Mtbruning t1_iuhhf57 wrote on October 31, 2022 at 11:25 AM

Reply to comment by Kinexity in New solar capacity 10 times cheaper than gas, says intelligence company Rystad by EnergyTransitionNews

Depending on the efficiency every water tower in the country could be converted.
we could convert all the area currently devoted to power lines and relay stations.

For every problem you can mention there is a solution that creates a better environment (pun intended) than the current layers of infrastructure that we live with right now. Pumped hydro is just one. There is also batteries, wind, geo-thermo, wave, biochemical, hydrogen and others we haven’t even conceived of yet.

Kinexity t1_iuhk6f1 wrote on October 31, 2022 at 11:55 AM

Problem is energy density and it has no simple solution. Yes, you can convert water tower into little battery but how much energy is it even going to store? Quick napkin math based on typical water tower from Google (50m in height, 4 million litres) gives us only about 555 kWh. The less energy storage we need, the better. Hydrogen could replace gas for on demand power but it's inefficient to turn power into it and back. Wind sometimes blows, sometimes doesn't just like with the sun. I'm hearing geo-thermal constantly but I have yet to hear how is it supposed in countries where there isn't that much heat in the ground compared to eg. Iceland where they have fuckton of it. Wave has yet to prove itself unless you talk here about tidal power. Batteries - energy density problem, resources problem in case of chemical ones. Biochemical - never heard of that one, you're free to drop some sources. Each of those solutions comes with problems of their own which aren't that simple to mitigate. Yes, you can use them together and maybe from combining many problematic solutions get somewhat reliable power but that takes effort and many governments don't like effort.

Mtbruning t1_iuhqfst wrote on October 31, 2022 at 12:54 PM

The problem is that we have been controlling the price of fossil fuels and not allowing the power of actual capitalism to reward innovation. In the past 20 years the price of oil have ranged from $127 to 18 dollars a barrel while the price of gas has stayed relatively stable. In any other industry this would be considered price fixing. It is not in our national interest to stay with resources that require price controls to keep it stable. We need energy independence and renewables will provide that. Maintaining our current system is only benefiting those who currently control those resources and many of them are bad actors.