Solar to Become World's Largest Power Source by 2050

[NickW + 2,714]

On 3/16/2019 at 3:18 PM, Meredith Poor said:

My numbers come from living in Texas and Florida, so they include a lot of cooling. I will agree that there is a lot of waste in my calculations. Replacing electric water heaters with solar water heaters would cut the power bill by a third.

Things get interesting when it's cheaper to put in the solar electricity than it is to insulate the house. This can happen in certain combinations of home size, construction materials/method, etc. The math I'm showing you is simply how I calculated costs for my residences which were/are admittedly older structures.

The original question was about roof area. My point in response is that roof area is only tangentially related to the best way to install and use solar. I agree with you 100% that we should put solar on 'disturbed earth', in my opinion however this is more focused on big box retailers, warehouses, parking lots, stadiums, and other large and relatively cheap buildings.

Heating water is one practical way of storing and utilising surplus electricity. 

There are diverter modules now that will send any surplus to an immersion heater. 

Alternatively use an air source heap pump on a day time time switch. 

[markslawson + 1,057]

20 hours ago, John N Denver said:

You better warn some of the states/grids that have upwards of 37% non-hydro renewable energy on their grid.  I think 7 states have over 20% non-hydro RE on their systems now.  Not to mention Germany had 38% of its electricity from RE in 2018.

John - this more of the same nonsense. Take Germany. The figure is essentially a cheat. When the Germany grid gets heaps of wind/solar on its grid it can't shut down its brown coal plants (they can take a whole day to start up again), so they dump their excess energy on the Poles and the Czech Republic and others and claim that the German grid only takes the renewable energy.. The figures for the US states are meaningless for a different reason, as the states are rarely run as grids. They are part of a larger grids - so the states you're quoting as having more than 20 per cent are often states with small demands feeding into those larger grids. Now go and look at the graph you cite.. bear in mind that PV has an effective average output of about one fifth of rated capacity (the figure being graphed). Now compare that capacity with the total US output. Sorry but my original point still stands. Leave it with you.

[David Jones + 84]

7 hours ago, markslawson said:

John - this more of the same nonsense. Take Germany. The figure is essentially a cheat. When the Germany grid gets heaps of wind/solar on its grid it can't shut down its brown coal plants (they can take a whole day to start up again), so they dump their excess energy on the Poles and the Czech Republic and others and claim that the German grid only takes the renewable energy.. The figures for the US states are meaningless for a different reason, as the states are rarely run as grids. They are part of a larger grids - so the states you're quoting as having more than 20 per cent are often states with small demands feeding into those larger grids. Now go and look at the graph you cite.. bear in mind that PV has an effective average output of about one fifth of rated capacity (the figure being graphed). Now compare that capacity with the total US output. Sorry but my original point still stands. Leave it with you.

Germany will be shutting down it's coal power plants within the next 20 years so your complaint about this particular generation element is more along the lines of "their renewable energy efforts mean nothing because they did not restructure their electricity grid entirely within 2 decades". Considering that this kind of infrastructure is usually done on a scale of a century, I would say your point is somewhat ridiculous. The figure is not cheating, it is relevant but your criticism of this transition that hasn't actually been completed is not as relevant as you seem to think. In addition and in terms of storage, the electrification of transportation which is coming whether certain oil industry elements like it or not, will provide an avalanche of cheap second hand batteries for the grid.

China alone will likely be producing 10 million EVs annually by 2025 many of which will have 50kWh batteries or larger and those oil industry elements have marginal influence on such developments in China. Consider how much storage this would provide and how related economies of scale as well as R&D spending will affect the price of storage technology. At best, the countries/areas that refuse to adopt the transition will be "left behind" in terms of technology and prestige, at worst (from the perspective of western dominance aficionados) many of us will be driving Chinese cars in the 30s as the ICEV sales model fails in the coming decade or two.

[John N Denver + 25]

On 3/17/2019 at 6:18 PM, markslawson said:

John - this more of the same nonsense. Take Germany. The figure is essentially a cheat. When the Germany grid gets heaps of wind/solar on its grid it can't shut down its brown coal plants (they can take a whole day to start up again), so they dump their excess energy on the Poles and the Czech Republic and others and claim that the German grid only takes the renewable energy.. The figures for the US states are meaningless for a different reason, as the states are rarely run as grids. They are part of a larger grids - so the states you're quoting as having more than 20 per cent are often states with small demands feeding into those larger grids. Now go and look at the graph you cite.. bear in mind that PV has an effective average output of about one fifth of rated capacity (the figure being graphed). Now compare that capacity with the total US output. Sorry but my original point still stands. Leave it with you.

Let's take ERCOT which is it's own grid and Texas has the largest power consumption of any of the states.  Texas had net utility scale generation of 474.777TWh in 2018.  Of that 80.671TWh was non-hydro renewable electric.  That is 17% of electric generation using RE.  If you look at the ERCOT proposal pipeline it currently (Feb 2019) consists of 10.529GW of NG, 37.42GW of wind and 47.141GW of solar.  That is 11% NG, 39% wind and 50% solar.  Developers in ERCOT certainly know which way the wind is blowing.

If you actually looked at the graph I posted it does not list capacity, but actual generation - the hint would have been the left y-axis label that says, "Total Solar Generation of U.S. Electric Power Sector (million megawatthours)".

In 2018 U.S. solar generated 92.5TWh of electricity but only ~2.2% of the total generated electricy.  Pretty measly, but if you look at the growth rate of solar generation even using the anemic 25% growth from 2017 to 2018 (vs the 43% the previous two years) it comes out to 282TWh and 6.7% of total.  Go out 10 years and it is 862TWh and 20% of total electric production.  Of course, that is assuming current growth rates.

[markslawson + 1,057]

5 hours ago, John N Denver said:

n 2018 U.S. solar generated 92.5TWh of electricity but only ~2.2% of the total generated electricy.  Pretty measly, but if you look at the growth rate of solar generation even using the anemic 25% growth from 2017 to 2018 (vs the 43% the previous two years) it comes out to 282TWh and 6.7% of total.  Go out 10 years and it is 862TWh and 20% of total electric production.  Of course, that is assuming current growth rates.

John  - good I'm glad to see you're looking beyond the activism and at the actual figures. I don't disagree with this crop of figures you cite.. 17 per cent for Texas sounds about right and on a par with what's happening in the rest of the world .. and that is achievable .. it is possible to go higher if there's a lot hydro, say, on the grid. Now look at the figures you cite for new generation. Again quite right but those figures have nothing to do with the usefulness of RE (apart from hydro). They are the result of mandates-subsidies-community demand. How much new capacity would be built without those mandates-demands? Probably very little. Also remember that behind the scenes, the grid operators have to find way to make the grid work despite so much near-useless RE being dumped on it, and to keep conventional plants going to back up the RE. Some conventional capacity is being built in the US (gas plants) but it would be hard to get investors interested considering  the way climate hysteria is infecting policy making. 2.2 per cent for solar sounds right but the 25 per cent year on year growth you assume depends entirely on government/social policy, and even then would soon run into natural limits.. some micro-grids have gotten beyond 40 per cent RE at vast expense, but its very hard. Anyway, John, thanks for the response but that's enough for this topic. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

On 3/7/2019 at 5:52 PM, Meredith Poor said:

Utility scale solar as of 2018 costs about $1 per watt, installed. This would suggest that the US would need to spend $400 billion to build out 'peak' (daytime maximum) solar. Apple has $260 billion in cash. Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathaway) has $100 billion that they don't know what to do with. These two companies alone could just about build out the 'daily max' component. Other companies like Google and Facebook have tens of billions in cash, so they could fill in the rest.

Anyone want to compare $400 billion to the current US annual defense budget?

 

Our energy systems need to be price competitive on their own merits. Natural gas is there, renewables are not capable of replacing base load energy. 

[Meredith Poor + 894]

1 hour ago, ronwagn said:

Our energy systems need to be price competitive on their own merits. Natural gas is there, renewables are not capable of replacing base load energy. 

Renewables are only going to provide 'baseload' if there is also an appropriate capacity storage component Various businesses are now rushing into that vacuum, although the scale of what's being done so far is pretty trivial. In the present tense, I would agree with your assertion. In the future tense, not so much.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

4 hours ago, Meredith Poor said:

Renewables are only going to provide 'baseload' if there is also an appropriate capacity storage component Various businesses are now rushing into that vacuum, although the scale of what's being done so far is pretty trivial. In the present tense, I would agree with your assertion. In the future tense, not so much.

I am all for progress if the cost/benefit ratio is right. Natural gas is going to be hard to beat despite any and all claims. 

[NickW + 2,714]

On 3/18/2019 at 12:18 AM, markslawson said:

John - this more of the same nonsense. Take Germany. The figure is essentially a cheat. When the Germany grid gets heaps of wind/solar on its grid it can't shut down its brown coal plants (they can take a whole day to start up again), so they dump their excess energy on the Poles and the Czech Republic and others and claim that the German grid only takes the renewable energy.. The figures for the US states are meaningless for a different reason, as the states are rarely run as grids. They are part of a larger grids - so the states you're quoting as having more than 20 per cent are often states with small demands feeding into those larger grids. Now go and look at the graph you cite.. bear in mind that PV has an effective average output of about one fifth of rated capacity (the figure being graphed). Now compare that capacity with the total US output. Sorry but my original point still stands. Leave it with you.

How long are you going to be relying on this old chestnut in your crusade against renewables? 

Agreed this was a problem several years ago however the issue has been progressively addressed. In the real world when problems arise the norrmal response is to look for ways to resolve these. 

1. The German, Polish and Czech Authorities agreed on limitations on how much power could be offloaded so as to specifically not to overload those countries grids. 

2. There is heavy investment in north- south interconnectors within Germany to transfer the electricity to the southern part of Germany where the bulk of demand is.

3. There is also extensive use of interconnectors with Scandinavia. More are being built which allows the export into these countries for either direct use or storage in the form of pump storage. This works very nicely for them as they can use cheap surplus german power and sell premium priced hydro on demand back. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

4. As others have pointed out the growth in EV's will generate a growing pool of second hand EV batteries. Currently the use would be for grid balancing but as the supply grows these will provide short - medium term storage capacity. 

 

[Otis11 + 551]

On 3/20/2019 at 4:54 AM, NickW said:

 

4. As others have pointed out the growth in EV's will generate a growing pool of second hand EV batteries. Currently the use would be for grid balancing but as the supply grows these will provide short - medium term storage capacity. 

 

Important thing to remember - you don't actually need to wait for EV batteries to be 'second hand'. Smart chargers can help the grid 'sink' excess supply into these loads and remove them from the grid during local dips. If the car owner is at work for 8 hours a day, do they really care which of those hours the car charges? (Similarly for charging at home)

We haven't seen this yet as charger installers are trying to free the charger as quickly as possible to sell more electricity to the next car, but this will change soon enough.

[NickW + 2,714]

1 minute ago, Otis11 said:

Important thing to remember - you don't actually need to wait for EV batteries to be 'second hand'. Smart chargers can help the grid 'sink' excess supply into these loads and remove them from the grid during local dips. If the car owner is at work for 8 hours a day, do they really care which of those hours the car charges? (Similarly for charging at home)

We haven't seen this yet as charger installers are trying to free the charger as quickly as possible to sell more electricity to the next car, but this will change soon enough.

At current battery prices if I had an EV, I would only permit my battery to be used as an STOR if the electricity company pay a hefty fee.

[Otis11 + 551]

On 4/2/2019 at 4:13 PM, NickW said:

At current battery prices if I had an EV, I would only permit my battery to be used as an STOR if the electricity company pay a hefty fee.

Note, I'm not advocating for using the EV battery as storage - I actually think that's a terrible idea as the LCOE for lithium batteries is much higher than other storage methods.

What I am advocating for is changing the time at which the EVs charge to help balance the grid. Doesn't change the battery wear at all, so, if the schedule can be managed that the car/charger knows when the car needs to be charged (and can be further optimized with information about how much charge it needs) - it can act as a flexible sink and balance the grid.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

On 3/19/2019 at 7:46 PM, ronwagn said:

Our energy systems need to be price competitive on their own merits. Natural gas is there, renewables are not capable of replacing base load energy. 

If solar and or wind etc. can actually meet base load at a truly competitive cost I would be very surprised due to the intermittency factor. In addition to my surprise, I would be delighted. They would still not be able to meet the need for transportation fuel including all large ICE vehicles. All I can say is we will have to wait and see how things progress in actuality.