Energy Storage Replace Gas Plants

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,135]

15 hours ago, Monk said:

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf

Some excerpts:

Holy moly, just took a closer look at that table.... To get their numbers they are using 30% capacity factor for solar(as no one does solar tracking anymore as it is cheaper to install more panels)... It is nowhere even close to this for brand new solar in perfect locations, and since those perfect locations happen to be HOT, performance goes down furthers, then add dust over time.  22% is typically thrown around and then throw in simple panel degradation over time... uh huh.  I know I live in craptastic W. Washington for Solar(1800 hours annually), but I get ~12% or so.  SE California gets ~2X the hours of sunshine but is hotter and dustier so... 22% sounds about right.  I know guys who wash their panels regularly in dusty S. California get approx 25% more power by doing so...   Last I checked, utility solar are not cleaning their panels...

So, what other numbers does the EIA regularly pull out of their ass wholesale?  Tells me this entire table is complete and utter BULL SHIT.

Edited May 9, 2020 by footeab@yahoo.com

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

2 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Holy moly, just took a closer look at that table.... To get their numbers they are using 30% capacity factor for solar(as no one does solar tracking anymore as it is cheaper to install more panels)... It is nowhere even close to this for brand new solar in perfect locations, and since those perfect locations happen to be HOT, performance goes down furthers, then add dust over time.  22% is typically thrown around and then throw in simple panel degradation over time... uh huh.  I know I live in craptastic W. Washington for Solar(1800 hours annually), but I get ~12% or so.  SE California gets ~2X the hours of sunshine but is hotter and dustier so... 22% sounds about right.  I know guys who wash their panels regularly in dusty S. California get approx 25% more power by doing so...   Last I checked, utility solar are not cleaning their panels...

So, what other numbers does the EIA regularly pull out of their ass wholesale?  Tells me this entire table is complete and utter BULL SHIT.

I also find it odd that I was directed to a 50% capacity figure by Jay I think. That table says 87%. But if they're telling lies about solar capacity, what is CCG capacity in reality? Ultimately it could be 50% and still beat solar since CAPEX is less than traditional and profits are above $200 M (as is the case with $3 per mmBtu). 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

7 hours ago, Wombat said:

It is actually quite simple Ron, NPV just try to take account of inflation, otherwise known as "the time value of money". Don't be fooled by Keyboard Warrior, he has no clue what he talkin about. All u need know, is that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow, bit like a bird in the hand worth 2 in the bush. Just try remember what a house cost 30 years ago, but what ur wage was back then, and u got the picture! Ur mortgage 30 years ago was maybe $30K, nothing now? Half a years wage? Inflation eats debt fast, deflation makes it harder to pay off. That why ur Fed printing lots of moola.

I am aware of that since my retirement (not S.S) does not increase with inflation so we will be suffering as that part of our income shrinks. The government does not tell the truth about inflation though so it is somewhat hidden. We mainly see it in our Illinois tax hikes while they spend their money to buy government union member votes with lush retirements compared to private plans and lush insurance packages. Those retirements generously adjust for inflation. Our real estate taxes are higher than the original value of the property over time.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

20 hours ago, Zak Pol said:

Coffeeguyzz,

I just want to add to your argument, that the only GREEN in this renewable Global SCAM is the GREEN AMERICAN $$$$.

Mr. McKinsey.

I have read few pages of this thread and it's just amazing, how many of you seem to be very smart people and have bought into the scam that the world can have 100% renewable energy. Mr. Jay McKinsey the author of this thread started with some "very nice" picture of the solar battery farm trying to show us how the new era of energy wind, solar, and battery storage is going to deliver on his "pipe dream" of 100% renewable. I do not know Mr. McKinsey credentials (I am retired comp. tech), but it seems he gets a lot of support from the anti-oil like-minded individuals on this forum, who are for some reason still snooping on oilprice.com and trying to say that oil & gas energy sector is doomed and that the only solution is renewable energy. Are you guys lost all ganging up on the wrong site?

IMO just want to say this is total garbage and a SCAM.

Question to the PRO renewable crowd. Can the renewable exist without Oil & GAS and COAL???

The obvious answer is NO.

For every 1 MW of renewable power we must have 1-2 MW of base load power from coal, or gas, or nuclear, or hydro backup. How wasteful is that? This must have a massive effect on our high energy bills to be even higher. How much more expensive should electricity get Mr. McKinsey, before people start screaming and throwing the baby together with the bath water? California socialist experiment. Is this sounds familiar?

How much mining resources of quartz and COAL goes into production of SOLAR PANELS? How much energy is used, and yes this bad, bad CO2 :)) is emitted in the production process?

How does this "green" process of building, and setting the wind turbines looks like for you, when you have to pour tons of hundreds of cement, concrete and use tons of hundreds of steel and plastics. Again lots of use of coal, oil & gas, metals and this bad CO2:)) emissions, and massive energy usage (fossil fuels).

 - 1 MW of wind turbine capacity requires ~230 tons of coal for the steel

 - 1 MW of wind turbine capacity requires 61 tonnes of coal for the concrete.

  - 800 yd^3 concrete ~60 truckloads of concrete per 1MW wind turbine to settle.

To produce 100 MW of solar, what is the LAND BASE required, and what is the cost of this land? Aren't we going to run out of arable land mass to deliver on your renewable wind farms and solar farms dream? We can go into the desert of course, or ocean you will say. Sure, why not to the Mars or Moon? The efficiency of the panels is ~8-10%, and more expensive ones are ~20%. Then comes the battery storage. How much mining and processing of lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, copper is needed? Again lots of energy is required from COAL or GAS and emissions of this bad, bad, bad CO2:))? Here again, what is the land base needed for the battery system to support a town of 200K people for a 1 week let's say? Can it be done without the base load power sitting idle (and yes, you still pay for it) while you use your CLEAN and GREEN energy? The simple answer is NO, NO, NO.

Next thing, what is the life exp. of your GREEN POWER assets? 10-20 years may be. What then? TEAR-DOWN.

How do you recycle, and dispose used batteries from cars and battery farms, or old wind turbines and solar panels? What are the costs, and who pays for it??? Do you reclaim the land or leave and get the TAXPAYER take care of the costs?

So, Mr. McKinsey please stop spewing this GREEN B$ SCAM, because without the OIL and GAS, your wind, and solar, and storage is pure fantasy. By the way, are you on the receiving end of the BOAT LOAD of our TAX$$$ while preaching your religion? Yes, it looks like it. Because without these GREEN,GREEN $$$$ your climate change, global warming, 100% renewables agenda would not hold the water.

When about 200 ducks landed in Canadian Syncrude tailing ponds the whole world was in uproar. When hundreds of thousands of birds gets killed by wind turbines, or gets fried in the solar farm collectors nobody says a BOO. How is that for enviro-accountabillity?

Until all facets of your renewable energy pipe dream starting with mining thru processing, production, installation, land usage, maintenance, and tear-down, recycling, are 100% renewable, and they are not on life support thru our GREEN TAX $$$ you have no ground to stand on.

Coal and resource mining, oil & gas upstream and downstream industries have always been the places of great jobs until greenies and do-gooders started to fix them and apply their holly religion of first global warming, and when that would not go too good for them, then came climate change. Their fix is 100% renewable dream. Their ambassadors are Greta Thunberg, Leo DiCapprio, David Suzuki, Al Gore and even Pope Francis. How DARE YOU not to believe in this RELIGION???

By the way Mr.McKinsey, did you watch a movie Planet of the Humans? or Global Warning? This is just the start to get off your addiction.

Thank you.

 

 

                                               

 

Of course we can use 100% renewable - the earth is solar powered. Fact.  Your beloved oil is just a nice solar energy storage device.

Do the math on how much steal and concrete is needed for a refinery, a pipeline, an oil rig, service trucks, coal plant.... Fossil fuels are far from immune to any of those costs.  You just ignore those costs when it's from oil production.

Count up how many abandoned oil rigs are across North America. Canada alone we have thousands of contaminated sites that are now the federal governments problem. https://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/fcsi-rscf/classification-eng.aspx

Syncrudes licence to operate mandates they have to use devices (noisemakers) to keep the birds from landing on the giant lakes of poison they created.  They admitted fault. Want to save birds - kill house cats (whataboutism).

PS

Some renewable energy systems last for centuries (Hoover Dam).

 

Edited May 9, 2020 by Enthalpic

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

36 minutes ago, Enthalpic said:

Of course we can use 100% renewable - the earth is solar powered. Fact.  Your beloved oil is just a nice solar energy storage device.

Do the math on how much steal and concrete is needed for a refinery, a pipeline, an oil rig, service trucks, coal plant.... Fossil fuels are far from immune to any of those costs.  You just ignore those costs when it's from oil production.

Count up how many abandoned oil rigs are across North America. Canada alone we have thousands of contaminated sites that are now the federal governments problem. https://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/fcsi-rscf/classification-eng.aspx

Syncrudes licence to operate mandates they have to use devices (noisemakers) to keep the birds from landing on the giant lakes of poison they created.  They admitted fault. Want to save birds - kill house cats (whataboutism).

PS

Some renewable energy systems last for centuries (Hoover Dam).

 

Hello Enthalpic. Since nobody has provided an NPV calculation, could you do it? They change the rules every time I do mine. 

[Jay McKinsey + 1,489]

2 hours ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

@Jay McKinsey Where are you my friend?

Did you do your own set of calculations like I requested? 

Don't let wombat irritate you. That odd symbol just means "sum", and you can ignore it if you keep the cash flow constant for each year. 

Of course you could take my approach and calculate actual returns.. you know, the stuff that intelligent investors are concerned with? s

Working on it. As @Monk astutely said there are a lot of variables and nuances to account for and I am double checking our numbers.

I'd also like to say to everyone out there that my goal is to honestly explore where the numbers stand today. The cost of renewables are dropping fast and we are just now at the inflection point where Solar-Wind-Storage (SWS) are becoming cost competitive with fossil fuels depending on the region and market. (I thoroughly acknowledge that natural gas prices are also dropping.)  Though as time goes on SWS will become competitive in all regions and all markets. And yes they wouldn't be at this point without massive investment in the form of subsidies. I am very much looking forward to getting rid of the PTC and ITC now that they aren't required.  

I am not a religious green zealot. That crew is generally anti-technology and anti-growth. I am very pro both! So you may be amused to hear that I receive just as much grief from a lot of the greens about my views!

All growth and all technologies have their costs, the question is how are they best valued and allocated. I leave the climate change arguments for others. My focus is on the more demonstrable economic costs of air / water pollution and geopolitics. For geopolitics that is neutering the middle east and Russia and generally decreasing resource conflicts. 

I am thrilled that natural gas is kicking coal to the curb! Fantastic for air and water pollution reduction. Next on the list is oil which natural gas will have its role in defeating as well in the form of electricity production for EV and direct combustion / fuel cell for bulk transport in shipping. Battery costs are in free fall and those who refuse to acknowledge the demonstrable cost curves are as much religious zealots as the green religious zealots they complain about. In just a few years the upfront purchase price of EV's will be less than ICE. At that point the new car market will rapidly shift to all EV by 2030. It will then take another 20 years for the fleet to turnover. A lot of that electricity for EV's will be produced by natural gas. But ultimately natural gas for electricity production will succumb to the zero marginal cost economics of solar & wind.( I can't stress enough that zero marginal cost is an economic function that drives everything else out of the market, whether you personally like it or not. Glad to discuss at length) 

As to the arguments that fossil fuels are required to underpin renewables - yes they are today but that role will decrease over time. For example much is made of the transport fuel required to transport or mine renewable resources. However, over time those transport resources will be mostly electrified. Coal is required for steel and I think that is just fine. I support metallurgical coal. It's benefits outweigh the costs. Likewise fossil fuels in concrete and plastics out weigh their costs per se. Plastic pollution is a separate issue, unrelated to whether it is made with fossil fuels or something else.

Biofuels are stupid with the possible exception of industrial algae for jet fuel. But I also don't have a great problem with using fossil fuels for jet or rocket fuel. The benefit out weighs the cost for the foreseeable future. 

FWIW my political economics evolved out of anarcho-capitalism (AC) and exponential scaling. In grad school I studied both extensively. My thesis advisor was David D. Friedman, Milton Friedman's son, and who is often referred to as the head of the utilitarian school of anarcho-capitalism.  At the same time I interned at the Semiconductor Industry Association as their Moore's Law expert. (Even got to meet Gordon Moore.) After graduation I tried for three years to combine the two economic models but couldn't. Exponential scaling was proven by hard numbers that I calculated first hand but AC was an unproven ideal. No matter how hard I tried to combine the two concepts the models went to hell and failed to scale. Political economics are not linear but circular. The far left and far right are both anarchists. And left anarchy scales just as poorly as right. So I ended up with the best model being in the middle. 50% right and 50% left or 50% authoritarian and 50% anarchy. The trick is determining the proper method of integration and that is my focus.

P.S. I am looking forward to a carbon intensive future! Graphene and other single layer crystals are going to have a profound effect on our future.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

14 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

Hello Enthalpic. Since nobody has provided an NPV calculation, could you do it? They change the rules every time I do mine. 

I could, but I wouldn't count on it being correct haha!

Frankly any calculation is only going to be as good as the values you feed into it; a biased number here, an assumption there, and the output is essentially worthless.

I agree renewable is more expensive, and probably will remain that way for a long time.  Lots of nice things cost more than their cheaper alternatives. I'll still eat a nice T-bone steak even though it costs as much a full weeks worth of Kraft dinner meals.

 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

1 minute ago, Enthalpic said:

I could, but I wouldn't count on it being correct haha!

Frankly any calculation is only going to be as good as the values you feed into it; a biased number here, an assumption there, and the output is essentially worthless.

I agree renewable is more expensive, and probably will remain that way for a long time.  Lots of nice things cost more than their cheaper alternatives. I'll still eat a nice T-bone steak even though it costs as much a full weeks worth of Kraft dinner meals.

 

Fair enough. I just like to have numbers but I understand how difficult it is to be objective. I'm a young investor chasing yields, so if it turns out that a solar farm can beat the S&P 500 index count me in; and the same goes for gas. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

@Jay McKinsey

Understand too that I was just having fun pissing off Wombat because he's toxic. He was rude to you too. 

We disagree on many points but ultimately we're both after improvement. 

Edited May 9, 2020 by KeyboardWarrior

[Jay McKinsey + 1,489]

23 hours ago, Zak Pol said:

Coffeeguyzz,

I just want to add to your argument, that the only GREEN in this renewable Global SCAM is the GREEN AMERICAN $$$$.

Mr. McKinsey.

I have read few pages of this thread and it's just amazing, how many of you seem to be very smart people and have bought into the scam that the world can have 100% renewable energy. Mr. Jay McKinsey the author of this thread started with some "very nice" picture of the solar battery farm trying to show us how the new era of energy wind, solar, and battery storage is going to deliver on his "pipe dream" of 100% renewable. I do not know Mr. McKinsey credentials (I am retired comp. tech), but it seems he gets a lot of support from the anti-oil like-minded individuals on this forum, who are for some reason still snooping on oilprice.com and trying to say that oil & gas energy sector is doomed and that the only solution is renewable energy. Are you guys lost all ganging up on the wrong site?

IMO just want to say this is total garbage and a SCAM.

Question to the PRO renewable crowd. Can the renewable exist without Oil & GAS and COAL???

The obvious answer is NO.

For every 1 MW of renewable power we must have 1-2 MW of base load power from coal, or gas, or nuclear, or hydro backup. How wasteful is that? This must have a massive effect on our high energy bills to be even higher. How much more expensive should electricity get Mr. McKinsey, before people start screaming and throwing the baby together with the bath water? California socialist experiment. Is this sounds familiar?

How much mining resources of quartz and COAL goes into production of SOLAR PANELS? How much energy is used, and yes this bad, bad CO2 :)) is emitted in the production process?

How does this "green" process of building, and setting the wind turbines looks like for you, when you have to pour tons of hundreds of cement, concrete and use tons of hundreds of steel and plastics. Again lots of use of coal, oil & gas, metals and this bad CO2:)) emissions, and massive energy usage (fossil fuels).

 - 1 MW of wind turbine capacity requires ~230 tons of coal for the steel

 - 1 MW of wind turbine capacity requires 61 tonnes of coal for the concrete.

  - 800 yd^3 concrete ~60 truckloads of concrete per 1MW wind turbine to settle.

To produce 100 MW of solar, what is the LAND BASE required, and what is the cost of this land? Aren't we going to run out of arable land mass to deliver on your renewable wind farms and solar farms dream? We can go into the desert of course, or ocean you will say. Sure, why not to the Mars or Moon? The efficiency of the panels is ~8-10%, and more expensive ones are ~20%. Then comes the battery storage. How much mining and processing of lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, copper is needed? Again lots of energy is required from COAL or GAS and emissions of this bad, bad, bad CO2:))? Here again, what is the land base needed for the battery system to support a town of 200K people for a 1 week let's say? Can it be done without the base load power sitting idle (and yes, you still pay for it) while you use your CLEAN and GREEN energy? The simple answer is NO, NO, NO.

Next thing, what is the life exp. of your GREEN POWER assets? 10-20 years may be. What then? TEAR-DOWN.

How do you recycle, and dispose used batteries from cars and battery farms, or old wind turbines and solar panels? What are the costs, and who pays for it??? Do you reclaim the land or leave and get the TAXPAYER take care of the costs?

So, Mr. McKinsey please stop spewing this GREEN B$ SCAM, because without the OIL and GAS, your wind, and solar, and storage is pure fantasy. By the way, are you on the receiving end of the BOAT LOAD of our TAX$$$ while preaching your religion? Yes, it looks like it. Because without these GREEN,GREEN $$$$ your climate change, global warming, 100% renewables agenda would not hold the water.

When about 200 ducks landed in Canadian Syncrude tailing ponds the whole world was in uproar. When hundreds of thousands of birds gets killed by wind turbines, or gets fried in the solar farm collectors nobody says a BOO. How is that for enviro-accountabillity?

Until all facets of your renewable energy pipe dream starting with mining thru processing, production, installation, land usage, maintenance, and tear-down, recycling, are 100% renewable, and they are not on life support thru our GREEN TAX $$$ you have no ground to stand on.

Coal and resource mining, oil & gas upstream and downstream industries have always been the places of great jobs until greenies and do-gooders started to fix them and apply their holly religion of first global warming, and when that would not go too good for them, then came climate change. Their fix is 100% renewable dream. Their ambassadors are Greta Thunberg, Leo DiCapprio, David Suzuki, Al Gore and even Pope Francis. How DARE YOU not to believe in this RELIGION???

By the way Mr.McKinsey, did you watch a movie Planet of the Humans? or Global Warning? This is just the start to get off your addiction.

Thank you.

Oh dear! Did I disrupt your safe space? I so apologize for discussing renewable energy in a renewable energy forum or are only anti renewable snowflakes allowed here?

No, we don't need to go the moon or mars just synchronous orbit The Air / Space Force is launching "experiment, designed by the Naval Research Laboratory, transforms solar power into radio frequency microwave energy, then studies transmitting that energy to Earth." on the X37B  https://www.sciencealert.com/the-x-37b-space-plane-is-heading-for-mission-6-and-this-time-we-know-what-it-s-doing

And we all know how lefty green liberal the US military is. 😘

btw- This is definitely a very expensive government subsidy for renewable research.Are you going to write to the military and tell them you object to this misuse of taxpayer money? 

 

 

Edited May 9, 2020 by Jay McKinsey

[Coffeeguyzz + 454]

Mr. McKinsey 

Combining graphene as a feedstock with 3D printing capabilities provides simply mind blowing potentialities.

As your forward looking open mindedness may prove a fertile ground for new ideas ... I would refer you (or anyone) to one of the more under reported achievements in the past several years, as described in the September 4, 2019 article from Asian Scientist, "Flexible Polymers for Natural Gas Storage".

To wit, an ultra cheap, easily manufactured material - called COP-150 - has been created in the lab of Texas A&M.  This polymer is an adsorbent (with a 'd', not 'b') that enables applications that achieve the 'Holy Grail'  of sub 500 psi storage in practical volumes.

Long story short ... placing this adsorbent in newly built, formable carbon 'tanks' will enable any of the 50 million US households supplied with residential natgas to fuel their CNG vehicles right in their driveway.

 

That day may arrive sooner than people could possibly imagine.

[Jay McKinsey + 1,489]

.

Edited May 9, 2020 by Jay McKinsey
double post

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,135]

3 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

Working on it. As @Monk astutely said there are a lot of variables and nuances to account for and I am double checking our numbers.

I'd also like to say to everyone out there that my goal is to honestly explore where the numbers stand today. The cost of renewables are dropping fast and we are just now at the inflection point where Solar-Wind-Storage (SWS) are becoming cost ime. For example much is made of the transport fuel required to transport or mine renewable resources. However, over time those transport resources will be mostly electrified. Coal is required for steel and I think that is just fine. I support metallurgical coal. It's benefits outweigh the costs. Likewise fossil fuels in concrete and plastics out weigh their costs per se. Plastic pollution is a separate issue, unrelated to whether it is made with fossil fuels or something else.

Biofuels are stupid with the possible exception of industrial algae for jet fuel.

As someone who has worked the analytical side of Wind as my day job for 7 years and was a giant proponent of it(until disillusionment), yes, we could have reset our civilization back 100 years and go all fossil fuel free... of course if that was the REAL objective, then the 2nd energy industry I have worked in is the only real solution: combined cycle Nuclear/nat gas.  Nat gas boosts temperature boosting efficiency from ~35% even for the breeder reactors working in a salt fluid upwards of 60%.  Now this could be supplemented by heating with electricity from wind/solar'... creating the ultimate perpetual motion machine....😂  

EDIT: IT is frankly criminal today to NOT turn our existing nuclear reactors into combined cycle gas fired.  This alone would boost electrical output around the world by ~10% with no added natural gas. This would also make the nuclear plants able to throttle output.

Uh, I get a GIGANTIC laugh out of algae proponents... What feeds this algae in all of these studies?  Biomatter/Sugar.... where does this sugar come from???  It is like fish farms.... where does nearly all the food for the "fish farms" come from?  The sea, where they harvest all the small fish as all the big fish were already caught and sold....

EDIT: IT all comes down to battery technology.  BEST Current tech is exceedingly dependent upon RARE, TOXIC minerals.  This is not possible to be implemented across the world.  Leaves us with pumped hydro storage which effectively means damming up every valley on earth.... Or a MUCH lower population.  I have run the rough numbers, it is NOT pretty.  Eastern USA grid alone has to be able to dump an entire Lake ERIE down its 700ft to sea level every single day during the typical winter high when wind is not blowing and sun is not shining other than ~10%

Edited May 10, 2020 by footeab@yahoo.com

[Jay McKinsey + 1,489]

7 minutes ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

As someone who has worked the analytical side of Wind as my day job for 7 years and was a giant proponent of it(until disillusionment), yes, we could have reset our civilization back 100 years and go all fossil fuel free... of course if that was the REAL objective, then the 2nd industry I have worked in is the only real solution: combined cycle Nuclear/nat gas.  Nat gas boosts temperature boosting efficiency from ~35% even for the breeder reactors working in a salt fluid upwards of 60%.  Now this could be supplemented by heating with electricity from wind/solar'... creating the ultimate perpetual motion machine....😂

Uh, I get a GIGANTIC laugh out of algae proponents... What feeds this algae in all of these studies?  Biomatter/Sugar.... where does this sugar come from???  It is like fish farms.... where does nearly all the food for the "fish farms" come from?  The sea, where they harvest all the small fish as all the big fish were already caught and sold....

What disillusioned you about wind?

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,135]

2 minutes ago, Jay McKinsey said:

What disillusioned you about wind?

To make wind work in even the BEST geography/circumstances you MUST have giant back up for weeks at a time when you get ZERO wind.  Not some.  ZERO.  Surrounding that giant ZERO which happens once a winter from between 1 to 3 or more weeks in length are often a month of little to no wind.  In summer in ***most*** locations, wind drops to 1/2 to 2/3 velocity in even the best locations.  Likewise wind regularly drops to near ZERO from midnight till about 8am.   This does not make a grid work.  Not in the slightest.  At least not without a staggeringly MASSIVE technological leap in battery ability.  No, LI-ion does not work.  Not enough cobalt, nickel, lithium in the world to make this work unless USA grabs 100% of the worlds production for the next 1000 years exclusively for itself.....  Maybe Europe, China, rest of the world would like some in the next 1000 years?  Maybe?

Good luck on that one working

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

13 minutes ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

As someone who has worked the analytical side of Wind as my day job for 7 years and was a giant proponent of it(until disillusionment), yes, we could have reset our civilization back 100 years and go all fossil fuel free... of course if that was the REAL objective, then the 2nd energy industry I have worked in is the only real solution: combined cycle Nuclear/nat gas.  Nat gas boosts temperature boosting efficiency from ~35% even for the breeder reactors working in a salt fluid upwards of 60%.  Now this could be supplemented by heating with electricity from wind/solar'... creating the ultimate perpetual motion machine....😂  

EDIT: IT is frankly criminal today to NOT turn our existing nuclear reactors into combined cycle gas fired.  This alone would boost electrical output around the world by ~10% with no added natural gas. This would also make the nuclear plants able to throttle output.

Uh, I get a GIGANTIC laugh out of algae proponents... What feeds this algae in all of these studies?  Biomatter/Sugar.... where does this sugar come from???  It is like fish farms.... where does nearly all the food for the "fish farms" come from?  The sea, where they harvest all the small fish as all the big fish were already caught and sold....

EDIT: IT all comes down to battery technology.  BEST Current tech is exceedingly dependent upon RARE, TOXIC minerals.  This is not possible to be implemented across the world.  Leaves us with pumped hydro storage which effectively means damming up every valley on earth.... Or a MUCH lower population.  I have run the rough numbers, it is NOT pretty.  Eastern USA grid alone has to be able to dump an entire Lake ERIE down its 700ft to sea level every single day during the typical winter high when wind is not blowing and sun is not shining other than ~10%

Algae are photosynthetic.... so the sun.

The small fish are gross. the fish meal feeds a variety of better tasting animals.

[Wombat + 1,028]

17 minutes ago, Enthalpic said:

Algae are photosynthetic.... so the sun.

The small fish are gross. the fish meal feeds a variety of better tasting animals.

Yes, only input needed for algae is extra CO2. Fish meal pellets are made from chicken offal.

[Wombat + 1,028]

On 5/9/2020 at 9:54 AM, Monk said:

EIA in its document has estimated some of the calculations in the link to the document that I did provide in my previous post: They have two tables weighted average, along with regional min and max in the tables below:

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf

Some excerpts:

 

These above are all average values and have significant variability from from region to region like this below from table 2 of the above link

 

Doing it correctly, requires allocating revenue split between capacity, energy, frequency and ancillary market revenues, costs include fixed and variable operational costs, fuel costs and fuel cost hedging, transmission congestion costs and the capacity factor at which the plant can operate in a given market.

All these vary by region significantly for all types of generation be it natural gas, coal, solar or wind or battery. 

Included in these is locational marginal pricing that a plant can expect in its region of operation.  That price can be in negative dollars like the recent oil price (i.e, the generator pays you to take the power away) to 9000$/MWh (yes it is real, see for ex below). The revenue estimation requires estimating the expected futures revenues based on curves likes these.  and Yes these curves are different for CAISO vs ERCOT vs PJM or any other region you may think of because of many factors besides the market design itself.  

ERCOT pricing curves by no of hours.

 

 

 

I have been trying to tell young Keyboard Warrior how complex an NPV calculation is, that "garbage in = garbage out", that there are many variables to consider such as the ones you have just pointed out, but he never listens so I have blocked him

[Jay McKinsey + 1,489]

11 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Holy moly, just took a closer look at that table.... To get their numbers they are using 30% capacity factor for solar(as no one does solar tracking anymore as it is cheaper to install more panels)... It is nowhere even close to this for brand new solar in perfect locations, and since those perfect locations happen to be HOT, performance goes down furthers, then add dust over time.  22% is typically thrown around and then throw in simple panel degradation over time... uh huh.  I know I live in craptastic W. Washington for Solar(1800 hours annually), but I get ~12% or so.  SE California gets ~2X the hours of sunshine but is hotter and dustier so... 22% sounds about right.  I know guys who wash their panels regularly in dusty S. California get approx 25% more power by doing so...   Last I checked, utility solar are not cleaning their panels...

So, what other numbers does the EIA regularly pull out of their ass wholesale?  Tells me this entire table is complete and utter BULL SHIT.

Actually single axis tracking is expanding. 

"The use of solar trackers (all single-axis, east-west tracking) dominated 2018 installations with nearly 70% of all new capacity.  After declining for five consecutive years—a reflection of the geographic shift in the market from the high-insolation Southwest to other less-sunny regions—the median long-term average insolation at newly built project sites stabilized in 2018.  New fixed-tilt projects are now seen predominantly in less-sunny regions, while tracking projects are increasingly pushing into these same regions". https://emp.lbl.gov/utility-scale-solar

[Jay McKinsey + 1,489]

2 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

To make wind work in even the BEST geography/circumstances you MUST have giant back up for weeks at a time when you get ZERO wind.  Not some.  ZERO.  Surrounding that giant ZERO which happens once a winter from between 1 to 3 or more weeks in length are often a month of little to no wind.  In summer in ***most*** locations, wind drops to 1/2 to 2/3 velocity in even the best locations.  Likewise wind regularly drops to near ZERO from midnight till about 8am.   This does not make a grid work.  Not in the slightest.  At least not without a staggeringly MASSIVE technological leap in battery ability.  No, LI-ion does not work.  Not enough cobalt, nickel, lithium in the world to make this work unless USA grabs 100% of the worlds production for the next 1000 years exclusively for itself.....  Maybe Europe, China, rest of the world would like some in the next 1000 years?  Maybe?

Good luck on that one working

Thanks for the explanation. I know you won't agree with me but I think the solution is to rely on solar for summer when the wind drops, regional interconnects for balancing out insolation and wind anomalies, short term storage and long term storage.

Solar will soon be cheap enough to put at northern latitudes just to cover the the shortfall in sunny months of the year. Interconnects are slowly being built and will accelerate in the coming decade. For example with underwater cables whose cost will be driven down by increased demand from offshore wind. Imagine running underwater cables from the incredibly windy Atlantic coastline of Canada up the St. Lawrence to Toronto and through the Great Lakes to Detroit and Chicago. In the western US we are building a new interconnect from Wyoming wind to the California grid. and I am sure you are aware that other interconnects are beginning to be built east out of the mid west. At some point ERCOT is going to build an interconnect out of Texas so that they can sell their surplus wind and solar. 

Regarding storage I posit that Li-ion will take us a long ways for daily load shifting and EV. There is plenty of Lithium, we are actually experiencing a Lithium glut right now and the new production facilities have barely begun to be built.  Same with nickel and cobalt, even with the increased battery production over the past 10 years their price is not far above their ten year lows. And a lot of effort is being put into reducing Cobalt usage. However the way I would suggest thinking about it is that we may need breakthroughs and advancements to get all the way to 100% renewable but those are developed along the growth curve as they become problems to solve. We have plenty for now and the coming decade. 

For long term storage we do need more advancements before we can start putting that into use but I have little doubt those advancements will be forthcoming. And in the meantime we fortunately have natural gas. 

Edited May 10, 2020 by Jay McKinsey

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,135]

1 hour ago, Jay McKinsey said:

Actually single axis tracking is expanding. 

"The use of solar trackers (all single-axis, east-west tracking) dominated 2018 installations with nearly 70% of all new capacity.  After declining for five consecutive years—a reflection of the geographic shift in the market from the high-insolation Southwest to other less-sunny regions—the median long-term average insolation at newly built project sites stabilized in 2018.  New fixed-tilt projects are now seen predominantly in less-sunny regions, while tracking projects are increasingly pushing into these same regions". https://emp.lbl.gov/utility-scale-solar

1) good sight: Have not found it before 👍

2) from same site which was my main point for brand new installation without dust etc: "Capacity Factors:  The cumulative net AC capacity factors of individual projects range widely, from 12.1% to 34.8%, with a sample median of 25.2%.  This project-level variation is based on a number of factors, including the strength of the solar resource at the project site, whether the array is mounted at a fixed tilt or on a tracking mechanism, the ILR, degradation, and curtailment.  Changes in at least the first three of these factors drove mean capacity factors higher from 2010-vintage to 2013-vintage projects.  Among more-recent project vintages, however, mean capacity factors have remained stagnant or even declined, as a build-out of lower-resource sites has offset an increase in the prevalence of tracking (while the ILR has changed little)."

[Jay McKinsey + 1,489]

7 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

As someone who has worked the analytical side of Wind as my day job for 7 years and was a giant proponent of it(until disillusionment), yes, we could have reset our civilization back 100 years and go all fossil fuel free... of course if that was the REAL objective, then the 2nd energy industry I have worked in is the only real solution: combined cycle Nuclear/nat gas.  Nat gas boosts temperature boosting efficiency from ~35% even for the breeder reactors working in a salt fluid upwards of 60%.  Now this could be supplemented by heating with electricity from wind/solar'... creating the ultimate perpetual motion machine....😂  

EDIT: IT is frankly criminal today to NOT turn our existing nuclear reactors into combined cycle gas fired.  This alone would boost electrical output around the world by ~10% with no added natural gas. This would also make the nuclear plants able to throttle output.

 

Are there any projects under way to make a combined cycle nuclear/nat gas plant?

[Jay McKinsey + 1,489]

Scientists in Egypt have investigated the effectiveness of using water and a mixture of aluminum oxide and calcium chloride hexahydrate to cool PV modules. Optimal performance was observed with a solution of 75% water, according to the research findings. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/05/06/a-new-passive-technique-for-cooling-solar-panels/

[Jay McKinsey + 1,489]

15 hours ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

I also find it odd that I was directed to a 50% capacity figure by Jay I think. That table says 87%. But if they're telling lies about solar capacity, what is CCG capacity in reality? Ultimately it could be 50% and still beat solar since CAPEX is less than traditional and profits are above $200 M (as is the case with $3 per mmBtu). 

The more I look the more I find EIA numbers all over the board.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,135]

35 minutes ago, Jay McKinsey said:

Are there any projects under way to make a combined cycle nuclear/nat gas plant?

Nope.  It is extremely stupid.  So instead nuclear is operating at low temperature/pressure creating low efficiencies and dumping gobs of waste heat into rivers ponds etc.  Frankly it borders on the criminally stupid if you asked me.  If nothing else for safety reasons you want to have to handle less waste heat if nothing else if the Fhit hits the San.