Submitted by ForHidingSquirrels t3_10xwl7q in Futurology
ForHidingSquirrels OP t1_j7ulkbf wrote
The IEA says renewable electricity from wind and solar are on pace to manufacture enough hardware to generate enough electricity to meet all electricity needs - the report also suggests that all energy needs can be met in time. Including industrial and transportation.
This is being done aggressively by the Chinese - who are using it for national security needs at this point. The nation spent $500 billion in clean energy - equal to the rest of the world.
rubixd t1_j7unrnj wrote
> The nation spent $500 billion in clean energy - equal to the rest of the world.
Energy independence is a hell of an incentive.
JGCities t1_j7uu4iz wrote
Not having to worry about NIMBY's helps too.
No one in China can stop them from placing wind or solar any place they want. Lot of environmental issues and lawsuits to slow that down in other countries.
user_dan t1_j7uxsve wrote
I too wish I could slowly die of lung cancer so a public infrastructure project can finish a year earlier. We ALL can dream.
JGCities t1_j7v5416 wrote
We could have been 100% nuclear decades ago but it was the greens who shut down building of all new nuclear plants.
Ironic.
[deleted] t1_j7vaemf wrote
Nah, it was just nuclear cost too much and couldn't compete without constant government subsidies. Money rules the world bro, if nuclear could make good money all the public complaining would mean jack and shit just like it does with medicine.
The Levelized Cost Of Electric for nuclear is just too high compared to gas or coal over the years. Nuclear is so complex it could never get the cost down and while it may seem simple enough to be like BUt GLOBal WARmING could have been prevented, that's questionable since power plants are just one part of the problem AND you're still talking about killing a lot of people with high energy costs.
Plus there is near zero chance most of the world, aka the developing world, even has an option to go nuclear. Talk about lack of energy independance, imagine buying into a power model that only like 3 countries sell. That would suck and that's only if their countries allow the export in the first place, a policy that could change at any moment. It's easy to see why most nations that don't have gas would go with coal, because unless you're the country making the nuclear reactor AND you're ok paying 2-3 times more for power AND you waive the added risks/costs of meltdown and pollution storage... it kind of sucks. There is also a bit of a water use problem as we saw as rivers in Europe got low, so all that would have to be fixed too.
That's a lot of money going to nuclear, which isn't improving rapidly, that is better spent pushing batteries and renewables.. which also have WAY WAY more uses than nuclear since you can expot them all over the world and install them in your home or power computers and robots with better batteries. There is a lot more vertical integration benefits where many products can benefit at once from something like solar and batteries and not much beside power plants for nuclear.
The problem is investors don't invest in nuclear and they don't because the return on investment takes way too long and it takes way too long because the cost to operate the plant is too high..
That's what LCOE means, so you if you cared you would know the LCOE on nuclear is too high to replace gas and coal without MAJOR economic slowdowns.
All that and then solar and batteries still keep getting better and their LCOE drops below nuclear and you're left with a bunch of nuclear reactors nobody can run cost effectively.
THAT is why nuclear died.. complexity = costs.. which is 100% predictable and obvious so your brain should really not need to create some secondary excuse. Costs are only like THE MOST IMPORTANT single factor in everything, so the only way you can be surprised nuclear failed is because you paid no attention to the costs of each power generation model.. aka you basically aren't interested in power generation buy want to have a say.
The data is SUPER easy to find, so I don't see a good excuse to not realize costs are what sunk nuclear.
If not then how did the same pattern happen all over the world? You're telling me the citizens of every country all kind of agreed nuclear was a bad idea and that's the reason it didn't catch on, not the fact it's 2-3 times more to run?
You basically need to invent a global conspiracy for that to make sense. It wasn't just one public, it was ALL the publics in all the nations. Sorry, but that's smells like BS.. it was the high complexity and cost and the fact renewables and batteries are improving far faster than nuclear.
The thing people don't get is that the best way to generate power will ALWAYS be the simplest way with reasonable costs than can be scaled globally and nuclear is none of those!
We don't need unlimited power. We just need the simplest way to meet global power needs. the simpler method that can accomplish that goal will win out because over time costs will always scale in favor of lower complexity. Less moving parts = less costs and nuclear is a lot of moving parts.
Viper_63 t1_j7vhyxd wrote
>You basically need to invent a global conspiracy for that to make sense.
The consensus in those circles seems to be that environmental groups/"the greens"/[party or group of choice you don't like] where all funded by the fossil fuel industry and the Soviet Union Russia to make nuclear look bad. I shit you not that what's I've seen people arguing on this subreddit.
no bro nuclear would totally be economic and viable if we would just poured more funds into it. Trust me bro, the key to making nuclear finally work is to build smaller and less efficient plants.
Like, have you actually looked at the subsidies nuclear has received? Granted this is nearly a decade old, but it's not like the situation has changed all that much:
It's not like we haven't already established that 100% renewables is viable:
>Recent studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and desalination well before 2050 is feasible. According to a review of the 181 peer-reviewed papers on 100% renewable energy that were published until 2018, "[t]he great majority of all publications highlights the technical feasibility and economic viability of 100% RE systems." A review of 97 papers published since 2004 and focusing on islands concluded that across the studies 100% renewable energy was found to be "technically feasible and economically viable." A 2022 review found that the main conclusion of most of the literature in the field is that 100% renewables is feasible worldwide at low cost.
>Existing technologies, including storage, are capable of generating a secure energy supply at every hour throughout the year. The sustainable energy system is more efficient and cost effective than the existing system. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated in their 2011 report that there is little that limits integrating renewable technologies for satisfying the total global energy demand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
The IPCC pointed this out over a decade ago.
Viper_63 t1_j7vitbj wrote
>We could have been 100% nuclear decades ago but it was the greens who shut down building of all new nuclear plants.
That's pure misinformation.
https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html
Nuclear basically isn't scalable beyond 1 TW globally. Geothermal energy alone has twice that potential. Nuclear is pretty much a dead end as far terrestial utility-scale use is concerned.
Blaming "[political group you don't like]" for the issues inherent to the technology isn't going to solve anything.
[deleted] t1_j7vmiqp wrote
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rileyoneill t1_j7xx5ne wrote
No. The hippies did zero damage to the nuclear industry. It was all WallStreet as the nuclear industry had constantly rising costs and weaker than expected long term earnings.
Any new nuke plant today will not be commercially viable in 10-15 years.
[deleted] t1_j7v84nn wrote
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ForHidingSquirrels OP t1_j7xherz wrote
Nuclear was failing in the US in the early 70s long before ‘the greensa’. Low knowledge nuclearvangelists say this because they don’t accept reality.
goodsam2 t1_j7vmfl4 wrote
I just don't see how it's possible with current tech.
I'm a huge optimist with renewables with batteries and their S curves. I just think we have all the answers to increase renewables and batteries for another decade(which we probably have a better idea of what to do in a decade in 8/9 years) but having a 100% wind/solar grid with batteries is hella expensive, some firm dispatchable energy is required. The amount of solar panels equal to 100% up time goes up a stupid amount.
I think we get to a floor of 60% renewable(based on current tech) but 100% is a problem.
Hydro can fill this some places but others I'm not so sure.
dontpet t1_j7vtzhd wrote
I look forward to the time when we are confronting the question of what to do about the last 10%.
I suspect we will have much better answers by then than nuclear power.
goodsam2 t1_j7vx1ov wrote
Me too.
Yeah I mean some niche places are getting close to the upper end but renewables can get us rather far.
Yeah we have clear answers about what to add on the marginal short to medium term for decarbonization. Something like 60% renewable on average is the estimated floor I've seen and by the time we get closer to that we'll know what to do for the next part or at least yeah a better idea.
I think geothermal is a clear winner with improved drilling techniques. Leading to less obvious geothermal being added. IDK how far that goes but lots of places could add some.
stevey_frac t1_j7ysvcs wrote
They are demonstrating geothermal boreholes with plasma drills now. The plan is to do a 20km deep borehole, in just 100 days, next year.
If that is actually achievable, we can drill a borehole next to every single coal plant in the world, and run the turbine off of super critical geothermal steam... Basically forever.
stevey_frac t1_j7ysn4t wrote
Because you don't just use all solar?
You mix solar, with geo-seperated wind farms, and existing hydro resources.
It tends to be sunny during the day and windy at night. It tends to be sunny in the summer and windy in winter. They kind of naturally dovetail. Also, off -Shore wind has incredibly high capacity factors...
Batteries, especially cheap and durable LFP batteries can definitely help cover peak loads, and then we start talking long scale storage, with things like ammonia / hydrogen storage, where we can start storing weeks worth of energy.
And even still, you probably have natural gas turbines hanging around for a few decades for those low periods, but we use them less and less as we increase storage and over build our wind and solar installs.
Huge thermal storage for industrial process heat is also coming.
goodsam2 t1_j7z6raw wrote
>And even still, you probably have natural gas turbines hanging around for a few decades for those low periods, but we use them less and less as we increase storage and over build our wind and solar installs.
That's not the 100% promised that I don't think we have answers to. We have answers for the next step for a decade+ but don't know the grid at 100% carbon free.
With geothermal like you mentioned in your other comment the math all works fine on top of already built hydro.
The study I always talks about 80% renewables with 12 hours of batteries (which is a shit ton) and 20% firm hydro, nuclear geothermal, biomass etc.
stevey_frac t1_j830yme wrote
I mean, the batteries are already coming. Ontario is bringing a 250 MW battery facility online point the next two years, as a part of a plan to deploy 1500 MW worth of battery capacity.
That's nearly 10% of our average demand being supplied by batteries, and it's cost effective to do so...
We can charge them with cheap overnight power, and use it to trim our peaks... Or prevent wind turbine from curtailing by starting to charge our battery banks.
12h hours of battery storage for our province should come out to only about 20 billion assuming you can do it with $100/kwh with LFP cells.
Considering we just spent $13 billion on a nuclear refurbishment, this doesn't seem crazy levels of investment at all.
My number might be a bit optimistic, but I'm assuming building the biggest battery plant in the world will net you some discounts.
rileyoneill t1_j7xx08e wrote
Here in California there are periods where during the day, renewables cover 70% of the demand on the CAISO. 15 years ago critics were claiming it was never going to surpass 10%. If we double the current solar, on most days, when the sun is shining, the solar output would be comparable to the total demand.
Renewables are dropping so much in price that it will be soon cheaper for households in the US to full rooftop solar and battery storage and then only buy the absolute minimum energy from the grid.
goodsam2 t1_j7xxl3x wrote
But that's the thing is that California has a bunch of natural gas peaked plants because it's hard to get over 70% renewable.
I mean double the solar panels and you are adding excess capacity at the wrong times. The duck curve is a thing so the marginal value added from a solar panel means getting over 80% is incredibly hard with batteries.
Having some amount of firm and dispatchable power is necessary unless our batteries improve an insane amount. Lithium ion isn't the best store of electricity over say 6 months when you are banking solar energy from the winter.
rileyoneill t1_j7y3g6n wrote
We had all the natural gas first. The renewables have only really been added over the last 10 years, and the majority of them since like 2016. That 70% is not any sort of hard limit. It was literally the maximum renewable today on the CAISO. Despite still being winter, our solar still puts out and hits its capacity all the time. We get sunshine in the winter months.
We do not have more solar than we have demand. Solar is around 13GW on the CAISO. The demand has never been under 18GW, most days its in the mid 20s, and in the summer days its in the 30-50GW range. So this idea that solar over producing is somehow a big problem is not founded on reality.
We do not need batteries for 6 months. We only need batteries for about 2 days, and even 8 hours would reduce our natural gas consumption considerably.
The plan is to keep installing solar, wind, and batteries and gradually ween off natural gas, to eventually between those three main systems we are not running natural gas. We might keep the plants around and they might get fired up 2 weeks a year, but it would be an enormous reduction.
We have about 10GWH of battery on the CAISO. I figure we are about 1% where it needs to be.
goodsam2 t1_j7y3zot wrote
The point is not maximum 100% is easy but 100% on the cloudy not windy days you need electricity. There is 0 downtime.
There is enough to continue to reduce consumption but there basically is not a 100% renewable grid. The natural gas would be run sporadically contributing around 10% of power on the low end.
Getting to 100% electricity is hard with renewables. I'm not disputing 60% or even up to like 80%, 90% is a little niche these days.
We have the technology to make massive improvements but not the answer to 100% renewable 0 down time.
dunderpust t1_j7yo1i9 wrote
Some people thinks that this means we can just give up on renewables. As if in 20 years time, when we are reaching the crunch points, we will had have no technological development at all. Heck, if massive electrification happens and we get, say, 70% of our energy needs from low-carbon sources, we have already bought ourselves time for further technological development, and that's a huge boon already.
goodsam2 t1_j7z6xd1 wrote
Yeah but it's a huge distinction. We don't have the technology to finish the job but we do have the technology for the next steps for a decade+
dunderpust t1_j828fx6 wrote
Yep, no excuse for not going full speed ahead.
rileyoneill t1_j830cq4 wrote
We have enough natural gas to run the entire grid during a windless and cloudy day. Our demand on those days is usually fairly low. The extra deman for brownouts was due to us having brief periods of 50GW of demand during an extreme heatwave.
The periods of extreme demand do not occur during cloudless days, the demand is brought on by AC. I have never seen on the CAISO where the daytime solar demand is under 20%, statewide storms like that are extremely rare.
My point is that if we are 90% renewables and 10% natural gas, that is a huge improvement. Then perhaps it can be 91% and 9% natural gas.
Because 6 months out of the year is extremely predictable weather regarding sunshine, we can probably get by with 300GWH of battery, 70GW of solar, and 25GW of wind. May 1st, October 31st could likely be 95% renewable.
Tony Seba of Rethink X made a presentation where they actually went and tracked historical weather data, then designed a system that would have 100% uptime. They then took the cost projected prices for renewables and gave capacity numbers for solar, wind and battery storage for California, Texas, and New England.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zgwiQ6BoLA
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The main idea is that solar will be so cheap that it will be viable to just overbuild by some huge factor so that on cloudy days where output is diminished by 80%, the remaining 20% is still collecting and that 20% is enough to satisfy demand, taking the edge off the batteries.
In one example he proposed 330GW of solar for California. Our normal demand is 20-35GW (with peak summer at 50GW). But it would be 30GW powering the grid and 300GW charging batteries. So every 1 hour of sunshine covers 8-10 hours of battery storage.
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