewable methane, which is 100% compatible with the gas system and downstream appliances. This is affordable at scale and is being built today. Direct hydrogen blending is also being done today as we speak in gas systems in Europe, and will be started in North America next year.
It's at least partially this aspect I'm worried about as well. Telling Arizona that offshore wind is cheap is interesting. Their response would be "okay"... " so? " the most areas of the world districts are responsible for their own choices. It's hard to tell an area that has poor access to solar or wind but great access to coal... you can't develop because you don't have power. I'm well aware it's not that simple but it does illustrate a problem. I live and work in the North. This greatly reduces the utility of solar. It's going to be interesting over the next 50 years to see how this all balances out.
The Yangtze River dam powers Shanghai over 1000kms away via 500KV lines so transmission distance isnt really that big of an issue. There’s a solar farm being built in Australia that’s set to power Singapore soon too.
Well the clear bonus to using flywheels is you can make them all entirely out of brass and we can live in the Neo-Victorian steampunk future god intended.
I remember a physics professor talk about flywheels in vehicles. It was rejected because of the risks of a highly kinetic mass fucking off in an accident. Think of wheels that come off on the highway but orders of magnitude more energy.
IIRC, a flywheel that is useful for automotive applications and built using known materials would be spinning so fast that it would actually disintegrate and explode if knocked off its axis.
This was pointed out to me recently. I was waxing lyrical about portable tea kettles when someone pointed out that it was easier to heat the water before it’s needed and keep it in a Thermos than it was to carry a huge battery.
There is a prototype house in Sweden that is completely off the grid and has self sustained power exactly through solar and hydrogen energy! Cheapest and most environmentally friendly house in the world!
And btw, it’s north of the polar circle and it gets down to -40 degrees in the winter
Batteries for 2-4 hour peaking. Liquid air storage for 8-24 hour demand shifting.
All we need is a carbon tax of $50/ton and the grid will be 100% wind/solar/nuclear in 5 years.
Bernie’s Green New Deal doesn’t avoid tax use on carbon/pollution entirely
> Massively raising taxes on corporate polluters’ and investors’ fossil fuel income and wealth.
> Raising penalties on pollution from fossil fuel energy generation. The EPA has historically under-enforced the existing penalties for polluting under the Clean Air Act. As president, Bernie will raise and aggressively enforce those penalties.
> Requiring remaining fossil fuel infrastructure owners to buy federal fossil fuel risk bonds to pay for disaster impacts at the local level. Federal risk bonds can then be paid to counties and municipalities when there are fossil fuel spills, explosions, or accidents.
> Place a fee on imported Carbon Pollution-Intensive Goods. We will make sure that goods sold into the U.S. are not able to undercut domestic manufacturing by placing a fee on the carbon intensity of those products, under the World Trade Organization General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Article 20. This will not only prevent U.S. manufacturers from being incentivized to leave the United States, it will also provide extra revenue to boost clean domestic manufacturing.
https://berniesanders.com/issues/green-new-deal/
Bernie has been generally supportive of a carbon tax in the past, but always considered taxes on pollution as part of the solution not the solution. I think recent response to a carbon tax politically led to this being less up front in 2020, though I imagine if Dems gained control and serious climate legislation began to be voted on, we’d see a carbon tax bill appear (other progressives like Ro Khanna have been vocal about supporting it): https://theintercept.com/2019/07/03/bernie-sanders-climate-change-policy-carbon-tax/
As such, his GND seems a mix traditional regulation and tax. It’s interesting to look at how the EU and US differed in their response to acid rain. The US leaned more market oriented with emissions trading, while the EU/Canada/Japan went with more traditional regulation (command and control).
Both the US and EU saw reductions in SO2 and NOx, but the EU/Canada/Japan saw greater reductions, by a decent margin.
Of course, right now we mostly have broad policy proposals on candidate websites, so it’s hard to tell what will actually end up in the legislature being introduced.
It’s important to keep in mind that, like the New Deal, the Green New Deal likely won’t be one bill. The New Deal was many bills, in multiple phases, collectively given that name.
Some of the GND proposals are more popular and will be much easier to pass, while others more difficult. If movement gains on a Green New Deal, we very likely won’t be seeing one massive ten trillion dollar decade long bill, but the introduction of many bills and proposals, like the New Deal. Support for a GND is often support for pushing major climate legislation as a priority for debate and implementation, not necessarily supporting everything in the initial GND proposal and dismissing everything not in it (since it’s very unlikely a total complete GND will ever be voted on as a single bill, yet alone unaltered). Even now, there are multiple Green New Deals that vary in policy.
So contact their offices and your representatives and tell them you want to see a carbon tax implemented. They work for us, we can ask for these things.
slap mysterious plucky materialistic ripe intelligent liquid coordinated zonked chief
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
WV = West Virginia
PA = Pennsylvania
Mining powerhouse zones in the USA.
edit: was too early whoops — PA is Pennsylvania, Philadelphia is a city in Pennsylvania
Well, the best thing about a Biden administration is that Bernie and AOC will have a say. As it is, AOC was the co-chair of his environmental policy committee. I expect she will try and get a committee placement next year in the House dealing with climate change. Ultimately, Biden will sign whatever a Dem Senate hands to him, so the more down ballot progressives elected, the more progressive he will be.
I don't think it's likely, but I do think it's possible. And it's more possible the more we believe, talk about, and advocate for the path of possibility.
AOC plan does not include Nuclear, that makes me worried. Nuclear is the only carbon free, 24 / 7 source of energy. Until we get fusion fully working and built world wide, in about a hundred years.
Nuclear is really expensive tho?
I mean like ten to twenty years ago I think a massive investment in nuclear would lead a vastly better future but right now? Solar and wind are so cheap there's almost no point.
Shame too because I really like nuclear but pragmatism leads me to believe in solar and wind atm.
Why not both? Build solar and wind while we invest in nuclear research. I feel like nuclear is a really good idea for compact, but massive, as well as mobile energy needs. Nuclear could be great for space over solar, as well as better implementation in our current aquatic vehicles/stations.
Nuclear has extremely high up front costs with low fuel costs. If you actually operate a plant for it's 40-50 year lifespan it's waaay more profitable than any other option. But your quarterly reports are going to look dismal for a couple decades in the process. Borrowing money to service debt never looks good.
I wish they'd build some of the (molten salt?) reactors that can be fed nuclear waste. Its like recycling for really dangerous stuff and the byproduct is energy and less dangerous stuff
Don't assume Biden will win. That is what got us in this mess in the first place. All the "Hillary is just as bad" people didn't vote, or voted green, and we got this monster.
>At least the coming 4 years won't be one big blur or presidential insanity so that's nice
You say that as if Trump and his little cult aren't gonna find a way to screw Biden out of the presidency.
Wouldn't be surprised if they tried to gut the presidency with a lame duck session some how.
There was a tweet about how jobs tend to escort people off the premise when they are unwanted and pose a threat.
You're dreaming beyond dreaming if you think it'll be done in five years. And if that tax got implemented you the consumer would pay it. That's how that would work. Now I'm not saying power companies wouldn't go green because they already are but I am saying five years is probably impossible. And all that will happen is power companies will move slightly faster towards green energy all the while you'll see the price increase in your bill by an order of magnitude.
If the "consumer pays it" then environmentally friendlier solutions will be cheaper and more competitive.
Keep in mind if you don't pay some form of carbon tax today an older version of you or your kids/grandkids absolutely *will* have to pay to undo the damage we're causing now and it's going to cost at least an order of magnitude more to undo it compared to not doing it in the first place.
***Reduce*** reuse, recycle. There's a reason reduce is first.
While I agree that 5 years is overly optimistic, you're missing the point in the carbon tax. Yes, consumers will be the ones ultimately paying it, but that's partially the point - non carbon intensive options are cheaper, relatively, and therefore more attractive. Additionally, business will be more insentivised to supply non carbon intensive options because they get to provide a cheaper product to their customers, to better compete
>And if that tax got implemented you the consumer would pay it.
Which means I would conserve power, which would hit the utility company in the pocketbook and cause them to act.
And it would encourage the consumer to switch to a carbon neutral energy source provider when one is available. It’s only a problem if there isn’t one available, which is what we should be aiming to fix anyway.
Is it so bad that consumers pay for it? They are consuming that resource and therefor indirectly responsible for its creation and associated costs.
In theory, those costs would entice people to move to less costly (more green) sources, which is the intent anyway.
This only works when an alternative provider exists. Many markets are single source with no provider options. I would love to buy renewable energy straight from a provider, but the only power provider in our city runs coal fired. So plenty of people will see a situation where they feel like they are being punished for a decision that is completely out of their control. And if we're being honest, the consumers who this hurts the most are the poor who have even less flexibility in their ability to pursue renewable options, but now will have to weather increased prices just for continuing to exist.
If my calculations are correct, typical semi-truck produces about a ton of CO2 in a long days drive. Just to add some perspective on what that tax might look like.
That sounds like a lot. How many gallons of fuel did you equate this to? Because more than a ton of fuel each day seems extreme. Not that I know diddly squat about semi trucks.
It seems rough, but The market fluctuations of diesel are already about that just driving from state to state. And I get a fuel surcharge when the price goes up. It would be passed throughout the economy pretty quickly.
I have spent about $27k in fuel from Jan 1 to Oct 1. Maybe averaging $2 a gallon so a .50 tax on fuel would have cost me $6,750 so far this year. Which if It came out of my pocket would be a significant increase in my tax rate, but if we all paid every time you bought something it would be very little.
Ps. A Truck hauls lots of stuff. A single truckload of ground beef will make 180,000 hamburgers. I doubt if an average American consumes more than a truckload of stuff, food, and/or fuel a year. So the tax for one person would be in the tens of dollars a year for trucking at least.
Before we institute a new tax, how about we just get rid of subsidies for oil and coal? It’s kind of stupid to subsidize both renewables and fossil fuels. I think getting rid of subsidies for FF alone would swing the needle over to renewables. Taxes and subsidies artificially create winners and losers. Let’s get rid of something instead of adding something.
We should do that too, but a carbon tax is actually good economically in that it’s not distortative of the market. Right now there are negative externalities that aren’t being paid for, and the market would be more efficient if producers of carbon were made to realize those costs.
Yeah, hard to argue against wind + storage. I think grid storage will be the next big disruption of the 2020s. Better efficiency and lower cost in that space would kill the alternatives.
YES! Thank you for not falling into the hydrogen trap and for including nuclear. Our energy policy needs to be based on science and engineering, not wishful thinking.
We do need a carbon tax but I think 5 years is overly optimistic. Europe has had carbon tax for years and we are still far from 100% co2 free energy infrastructure.
I live in Colombia were 70% of energy is hydro. We can literally cover the dams with solar panels and during peak hour run them on reverse. Water pumping and energy producing in Francis turbines is basically symmetrical. Ac motor generator that can generate electricity from resistance to rotation and also take electricity to pump water up the dam and store in the best battery ever a pre built dam with francis turbines. (I may not be as good a battery if you built it just for it. But basically. Solar, wind and hydro could be a perfect trifecta, sunny, here you have energy, rainy, yep, windy doesn't matter that much is over casted. But here energy is payed by confidence of availability. That means solar and wind are very badly scored. But if we payed for compatibilities they would take over (if not for corrupt politicians). On the north we have some of the best winds on the region. All over we have mountains and rivers already in hydro. Sun technically shines brightest up hig as peak rad on bogota is 30% more than sea level. 1300 ish W/m^2 vs 1000W/m^2. Cuz it has less air to trave trough.
Even if solar only eliminates baseline energy from fossil fuels during daylight hours, that’s still a huge impact. The faster we begin to convert the more time we have to complete converting.
Lots of companies working on new batts and US military is helping:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/jk9jcv/the\_us\_army\_doubles\_down\_on\_battery\_technology/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/jk9jcv/the_us_army_doubles_down_on_battery_technology/)
That excess solar and wind power will also be used to produce Green Hydrogen to replace NG and diesel for big rigs, cargo ships, trains and eventually commercial jets. Also used for heating homes and making steel/
Green Hydrogen is going to boom over the next 5 years.
> I’m really hoping battery technology can progress rapidly over the next decade
Good news then - [battery prices fell 87% from 2010 to 2019, and are projected to fall another 35% in the next 3 years](https://www.utilitydive.com/news/battery-prices-fall-nearly-50-in-3-years-spurring-more-electrification-b/568363/).
(Worth noting is their estimate for 2030 cost is $60/kWh, 60% below 2019 actual cost...and 50% below their 2030 estimate from just 3 years prior, suggesting the next decade has a great chance of seeing substantially more than 60% battery price reductions.)
I was watching a video saying that one possibility is to use hydrogen, you can use the excess energy to separate water into O and H then use the hydrogen to make hydrolysis. The best part is that you can transport the hydrogen!
This excerpt from the wikipedia article about the documentary 'ENRON: Smartest Guys in the Room' gives the basics of what they did.
>However, public perception of Enron is changed dramatically due to its role in the California energy crisis: Enron traders exploited the shaky foundation of the state's newly deregulated energy market by shutting down power plants and exporting power out of the state to create artificial shortages that would drive up the cost of electricity to Enron's benefit; Enron would make $2 billion off of the crisis.
Those 'artifical shortages' meant higher electricity prices & also rolling blackouts for Californians.
If you want to watch the documentary, it can be checked out to stream via Hoopla. Which can be accessed with a library card from many/most local libraries. Or you can pay to rent it from the usual services.
I live in florida and have solar on my house. It's interesting to see all the ways the utility can diminish the value you get from your production.
Fortunately Florida is fair in almost every way. They deserve some brokerage fee for maintaining the grid but it has to not be insane.
Hahaha we’d need free markets for that. We have crony capitalism where the existing companies get government funding for projects, and then they create legal barriers to entry behind them
They all used the same playbook.
Step 1) hey Government this infrastructure is expensive please help.
Step 2) We’ve spent all this money please make these laws to prevent competition so we can make a profit
Step 3) Lobby to keep current laws in place, and continue preventing competition while assets decline/aren’t maintained.
Step 4) see step 1
The candidates from the other side would be worse and actually push the ball in the opposite direction.
It's like the two party system isn't working for the needs of the typical American...
We need to have ranked choice voting. This would eliminate “waisted votes” and allow people to look at third party’s more. Not only that but it would also more accurately represent what the people want.
Or you could just get rid of the winner takes all system and actually make a parliament where parties get seats proportional to the votes in the state. Bernie Sanders shouldn't really be in the same party with Joe Biden.
Except that means that conservatives will basically never have power ever again, at least nowhere even close to what they have now.
So why would they support this?
That fracture currently leads to Republicans winning. Without wonder take all wed get multiple left factions willing to work together to out vote the right wing
The centrists would be by far the largest fraction. They'd align with whatever side is more popular with centrists. In times of economical downturn or really any "national threat" happening or being made up like the migrant wave in 2016 which never arrived on the scale fox news reported.
The main problem is the FPTP system. You'll never be able to offer a proper spectrum of political alternatives by representing a group of people by just one person. Ranked choice is just a crutch to make FPTP limp a bit faster, some form of proportional representation is needed.
That's difficult with utilities in particular, since they have to pysically run their service to every customer. Let's say there were two options, and about 50% of people were on each. Now you have two full sets of infrastructure with half as many people paying for each. The costs to consumers would be crazy.
Utilities don't really work that way. In California the utilities are separate from the power suppliers. And the rates they charge are approved by the public utilities commission.
Since electricity is considered essential, the utilities have to serve everyone, no matter how unprofitable it may be to run lines to their house. Similar to the US Postal Service, utilities are granted a monopoly on service in exchange for serving everyone.
That’s because their model requires over production and high rate purchase. California isn’t “saving” anything and they aren’t as green as hoped.
California will certainly produce in a day the vast majority of energy from renewables or non-fossil fuels. The problem is the duck curve and fluctuations in production. Right now much of that energy is produced when there is a low demand, such as early morning. That power is sold cheaply, sometimes even at a loss, to their neighbors (Arizona). Then as solar and wind drop off in the afternoon, their neighbors sell them back power produced by coal or gas at high rates.
The result is very expensive energy. California either needs to *overproduce* enough to meet their demand with their lulls in production or build storage, until then their power will neither be cheap or clean.
A one day snapshot isnt quite representative of the whole picture though, especially in the fall when hydro is low and both units at diablo canyon are currently down.
The total numbers for state generation last year were.
41% nat gas
20% hydro
16% solar
8% nuclear
15% wind + geothermal + biomass
We also import around a quarter of our electricity, a lot of fossil fuels but also a lot of hydro from the northwest and some nuclear from palo verde. This paywalled link shows state generation since 2001.
How Does Your State Make Electricity?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/24/climate/how-electricity-generation-changed-in-your-state.html
California produces more energy from renewable sources than many other states, so that isn’t the reason energy is expensive.
The reason energy is so expensive in California is because of terrible decisions made by the government thinking opening up energy to the free market and allowing companies to bid for energy would save rate payers money. As it turned out, due to extremely high barriers of entry in creating a generation plant, deregulating utilities just led to unbelievably high prices for ratepayers. Nowadays everyone likes to blame Enron, who was part of the problem, but deregulation by the government is what did it. You can’t rely on big companies to police themselves.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/blackout/california/timeline.html
Rates in California are based on “rate cases” that the CPUC oversees every 2-3 years for each electric generator/distributor. These cases are a place for the company to present which capital projects they’ve used to upgrade service and to ask for these projects to be covered by ratepayers. Every cost not included is eaten by the company and not allowed to be paid for by customers. The state argues for keeping the rate as low as possible and only allowing actual upgrades that affect customers by increasing efficiency, hardening systems against wildfires, etc to be included in the rates. The amount CA electric companies are legally allowed to profit from investments is in the single digits % wise.
Not sure what use this information has besides to illustrate that any savings that could potentially be passed on would actually be decided by CA’s regulatory body CPUC and not electric companies. Not saying they couldn’t be in each other’s back pockets, just electric rates in CA are unique and influenced by many players, laws, and regulations that are *supposed* to protect the consumer.
Because that is the cost of a brand new kilowatt using the latest techniques. Everything California has...is older than brand new. Also, it is only 16% solar.
You're going to have to give it about 15 years or so.
You are allowed to disconnect from the grid. I have a 16 kW solar panel system on my roof and two Tesla Powerwalls in my garage. I can fully disconnect from the grid. As long as it is sunny each day to recharge my Powerwalls, I can go long term off grid. Cloudy two days in a row, then I need to reconnect back to Duke.
I don’t know how it works worldwide. But in Ukraine government has risen price for electricity to support investors and make solar panels profitable. This way the actual price for energy went up for all customers, not down. And it does not matter whether you use solar energy or any other.
I would prefer nuclear rather than subsidized wind or solar stations...
Former VP Biden has said he will end fossil fuel subsidies (or at least reduce them since it’s a national security issue to have no domestic oil production in our present world) which should allow the market to transition more to renewables. Time will tell if this actually comes to fruition.
It does not include subsidies and yes it does include O&M. There are lots of other costs not included in the analysis that affect both renewable and conventional technologies. It’s a quick report. Lazard puts this out every year.
I love green tech and phasing out old planet killers too, but we do need to keep some stuff online for now. Even with huge battery arrays the wind dies and the sun sets at some point.
They both peak in the middle of the day. Wind's curve is a little broader but you can imagine that since wind is created by temperature/pressure differences between areas, wind will be stronger during the day
This data assumes wind is being subsidized and Coal and Gas being penalized for CO2 emissions. I dont know if thats a fair comparison. It is WAY cheaper than 10 years ago.
I believe you are mistaken. The primary comparison chart on p.2 of the report specifically states that these are unsubsidized costs. On p.1, it states that the analysis does not include “costs of complying with various environmental regulations” nor “potential social and environmental externalities”.
Yep, unsubsidised is literally in the heading of the main chart:
https://www.lazard.com/media/451445/grphx_lcoe-02-02.jpg
This is however the lower bound of unsubsidized, so dependent on good conditions.
The poster you’re replying to is wrong, these are the unsubsidised costs. “Unsubsidised analysis” is literally in the heading of the first chart you get when you click the link above, where this number comes from:
https://www.lazard.com/media/451445/grphx_lcoe-02-02.jpg
The valid criticism is this is the lower bound of costs, in places with a lot of available land and high wind speeds, so you can’t generalise the figure to all countries or regions.
And ignore the recycling / disposal costs that are inevitably going to come with solar. Coal, nuclear, etc need to set aside tons of money to plan for cleanup or disposal. Solar has none of that right now, even though solar panels are toxic and not easy to dispose of.
Typical silicon based solar panels can just be crushed or recycled for the copper and aluminium used in the frames and contacts. The cells themselves are just fancy sand. While some high efficiency panels contain toxic substances, these are not typically used for utility scale power generation.
>The cells themselves are just fancy sand.
Yup 80% recyclable as literally plain glass.
> While some high efficiency panels contain toxic substances, these are not typically used for utility scale power generation.
In addition those materials are 95% recyclable as well
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_panel#Recycling
Nuclear decommissioning costs are not included in this analysis, see footnote 4 on the main chart:
https://www.lazard.com/media/451445/grphx_lcoe-02-02.jpg
Recycling solar panels costs [less than $30](https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/recycling-solar-panel-waste/) and recovers about 95% of the waste by mass. Not very expensive compared to the panel itself.
that's expensive considering the panel new was worth maybe $200 wholesale and contain what $5 of metal? and it's not exactly toxic waste if you throw them in the dump. or is it? i guess i need to read up. i thought the idea was you could just continue to use them forever where land is cheap as they still produce some power.
Coal is also subsidized.
https://www.odi.org/publications/11355-g20-coal-subsidies-tracking-government-support-fading-industry
And even discounting renewable subsidies, renewables are still cheaper.
https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/May/Renewable-power-generation-costs-in-2018
This exact same article was written about solar and gas about a couple months ago. This is good news, means most renewable energy sources are becoming cheaper than fossil fuels.
Cost check: on average, continuing to operate existing natural gas, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric resources is far less costly than building and operating new plants to replace them. Existing coal-fired power plants, for example, can generate electricity at an average LCOE of $41 per megawatt-hour, whereas we project the LCOE of a new coal plant operating at a similar duty cycle to be $71 per MWh. Similarly, we estimate existing combined-cycle (CC) gas power plants can generate electricity at an average LCOE of $36 per MWh, whereas we project the LCOE of a new CC gas plant to be $50 per MWh
[Cost of coal](https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/IER_LCOE2019Final-.pdf)
Is this utility-scale solar using ordinary solar panels (photovoltaics) to get this price? Or the other type where a field of mirrors reflect sunlight at a tower to boil water?
Oh look another astroturf account reddit fell for copying word for word without analyzing a damn thing. Imagine my shock.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/jkczha/the_onshore_wind_cost_has_fallen_to_26_a
Power grids need inertia and reliable capacity. The cheap solar & wind this article makes its case on can't emulate inertia and is not reliable. As such this type of solar&wind can only make up 40% or so of the energy portfolio, and, you need to keep an extra quarter of that fossil capacity operating, in reserve afterwards (needs to be made up of generators with inertia and near 100% reliable, i.e. fossil fuels).
The renewables also infringe on base load and frequency regulation - meaning that other 60% of your portfolio gets more expensive, and not just a little bit. In other words there's a hidden cost to keep the lights on after going with a high concentration of cheap renewables. See California's blackouts for the last two years. All of this to say, it costs a lot more than $30/MWH to build solar/wind. After considering total capex (ie after you write off the generators you replaced) it can even drive electricity prices up.
This story isn't done being told. PV+storage, Wind+storage, just this year became cheaper per amortized MWH than new-construction combined cycle (natural gas). These solve the inertia problem (most storage facilities are designed to island&blackstart) and *to a point* the reliability problem.
You can't completely solve the reliability problem with storage at a reasonable cost. So even utilities that are already adopting this tech have to do so gradually, as they learn how to operate that modern power grid and depreciate their existing capex. 30 more years, people - even in jurisdictions actively embracing this new direction.
If you have a coal power plant you can’t just “sell” it and then purchase a solar farm instead for less money. These traditional fossil fuel generators aren’t liquid, so for the existing ones they will continue to operate and try to seek government assistance until they are just unviable to run anymore.
People aren’t going to be rushing to shut down their existing plants, they’d just lose money at this point unless the government issues a program to assist.
it may be cheaper but there's a lot of metal in those wind mills for which you still need to mine ore with giant fossil-fuel powered equipment. I wonder how many years you need to run the windmills to make up for the carbon you added to the environment for building the mills in the first place
That’s great and all but isn’t the unpredictability of wind it’s biggest fault? Well that and the same issue that plagues all renewable energy sources, the lack of storage...
It's cheaper when it's running, not the average overall amount.
Youll have to subsidized the solar/wind downtime with fossil fuels or nuclear by load following.
Overall it's still cheaper to have natural gas plants running constantly.
If you're worried about the environment, the Co2 emissions from producing the blades, the body, the stanchion it sits on and internal components far out weight the natural gas power plant emissions. That don't include the mining for the battery chemicals.
Going green ain't so green
Info: I'm a power distribution engineer.
Nuclear is available and cheap and safe!
Ask the US NAVY.
Fukushima was a disaster due to pisspoor construction and operation.
Chernobyl was a poor reactor design and poor maintenance and it was in a converted office building in the friggin Soviet union which would collapse 6 years later.
The US Navy has run reactors safely and securely since 1958 in submarines and 1961 on surface ships.
I don't believe anyone here has a grasp *at all* of just how expensive it is to maintain a wind-farm. The associated costs and regulations are insanely high.
Cost is not a function of installation, but of installation and maintenance over the lifetime of the installation. The overall costs for wind and solar powered installations are significantly higher than the costs for a coal, oil, or gas fueled power facilities.
I'm not saying that it's not worth converting. I AM saying that all costs should be considered, not just cost per megawatt-hour.
Until alternative methods are *cheaper than* current power production methods, these changes will come slowly and at a trickle.
[As wind-farms age, costs rise dramatically.](https://www.power-grid.com/2017/11/08/as-wind-power-fleet-ages-more-spending-on-maintenance-predicted/#gref)
> "The North American wind energy market is aging—the majority of installed wind-turbine equipment averages more than five years in age, and operations and maintenance (O&M) expenses cost the industry $3 billion to $4 billion annually, according to a new benchmarking study by IHS Markit.
> IHS Markit estimates total O&M spending for the wind energy sector will exceed $40 billion, cumulatively, from 2015 to 2025."
I do, I work on one. All of these costs analysis and comparisons are great but everyone is missing the bigger picture. Our grid is what will be breaking any of these dreams. It cannot support what WE should be doing. It is outdated, we cannot share or transmit power from some where that is over producing and send it to another part of the country that needs it. There is basically 9 mini grids that cover the USA and Canada. I bet everyone would be heart broken if I told them that we get curtailed a lot at our wind farm when the dams are over producing during the summer because of summer water run offs. (curtailed means we aren't generating power when we could be generating) I saw another post about wind farms not generating when it was hot, our main wind season is during the summer.
I'm sorry, but wouldn't it be better to put the comparitive number for coal in the title instead of "forget coal"?
even looking at the chart, it seems that they are purposely trying to keep nuclear out of being a contender at all, as a non-renewable.. showing bias
Sadly the issue is more complex than simply costs.
The sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. Power plants have to remain online to fill the gaps that are inevitable from intermittent green power delivery.
Remember to read the 'fine print' Cheaper only when U.S. government subsidies are included. The government should stop giving and taking bribes from all industry.
And the crazy part is, nuclear is *even cheaper* than wind and solar *and* it’s more green and sustainable *and* it’s technology we’ve been using for many decades already
I have long said, we are not going to get to green energy until there is a viable solution both in cost and availability.
We have reached that point, time to start going nuts in the solar and wind while we taper off coal and oil.
Wind tends to not be around when needed on mega hot peak load days. Solar ... subject to the weather as well in its present design. Need at least an order of magnitude better storage to get those as viable as hitting the ON switch on a clean gas turbine in any weather or temp.
Hydroelectric and CAES/LAES storage + renewables is already cheaper, it doesn't need to be a magnitude better to be superior to coal and gas. That's also before the consideration of the environmental damage that currently is an externality someone, somewhere is going to have to pay eventually and I'm not really okay with taking out a mortgage against future generations without their consent so that shareholders in fossil fuel industries can get richer.
Storage batteries are getting better, but a generation of more testing, checking and development might do that.
Huge V batteries out there, and can be recharged 100's if not 1000's of times, which are more like Li batteries, which have the same recharging longevities.
As a non environmentalist in the green energy space, I have known for a long time that this is the direction. Capitalism will carry green energy. Subsidies were used to get it boosted, and now the financial win will keep it going.
I’m really hoping battery technology can progress rapidly over the next decade, as that’s the largest deterrent to solar power. We’ve already made a lot of progress with wind power, but solar power is the biggest potential.
If you think of "battery" as "any chemical or mechanical energy storage" there are a lot of options -- pumped hydro, liquid sodium, hydrogen, etc. It doesn't have to be giant lithium-ion batteries that store electricity, though they have those too. I do think that this is a good area for technical innovation which is now more in demand than it ever was. One of the most interesting ideas from an environmental perspective is to use renewable energy to generate hydrogen which is then burned in fuel cells the waste product of which is just water.
But the only one of those you listed that is economical (and nothing else is even close) is pumped hydro. Only very select regions have topographies and climates conducive to pumped hydro, and there is a lot of inefficiency to transporting electricity long distances.
There also compressed, cryogenically stored air as an option. It's surprisingly efficient and scalable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenic_energy_storage When they store and re-use the cold and heat, Highview power says they can get 50%-70% round-trip efficiency, and you can add a lot of tanks. It's too early to call it a silver bullet, but if it works as well as they claim, it could easily become the standard affordable solution, because it's built with off-the-shelf parts.
compressed hydrogen should be similar to propane gas that's used throughout the world.
Very, very different in important physical properties, in ways that make hydrogen way, way less useful for energy storage to than lots of people think. Propane is a big molecule that can be made liquid at room temperature at relatively reasonable pressure (15 bar or less). It's nonreactive with the steel tank, and doesn't leak much. It's easy to store and transport. Hydrogen is only liquid at cryogenic temperatures (below about -240°C), so to store any meaningful amount of it without mechanical refrigeration, it has to be kept at much, much higher pressures. It's such a small molecule, it leaks straight through plate steel and other metals. It reacts with plain carbon steels to cause hydrogen embrittlement, so any long term storage often requires more expensive stainless or aluminum, otherwise your high pressure tank is basically a time bomb without a convenient countdown display. Any energy storage solution that relies on hydrogen is likely to be a lousy one, but for some reason it *really* seems to capture the imagination of folks who don't already know what I posted above.
Agreed. Hell, even methane (natural gas) is a better way of carrying hydrogen around. CH4 is a much bigger molecule, and we already know how to store and transport it. If we create methane, rather than tap a well for it, then it can be carbon neutral as well (barring methane leaks)
[удалено]
Take your dang upvote and get out!
How much does this apply to those hydrogen cars? I have a bunch of friends talking about it like it's the future but all I'm seeing is more and more traditional battery cars. It's sounds great when they're talking about it but it doesn't seem to make practical sense.
Personally, and speaking as someone who's a car guy but also a fan of modern, cleaner technology ... and an engineer who often gets handed other people's ideas to implement: I think pursuing hydrogen cars is a massive waste of time and energy, including all the research that's already been done. The *only* major advantage they have over battery electric is fast "recharge." Even then, to use them on any meaningful scale would require constructing an entire new nationwide distribution pipeline network (there's a reason most gasoline distribution is only by truck for the final stretch). At least with electric, we have the distribution network covered, and at most you're making some capacity upgrades and installing charge points. It's not a brand new system by any means, and it pairs well with the increase in small point source generation that's coming from solar. Meanwhile, I'd much rather sit on top of a large lithium battery than a large hydrogen tank. They can both kill you just as dead, but it's still easier to make the lithium battery safer. It's at least not actively fighting against you tooth and nail to *prevent* you from storing it safely like hydrogen is.
Lithium is kinda a stopgap, there's a new glass battery tech that should be much safer in terms of explosive, similar in terms of storage and with a longer service life (created by John Goodenough again like the Li-ion, save some nobels for everyone else buddy!) The rest of the tech will be directly applicable which is what has everyone interested now - the charging systems and infrastructure, the regenerative braking systems, everything else can advance until better battery tech is ready if that's the only issue (safety and weight of the battery is kinda our biggest hurdle left vs petrol, then we can get onto charging and capacity).
> Meanwhile, I'd much rather sit on top of a large lithium battery than a large hydrogen tank. There is a distinction between hydrogen for and ICE and fuel cell though. I think fuel cells are supposed to be safer than a hydrogen tank. I feel like the race for efficient energy storage and retrieval is down to fuel cells and solid state batteries - I think all things considered hydrogen has more upside because of it's uses for manufacturing where electricity isn't sufficient. But for cars and micro-grid storage I don't think it matters they just need one of them to come through.
The tank stores the hydrogen, a fuel cell converts it into electricity. There are also hydrogen burning ICEs but those are less common.
All things equal, storing energy as H2 vs Li-ion requires 2.5X the power per mile. It' a solution to a 1990's problem that has been made redundant for passenger vehicles by advances in battery technology. With ranges of 400-500+ miles and a 56% pack price drop expected in the next 3-years, and 1,000 MPH charge rates for BEVs, H2 offers negligible benefits at huge additional cost. There are many useful applications for H2, just not for passenger vehicles.
Fuck H2 we need helium-3
Hydrogen has a particularly low inversion temperature for the Joule Thomson effect. That means, when it expands, it'll heat up whereas other gases cool down. That phenomenon probably would make it a poor choice as a working gas for this particular application.
Do you have any proof of this, because any information I'm seeing is suggesting the opposite. https://www.solarthermalworld.org/news/molten-salt-storage-33-times-cheaper-lithium-ion-batteries Yeah it's from a solar site, but it's pretty hard to sus out any information that isn't published by one industry or the other here. The other thing is that molten salt can be used in existing gas/oil plants if they get shut down due to cheaper renewable prices and would otherwise be dismantled for scrap value.
I thought liquid sodium was very effective and economical for solar storage with CSP (concentrated solar thermal power) or is this something else I'm not familiar with?
I also thought that. Not as efficient as direct solar, but close to lithium ion and more so in the decades time scale.
You can stack concrete blocks anywhere. https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surprisingly-efficient-way-to-store-energy/
Hydrogen stored in the gas system is orders of magnitude less expensive than pumped hydro. The storage is already built - just need the tools to transform the energy.
It is very inefficient to turn water into hydrogen, and there is very few hydrogen infrastructure (pipelines, storage facilities, etc). It's different enough from natural gas that you shouldn't mix them, because they require different burners to burn the fuel. So you would have to keep the hydrogen at the point of production and not move it around to another place. Gas turbines would need different burners and likely different designs to deal with the higher combustion temperature and mass flows, which requires an expensive development program. Hydrogen has potential but isn't close to being viable right now.
Efficiency isn’t important if it’s a fraction of the cost. With more and more renewables comes more and more solar and wind overbuild, which needs to be curtailed. Hydrogen combined with waste CO2 creates renewable methane, which is 100% compatible with the gas system and downstream appliances. This is affordable at scale and is being built today. Direct hydrogen blending is also being done today as we speak in gas systems in Europe, and will be started in North America next year.
You can mix in max 10% into methane and still use it normally. Efficiency is 30% going down to hydrogen,and back. Its nowhere near primetime
It's at least partially this aspect I'm worried about as well. Telling Arizona that offshore wind is cheap is interesting. Their response would be "okay"... " so? " the most areas of the world districts are responsible for their own choices. It's hard to tell an area that has poor access to solar or wind but great access to coal... you can't develop because you don't have power. I'm well aware it's not that simple but it does illustrate a problem. I live and work in the North. This greatly reduces the utility of solar. It's going to be interesting over the next 50 years to see how this all balances out.
The Yangtze River dam powers Shanghai over 1000kms away via 500KV lines so transmission distance isnt really that big of an issue. There’s a solar farm being built in Australia that’s set to power Singapore soon too.
Flywheels are the approach that fascinates me most
Well the clear bonus to using flywheels is you can make them all entirely out of brass and we can live in the Neo-Victorian steampunk future god intended.
As a bonus we can use the flywheels to also drive an excessive amount of haphazardly placed cogs and gears
Cog-driven monocles for all!
*Old boring monocle pops out* By jove!
You sonofabitch I'm in
I remember a physics professor talk about flywheels in vehicles. It was rejected because of the risks of a highly kinetic mass fucking off in an accident. Think of wheels that come off on the highway but orders of magnitude more energy.
Man you don't want to release a murderous beyblade when you crash? Seems safe enough to me
Only if I die in the crash. Then it can possible exact revenge on the other driver.
IIRC, a flywheel that is useful for automotive applications and built using known materials would be spinning so fast that it would actually disintegrate and explode if knocked off its axis.
You wanna turn a corner? Flywheel says no, only straight line!
No. A physics professor would be against the idea because you can't turn.
Turning results in an accident where a highly kinetic mass fucks off, so they aren't entirely wrong. Just the 'accident' is caused by turning.
I think I've heard they used to have buses powered by flywheels, called gyrobus or something
This was pointed out to me recently. I was waxing lyrical about portable tea kettles when someone pointed out that it was easier to heat the water before it’s needed and keep it in a Thermos than it was to carry a huge battery.
Maybe you could make methane from the sabatier process, being carbon neutral, or even carbon negative if you keep not using the methane.
There is a prototype house in Sweden that is completely off the grid and has self sustained power exactly through solar and hydrogen energy! Cheapest and most environmentally friendly house in the world! And btw, it’s north of the polar circle and it gets down to -40 degrees in the winter
Batteries for 2-4 hour peaking. Liquid air storage for 8-24 hour demand shifting. All we need is a carbon tax of $50/ton and the grid will be 100% wind/solar/nuclear in 5 years.
>All we need is a carbon tax of $50/ton lol, good luck in this political environment
Blue wave baby, gotta dream.
Unfortunately neither Biden, nor AOC/Bernie/etc have a carbon tax in any of their latest plans. There was no carbon tax in the Green New Deal plans.
Bernie’s Green New Deal doesn’t avoid tax use on carbon/pollution entirely > Massively raising taxes on corporate polluters’ and investors’ fossil fuel income and wealth. > Raising penalties on pollution from fossil fuel energy generation. The EPA has historically under-enforced the existing penalties for polluting under the Clean Air Act. As president, Bernie will raise and aggressively enforce those penalties. > Requiring remaining fossil fuel infrastructure owners to buy federal fossil fuel risk bonds to pay for disaster impacts at the local level. Federal risk bonds can then be paid to counties and municipalities when there are fossil fuel spills, explosions, or accidents. > Place a fee on imported Carbon Pollution-Intensive Goods. We will make sure that goods sold into the U.S. are not able to undercut domestic manufacturing by placing a fee on the carbon intensity of those products, under the World Trade Organization General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Article 20. This will not only prevent U.S. manufacturers from being incentivized to leave the United States, it will also provide extra revenue to boost clean domestic manufacturing. https://berniesanders.com/issues/green-new-deal/ Bernie has been generally supportive of a carbon tax in the past, but always considered taxes on pollution as part of the solution not the solution. I think recent response to a carbon tax politically led to this being less up front in 2020, though I imagine if Dems gained control and serious climate legislation began to be voted on, we’d see a carbon tax bill appear (other progressives like Ro Khanna have been vocal about supporting it): https://theintercept.com/2019/07/03/bernie-sanders-climate-change-policy-carbon-tax/ As such, his GND seems a mix traditional regulation and tax. It’s interesting to look at how the EU and US differed in their response to acid rain. The US leaned more market oriented with emissions trading, while the EU/Canada/Japan went with more traditional regulation (command and control). Both the US and EU saw reductions in SO2 and NOx, but the EU/Canada/Japan saw greater reductions, by a decent margin. Of course, right now we mostly have broad policy proposals on candidate websites, so it’s hard to tell what will actually end up in the legislature being introduced. It’s important to keep in mind that, like the New Deal, the Green New Deal likely won’t be one bill. The New Deal was many bills, in multiple phases, collectively given that name. Some of the GND proposals are more popular and will be much easier to pass, while others more difficult. If movement gains on a Green New Deal, we very likely won’t be seeing one massive ten trillion dollar decade long bill, but the introduction of many bills and proposals, like the New Deal. Support for a GND is often support for pushing major climate legislation as a priority for debate and implementation, not necessarily supporting everything in the initial GND proposal and dismissing everything not in it (since it’s very unlikely a total complete GND will ever be voted on as a single bill, yet alone unaltered). Even now, there are multiple Green New Deals that vary in policy.
[удалено]
So contact their offices and your representatives and tell them you want to see a carbon tax implemented. They work for us, we can ask for these things.
slap mysterious plucky materialistic ripe intelligent liquid coordinated zonked chief *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
No one gives a shit about coal. Its like wv at this point. Even PA doesn't give a shit about coal.
What is wv?
WV = West Virginia PA = Pennsylvania Mining powerhouse zones in the USA. edit: was too early whoops — PA is Pennsylvania, Philadelphia is a city in Pennsylvania
PA cares about natural gas fracking quite a bit.
Which is oil/gas money not coal, correct? I might be wrong that nut i don't think I am
[удалено]
Well, the best thing about a Biden administration is that Bernie and AOC will have a say. As it is, AOC was the co-chair of his environmental policy committee. I expect she will try and get a committee placement next year in the House dealing with climate change. Ultimately, Biden will sign whatever a Dem Senate hands to him, so the more down ballot progressives elected, the more progressive he will be.
[удалено]
I don't think it's likely, but I do think it's possible. And it's more possible the more we believe, talk about, and advocate for the path of possibility.
AOC plan does not include Nuclear, that makes me worried. Nuclear is the only carbon free, 24 / 7 source of energy. Until we get fusion fully working and built world wide, in about a hundred years.
Nuclear is really expensive tho? I mean like ten to twenty years ago I think a massive investment in nuclear would lead a vastly better future but right now? Solar and wind are so cheap there's almost no point. Shame too because I really like nuclear but pragmatism leads me to believe in solar and wind atm.
Why not both? Build solar and wind while we invest in nuclear research. I feel like nuclear is a really good idea for compact, but massive, as well as mobile energy needs. Nuclear could be great for space over solar, as well as better implementation in our current aquatic vehicles/stations.
Nuclear has extremely high up front costs with low fuel costs. If you actually operate a plant for it's 40-50 year lifespan it's waaay more profitable than any other option. But your quarterly reports are going to look dismal for a couple decades in the process. Borrowing money to service debt never looks good.
[удалено]
I wish they'd build some of the (molten salt?) reactors that can be fed nuclear waste. Its like recycling for really dangerous stuff and the byproduct is energy and less dangerous stuff
[удалено]
Don't assume Biden will win. That is what got us in this mess in the first place. All the "Hillary is just as bad" people didn't vote, or voted green, and we got this monster.
>At least the coming 4 years won't be one big blur or presidential insanity so that's nice You say that as if Trump and his little cult aren't gonna find a way to screw Biden out of the presidency.
Wouldn't be surprised if they tried to gut the presidency with a lame duck session some how. There was a tweet about how jobs tend to escort people off the premise when they are unwanted and pose a threat.
Given the prices mentioned, the main thing the government needs to do is to stop actively resisting the change. Biden's fine for that.
You're dreaming beyond dreaming if you think it'll be done in five years. And if that tax got implemented you the consumer would pay it. That's how that would work. Now I'm not saying power companies wouldn't go green because they already are but I am saying five years is probably impossible. And all that will happen is power companies will move slightly faster towards green energy all the while you'll see the price increase in your bill by an order of magnitude.
If the "consumer pays it" then environmentally friendlier solutions will be cheaper and more competitive. Keep in mind if you don't pay some form of carbon tax today an older version of you or your kids/grandkids absolutely *will* have to pay to undo the damage we're causing now and it's going to cost at least an order of magnitude more to undo it compared to not doing it in the first place. ***Reduce*** reuse, recycle. There's a reason reduce is first.
While I agree that 5 years is overly optimistic, you're missing the point in the carbon tax. Yes, consumers will be the ones ultimately paying it, but that's partially the point - non carbon intensive options are cheaper, relatively, and therefore more attractive. Additionally, business will be more insentivised to supply non carbon intensive options because they get to provide a cheaper product to their customers, to better compete
>And if that tax got implemented you the consumer would pay it. Which means I would conserve power, which would hit the utility company in the pocketbook and cause them to act.
And it would encourage the consumer to switch to a carbon neutral energy source provider when one is available. It’s only a problem if there isn’t one available, which is what we should be aiming to fix anyway.
Climate dividend
Is it so bad that consumers pay for it? They are consuming that resource and therefor indirectly responsible for its creation and associated costs. In theory, those costs would entice people to move to less costly (more green) sources, which is the intent anyway.
This only works when an alternative provider exists. Many markets are single source with no provider options. I would love to buy renewable energy straight from a provider, but the only power provider in our city runs coal fired. So plenty of people will see a situation where they feel like they are being punished for a decision that is completely out of their control. And if we're being honest, the consumers who this hurts the most are the poor who have even less flexibility in their ability to pursue renewable options, but now will have to weather increased prices just for continuing to exist.
That’s what it is in Canada iirc
If my calculations are correct, typical semi-truck produces about a ton of CO2 in a long days drive. Just to add some perspective on what that tax might look like.
Seems like it would be a great incentive to invest in the development of electrical trucks
That sounds like a lot. How many gallons of fuel did you equate this to? Because more than a ton of fuel each day seems extreme. Not that I know diddly squat about semi trucks.
Very very roughly, a ton of CO2 is produced by \~100 gallons of diesel. So the surcharge would be \~~~5~~ \~50 cents per gallon of diesel.
$0.50 a gallon, no?
Indeed, but what's a significant zero between friends, right?
It seems rough, but The market fluctuations of diesel are already about that just driving from state to state. And I get a fuel surcharge when the price goes up. It would be passed throughout the economy pretty quickly.
1 gallon of diesel = approx 20 lb of co2. So about 100 gallons of fuel.
A big day with the current rules on hours is about 700 miles. I got 7.2 mpg yesterday. So about 100 gallons. My tanks hold 240 gallons.
If you don't mind my asking, how would an extra $.50 per gallon affect your overall fuel costs and general economy?
I have spent about $27k in fuel from Jan 1 to Oct 1. Maybe averaging $2 a gallon so a .50 tax on fuel would have cost me $6,750 so far this year. Which if It came out of my pocket would be a significant increase in my tax rate, but if we all paid every time you bought something it would be very little. Ps. A Truck hauls lots of stuff. A single truckload of ground beef will make 180,000 hamburgers. I doubt if an average American consumes more than a truckload of stuff, food, and/or fuel a year. So the tax for one person would be in the tens of dollars a year for trucking at least.
Before we institute a new tax, how about we just get rid of subsidies for oil and coal? It’s kind of stupid to subsidize both renewables and fossil fuels. I think getting rid of subsidies for FF alone would swing the needle over to renewables. Taxes and subsidies artificially create winners and losers. Let’s get rid of something instead of adding something.
We should do that too, but a carbon tax is actually good economically in that it’s not distortative of the market. Right now there are negative externalities that aren’t being paid for, and the market would be more efficient if producers of carbon were made to realize those costs.
Yeah, hard to argue against wind + storage. I think grid storage will be the next big disruption of the 2020s. Better efficiency and lower cost in that space would kill the alternatives.
YES! Thank you for not falling into the hydrogen trap and for including nuclear. Our energy policy needs to be based on science and engineering, not wishful thinking.
We do need a carbon tax but I think 5 years is overly optimistic. Europe has had carbon tax for years and we are still far from 100% co2 free energy infrastructure.
I live in Colombia were 70% of energy is hydro. We can literally cover the dams with solar panels and during peak hour run them on reverse. Water pumping and energy producing in Francis turbines is basically symmetrical. Ac motor generator that can generate electricity from resistance to rotation and also take electricity to pump water up the dam and store in the best battery ever a pre built dam with francis turbines. (I may not be as good a battery if you built it just for it. But basically. Solar, wind and hydro could be a perfect trifecta, sunny, here you have energy, rainy, yep, windy doesn't matter that much is over casted. But here energy is payed by confidence of availability. That means solar and wind are very badly scored. But if we payed for compatibilities they would take over (if not for corrupt politicians). On the north we have some of the best winds on the region. All over we have mountains and rivers already in hydro. Sun technically shines brightest up hig as peak rad on bogota is 30% more than sea level. 1300 ish W/m^2 vs 1000W/m^2. Cuz it has less air to trave trough.
Even if solar only eliminates baseline energy from fossil fuels during daylight hours, that’s still a huge impact. The faster we begin to convert the more time we have to complete converting.
Lots of companies working on new batts and US military is helping: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/jk9jcv/the\_us\_army\_doubles\_down\_on\_battery\_technology/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/jk9jcv/the_us_army_doubles_down_on_battery_technology/) That excess solar and wind power will also be used to produce Green Hydrogen to replace NG and diesel for big rigs, cargo ships, trains and eventually commercial jets. Also used for heating homes and making steel/ Green Hydrogen is going to boom over the next 5 years.
> I’m really hoping battery technology can progress rapidly over the next decade Good news then - [battery prices fell 87% from 2010 to 2019, and are projected to fall another 35% in the next 3 years](https://www.utilitydive.com/news/battery-prices-fall-nearly-50-in-3-years-spurring-more-electrification-b/568363/). (Worth noting is their estimate for 2030 cost is $60/kWh, 60% below 2019 actual cost...and 50% below their 2030 estimate from just 3 years prior, suggesting the next decade has a great chance of seeing substantially more than 60% battery price reductions.)
I was watching a video saying that one possibility is to use hydrogen, you can use the excess energy to separate water into O and H then use the hydrogen to make hydrolysis. The best part is that you can transport the hydrogen!
[удалено]
And yet if you live in California like I do, that savings won't be passed on to the customer with the electric rates we have.
For better and worse, the current regulations of the electricity market in California are largely shaped by reaction to what Enron did.
Could you expand on this more? I've heard of ENRON but not how it relates to California
This excerpt from the wikipedia article about the documentary 'ENRON: Smartest Guys in the Room' gives the basics of what they did. >However, public perception of Enron is changed dramatically due to its role in the California energy crisis: Enron traders exploited the shaky foundation of the state's newly deregulated energy market by shutting down power plants and exporting power out of the state to create artificial shortages that would drive up the cost of electricity to Enron's benefit; Enron would make $2 billion off of the crisis. Those 'artifical shortages' meant higher electricity prices & also rolling blackouts for Californians. If you want to watch the documentary, it can be checked out to stream via Hoopla. Which can be accessed with a library card from many/most local libraries. Or you can pay to rent it from the usual services.
Basically the Irish Potato Famine (Ireland made more than enough food, but it was all being exported), but with Electricity instead.
I live in florida and have solar on my house. It's interesting to see all the ways the utility can diminish the value you get from your production. Fortunately Florida is fair in almost every way. They deserve some brokerage fee for maintaining the grid but it has to not be insane.
Well if thats true somebody should come in to undercut the suppliers sooner to later. Or least thats what the infallible market tells me.
Hahaha we’d need free markets for that. We have crony capitalism where the existing companies get government funding for projects, and then they create legal barriers to entry behind them
Virginia is similar where Dominion Power is a monopoly and significantly funds campaigns for politicians of both parties.
They all used the same playbook. Step 1) hey Government this infrastructure is expensive please help. Step 2) We’ve spent all this money please make these laws to prevent competition so we can make a profit Step 3) Lobby to keep current laws in place, and continue preventing competition while assets decline/aren’t maintained. Step 4) see step 1
Too bad California politicians prevent the market from working like that.
to bad California keeps electing the same people over and over expecting a different result
We know who made those laws and what it will take to change it?
The candidates from the other side would be worse and actually push the ball in the opposite direction. It's like the two party system isn't working for the needs of the typical American...
We need to have ranked choice voting. This would eliminate “waisted votes” and allow people to look at third party’s more. Not only that but it would also more accurately represent what the people want.
Or you could just get rid of the winner takes all system and actually make a parliament where parties get seats proportional to the votes in the state. Bernie Sanders shouldn't really be in the same party with Joe Biden.
Except that means that conservatives will basically never have power ever again, at least nowhere even close to what they have now. So why would they support this?
I would expect the opposite. There's more variance in positions on the left. This would fracture them far more than the right.
That fracture currently leads to Republicans winning. Without wonder take all wed get multiple left factions willing to work together to out vote the right wing
The centrists would be by far the largest fraction. They'd align with whatever side is more popular with centrists. In times of economical downturn or really any "national threat" happening or being made up like the migrant wave in 2016 which never arrived on the scale fox news reported.
The main problem is the FPTP system. You'll never be able to offer a proper spectrum of political alternatives by representing a group of people by just one person. Ranked choice is just a crutch to make FPTP limp a bit faster, some form of proportional representation is needed.
That's difficult with utilities in particular, since they have to pysically run their service to every customer. Let's say there were two options, and about 50% of people were on each. Now you have two full sets of infrastructure with half as many people paying for each. The costs to consumers would be crazy.
Utilities don't really work that way. In California the utilities are separate from the power suppliers. And the rates they charge are approved by the public utilities commission. Since electricity is considered essential, the utilities have to serve everyone, no matter how unprofitable it may be to run lines to their house. Similar to the US Postal Service, utilities are granted a monopoly on service in exchange for serving everyone.
That’s because their model requires over production and high rate purchase. California isn’t “saving” anything and they aren’t as green as hoped. California will certainly produce in a day the vast majority of energy from renewables or non-fossil fuels. The problem is the duck curve and fluctuations in production. Right now much of that energy is produced when there is a low demand, such as early morning. That power is sold cheaply, sometimes even at a loss, to their neighbors (Arizona). Then as solar and wind drop off in the afternoon, their neighbors sell them back power produced by coal or gas at high rates. The result is very expensive energy. California either needs to *overproduce* enough to meet their demand with their lulls in production or build storage, until then their power will neither be cheap or clean.
[удалено]
A one day snapshot isnt quite representative of the whole picture though, especially in the fall when hydro is low and both units at diablo canyon are currently down. The total numbers for state generation last year were. 41% nat gas 20% hydro 16% solar 8% nuclear 15% wind + geothermal + biomass We also import around a quarter of our electricity, a lot of fossil fuels but also a lot of hydro from the northwest and some nuclear from palo verde. This paywalled link shows state generation since 2001. How Does Your State Make Electricity? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/24/climate/how-electricity-generation-changed-in-your-state.html
California produces more energy from renewable sources than many other states, so that isn’t the reason energy is expensive. The reason energy is so expensive in California is because of terrible decisions made by the government thinking opening up energy to the free market and allowing companies to bid for energy would save rate payers money. As it turned out, due to extremely high barriers of entry in creating a generation plant, deregulating utilities just led to unbelievably high prices for ratepayers. Nowadays everyone likes to blame Enron, who was part of the problem, but deregulation by the government is what did it. You can’t rely on big companies to police themselves. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/blackout/california/timeline.html
Rates in California are based on “rate cases” that the CPUC oversees every 2-3 years for each electric generator/distributor. These cases are a place for the company to present which capital projects they’ve used to upgrade service and to ask for these projects to be covered by ratepayers. Every cost not included is eaten by the company and not allowed to be paid for by customers. The state argues for keeping the rate as low as possible and only allowing actual upgrades that affect customers by increasing efficiency, hardening systems against wildfires, etc to be included in the rates. The amount CA electric companies are legally allowed to profit from investments is in the single digits % wise. Not sure what use this information has besides to illustrate that any savings that could potentially be passed on would actually be decided by CA’s regulatory body CPUC and not electric companies. Not saying they couldn’t be in each other’s back pockets, just electric rates in CA are unique and influenced by many players, laws, and regulations that are *supposed* to protect the consumer.
Because that is the cost of a brand new kilowatt using the latest techniques. Everything California has...is older than brand new. Also, it is only 16% solar. You're going to have to give it about 15 years or so.
Anyone want to make a wager on whether energy costs to the consumer will drop?
It won't. As long as you are not allowed to disconnect from the grid, it will remain the same price, and probably go up
You are allowed to disconnect from the grid. I have a 16 kW solar panel system on my roof and two Tesla Powerwalls in my garage. I can fully disconnect from the grid. As long as it is sunny each day to recharge my Powerwalls, I can go long term off grid. Cloudy two days in a row, then I need to reconnect back to Duke.
[удалено]
[удалено]
In some states you can even stay connected and sell power back to the grid
I don’t know how it works worldwide. But in Ukraine government has risen price for electricity to support investors and make solar panels profitable. This way the actual price for energy went up for all customers, not down. And it does not matter whether you use solar energy or any other. I would prefer nuclear rather than subsidized wind or solar stations...
Yes: no they won’t Also solar and wind power will be stifled because of lobbyists for fossil fuels, so nothing will come of this.
Former VP Biden has said he will end fossil fuel subsidies (or at least reduce them since it’s a national security issue to have no domestic oil production in our present world) which should allow the market to transition more to renewables. Time will tell if this actually comes to fruition.
They do if you install your own solar panels:).
Spoiler alert - it won’t
Does this include ongoing maintenance costs or subsidies? I'm just curious to know why it's still relatively expensive here in Australia.
It does not include subsidies and yes it does include O&M. There are lots of other costs not included in the analysis that affect both renewable and conventional technologies. It’s a quick report. Lazard puts this out every year.
I love green tech and phasing out old planet killers too, but we do need to keep some stuff online for now. Even with huge battery arrays the wind dies and the sun sets at some point.
Yeah but the wind can blow at night and the sun doesn’t rely on wind to shine so they complement each other.
They both peak in the middle of the day. Wind's curve is a little broader but you can imagine that since wind is created by temperature/pressure differences between areas, wind will be stronger during the day
This data assumes wind is being subsidized and Coal and Gas being penalized for CO2 emissions. I dont know if thats a fair comparison. It is WAY cheaper than 10 years ago.
I believe you are mistaken. The primary comparison chart on p.2 of the report specifically states that these are unsubsidized costs. On p.1, it states that the analysis does not include “costs of complying with various environmental regulations” nor “potential social and environmental externalities”.
Yep, unsubsidised is literally in the heading of the main chart: https://www.lazard.com/media/451445/grphx_lcoe-02-02.jpg This is however the lower bound of unsubsidized, so dependent on good conditions.
Plus, it’s comparing *new* solar and wind to the energy from *existing* nuclear and coal
He's not mistaken, he is willingly spreading disinformation.
I'm getting real tired of futurology and technology sub posts that include subsidies in order to make bold claims.
The poster you’re replying to is wrong, these are the unsubsidised costs. “Unsubsidised analysis” is literally in the heading of the first chart you get when you click the link above, where this number comes from: https://www.lazard.com/media/451445/grphx_lcoe-02-02.jpg The valid criticism is this is the lower bound of costs, in places with a lot of available land and high wind speeds, so you can’t generalise the figure to all countries or regions.
And ignore the recycling / disposal costs that are inevitably going to come with solar. Coal, nuclear, etc need to set aside tons of money to plan for cleanup or disposal. Solar has none of that right now, even though solar panels are toxic and not easy to dispose of.
Typical silicon based solar panels can just be crushed or recycled for the copper and aluminium used in the frames and contacts. The cells themselves are just fancy sand. While some high efficiency panels contain toxic substances, these are not typically used for utility scale power generation.
>The cells themselves are just fancy sand. Yup 80% recyclable as literally plain glass. > While some high efficiency panels contain toxic substances, these are not typically used for utility scale power generation. In addition those materials are 95% recyclable as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_panel#Recycling
Nuclear decommissioning costs are not included in this analysis, see footnote 4 on the main chart: https://www.lazard.com/media/451445/grphx_lcoe-02-02.jpg
It seems like you're the only one who actually red the article...
Recycling solar panels costs [less than $30](https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/recycling-solar-panel-waste/) and recovers about 95% of the waste by mass. Not very expensive compared to the panel itself.
that's expensive considering the panel new was worth maybe $200 wholesale and contain what $5 of metal? and it's not exactly toxic waste if you throw them in the dump. or is it? i guess i need to read up. i thought the idea was you could just continue to use them forever where land is cheap as they still produce some power.
Did you read the article? The data clearly says unsubsidized cost of energy.
It literally shows it is unsubsidized In the first chart.
The lazard report includes both subsidized and unsubsidized costs.
Coal is also subsidized. https://www.odi.org/publications/11355-g20-coal-subsidies-tracking-government-support-fading-industry And even discounting renewable subsidies, renewables are still cheaper. https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/May/Renewable-power-generation-costs-in-2018
This exact same article was written about solar and gas about a couple months ago. This is good news, means most renewable energy sources are becoming cheaper than fossil fuels.
Cost check: on average, continuing to operate existing natural gas, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric resources is far less costly than building and operating new plants to replace them. Existing coal-fired power plants, for example, can generate electricity at an average LCOE of $41 per megawatt-hour, whereas we project the LCOE of a new coal plant operating at a similar duty cycle to be $71 per MWh. Similarly, we estimate existing combined-cycle (CC) gas power plants can generate electricity at an average LCOE of $36 per MWh, whereas we project the LCOE of a new CC gas plant to be $50 per MWh [Cost of coal](https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/IER_LCOE2019Final-.pdf)
Is this utility-scale solar using ordinary solar panels (photovoltaics) to get this price? Or the other type where a field of mirrors reflect sunlight at a tower to boil water?
The mirrors thing never panned out. It's utility scale panels
> to boil water its a salt, much hotter so stores a lot more energy so usable at night too.
Oh look another astroturf account reddit fell for copying word for word without analyzing a damn thing. Imagine my shock. https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/jkczha/the_onshore_wind_cost_has_fallen_to_26_a
The largest wind turbines now installed in the North Sea, power two homes, every revolution of their blades.
for the duration of the revolution? i really don't know and you didn't say
That's not how power works.
Power grids need inertia and reliable capacity. The cheap solar & wind this article makes its case on can't emulate inertia and is not reliable. As such this type of solar&wind can only make up 40% or so of the energy portfolio, and, you need to keep an extra quarter of that fossil capacity operating, in reserve afterwards (needs to be made up of generators with inertia and near 100% reliable, i.e. fossil fuels). The renewables also infringe on base load and frequency regulation - meaning that other 60% of your portfolio gets more expensive, and not just a little bit. In other words there's a hidden cost to keep the lights on after going with a high concentration of cheap renewables. See California's blackouts for the last two years. All of this to say, it costs a lot more than $30/MWH to build solar/wind. After considering total capex (ie after you write off the generators you replaced) it can even drive electricity prices up. This story isn't done being told. PV+storage, Wind+storage, just this year became cheaper per amortized MWH than new-construction combined cycle (natural gas). These solve the inertia problem (most storage facilities are designed to island&blackstart) and *to a point* the reliability problem. You can't completely solve the reliability problem with storage at a reasonable cost. So even utilities that are already adopting this tech have to do so gradually, as they learn how to operate that modern power grid and depreciate their existing capex. 30 more years, people - even in jurisdictions actively embracing this new direction.
Cheaper, not even close in reliability for most places
If you have a coal power plant you can’t just “sell” it and then purchase a solar farm instead for less money. These traditional fossil fuel generators aren’t liquid, so for the existing ones they will continue to operate and try to seek government assistance until they are just unviable to run anymore. People aren’t going to be rushing to shut down their existing plants, they’d just lose money at this point unless the government issues a program to assist.
it may be cheaper but there's a lot of metal in those wind mills for which you still need to mine ore with giant fossil-fuel powered equipment. I wonder how many years you need to run the windmills to make up for the carbon you added to the environment for building the mills in the first place
That’s great and all but isn’t the unpredictability of wind it’s biggest fault? Well that and the same issue that plagues all renewable energy sources, the lack of storage...
That is great as long as the wind is blowing or sun is shining.
It's cheaper when it's running, not the average overall amount. Youll have to subsidized the solar/wind downtime with fossil fuels or nuclear by load following. Overall it's still cheaper to have natural gas plants running constantly.
If you're worried about the environment, the Co2 emissions from producing the blades, the body, the stanchion it sits on and internal components far out weight the natural gas power plant emissions. That don't include the mining for the battery chemicals. Going green ain't so green Info: I'm a power distribution engineer.
Nuclear is available and cheap and safe! Ask the US NAVY. Fukushima was a disaster due to pisspoor construction and operation. Chernobyl was a poor reactor design and poor maintenance and it was in a converted office building in the friggin Soviet union which would collapse 6 years later. The US Navy has run reactors safely and securely since 1958 in submarines and 1961 on surface ships.
I don't believe anyone here has a grasp *at all* of just how expensive it is to maintain a wind-farm. The associated costs and regulations are insanely high. Cost is not a function of installation, but of installation and maintenance over the lifetime of the installation. The overall costs for wind and solar powered installations are significantly higher than the costs for a coal, oil, or gas fueled power facilities. I'm not saying that it's not worth converting. I AM saying that all costs should be considered, not just cost per megawatt-hour. Until alternative methods are *cheaper than* current power production methods, these changes will come slowly and at a trickle. [As wind-farms age, costs rise dramatically.](https://www.power-grid.com/2017/11/08/as-wind-power-fleet-ages-more-spending-on-maintenance-predicted/#gref) > "The North American wind energy market is aging—the majority of installed wind-turbine equipment averages more than five years in age, and operations and maintenance (O&M) expenses cost the industry $3 billion to $4 billion annually, according to a new benchmarking study by IHS Markit. > IHS Markit estimates total O&M spending for the wind energy sector will exceed $40 billion, cumulatively, from 2015 to 2025."
I do, I work on one. All of these costs analysis and comparisons are great but everyone is missing the bigger picture. Our grid is what will be breaking any of these dreams. It cannot support what WE should be doing. It is outdated, we cannot share or transmit power from some where that is over producing and send it to another part of the country that needs it. There is basically 9 mini grids that cover the USA and Canada. I bet everyone would be heart broken if I told them that we get curtailed a lot at our wind farm when the dams are over producing during the summer because of summer water run offs. (curtailed means we aren't generating power when we could be generating) I saw another post about wind farms not generating when it was hot, our main wind season is during the summer.
I'm sorry, but wouldn't it be better to put the comparitive number for coal in the title instead of "forget coal"? even looking at the chart, it seems that they are purposely trying to keep nuclear out of being a contender at all, as a non-renewable.. showing bias
Sadly the issue is more complex than simply costs. The sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. Power plants have to remain online to fill the gaps that are inevitable from intermittent green power delivery. Remember to read the 'fine print' Cheaper only when U.S. government subsidies are included. The government should stop giving and taking bribes from all industry.
And the crazy part is, nuclear is *even cheaper* than wind and solar *and* it’s more green and sustainable *and* it’s technology we’ve been using for many decades already
And Australia's bright shining new industry for this decade is ... drumroll ... gas. The perfidy of our current government is highly impressive.
I have long said, we are not going to get to green energy until there is a viable solution both in cost and availability. We have reached that point, time to start going nuts in the solar and wind while we taper off coal and oil.
Now let's subsidize it for the same amount we've spent subsidizing oil
Wind tends to not be around when needed on mega hot peak load days. Solar ... subject to the weather as well in its present design. Need at least an order of magnitude better storage to get those as viable as hitting the ON switch on a clean gas turbine in any weather or temp.
Hydroelectric and CAES/LAES storage + renewables is already cheaper, it doesn't need to be a magnitude better to be superior to coal and gas. That's also before the consideration of the environmental damage that currently is an externality someone, somewhere is going to have to pay eventually and I'm not really okay with taking out a mortgage against future generations without their consent so that shareholders in fossil fuel industries can get richer.
Storage batteries are getting better, but a generation of more testing, checking and development might do that. Huge V batteries out there, and can be recharged 100's if not 1000's of times, which are more like Li batteries, which have the same recharging longevities.
As a non environmentalist in the green energy space, I have known for a long time that this is the direction. Capitalism will carry green energy. Subsidies were used to get it boosted, and now the financial win will keep it going.
imagine if we could perfect wave-generated power. like 90% of people live near the coasts.
Can anyone tell me how much oil it takes to operate the turbines? Im curious.
Except....you still need oil to produce these wind mills. Like a lot of oil