So-called renewables don't solve the problem.

[David B. Benson]

Surprised and pleased to read this article in TNYT:
www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/business/climate-carbon-renewables.html

Nothing that regulars do not know but this provides a reference to an article in a newspaper of record.

[huon]

"Stanford University Professor Mark Z. Jacobson Sues Prestigious Team of Scientists for Debunking 100% Renewables"
environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/11/1/stanford-university-professor-mark-z-jacobson-sues-prestigious-team-of-scientists-for-debunking-100-renewables

Barry Brook tweeted about this lawsuit, "Absolutely indefensible behavior, striking at the heart of critical scientific discourse."

The New York Times had a good piece in June about the underlying controversy.
www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/business/energy-environment/renewable-energy-national-academy-matt-jacobson.html

[David B. Benson]

Expansion of wind and solar power too slow to stop climate change 
2021 Oct 18 
phys.org 
phys.org/news/2021-10-expansion-solar-power-climate.html

Are not going to build enough fast enough to limit global temperature increase to 2 C.

[David B. Benson]

The Era of Cheap Renewables Grinds To A Halt
Irina Slav
2022 Jan 25
Oilprice.com
oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Era-of-Cheap-Renewables-Grinds-To-A-Halt.html

Materials shortages have sent prices way up.  This opinion piece states that it will stay that way.

[David B. Benson]

The Biggest Problem With The Green Energy Revolution  
Gail Tverberg 
2022 Feb 28 
OilPrice
oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Biggest-Problem-With-The-Green-Energy-Revolution.html

Overly dependent upon the weather.  Even hydro requires rain.

[David B. Benson]

The Finite Factor Standing In The Way Of The Renewable Revolution
Irina Slav
2022 Aug 15
OilPrice
oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/The-Finite-Factor-Standing-In-The-Way-Of-The-Renewable-Revolution.html

Not enough room for the required solar panels and wind farms onshore.

[David B. Benson]

EU proposes an e0.18/kWh price cap on solar, wind
2022 Sep 14
PV Magazine
www.pv-magazine.com/2022/09/14/eu-proposing-e0-18-kwh-price-cap-on-solar-wind/

That is 18 Euro-cents per kiloWatt-hour.
Once again we see that free market principles fail in the electricity markets.

[eclipse]

Aug 17, 2022 3:05:09 GMT 9.5 David B. Benson said:

The Finite Factor Standing In The Way Of The Renewable Revolution
Irina Slav
2022 Aug 15
OilPrice
oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/The-Finite-Factor-Standing-In-The-Way-Of-The-Renewable-Revolution.html

Not enough room for the required solar panels and wind farms onshore.

OK - I've been a fan of nuclear since you guys spent all that time with me learning the basics back in 2010? Forever ago.
But now that we're here in 2023 there's a few things to note.
Renewables have been on a economies-of-scale cost reduction to ridiculously low price. We used to ask how to do a 100% grid - and winter was a terrible bottleneck! It looked like you had to store power for months just to get through winter.
Then as news of the price reductions got out and solar was 10% the cost of over a decade ago - I started to see a new trend in renewables papers.
Massive OVERBUILD. That is, if winter halves your renewables output, then double your renewables! Don't even try 100% - do 200%!

The modelling shows with enough HVDC transmission around Australia, and with decent overbuild, most places can get by with 2 days storage from off-river pumped hydro. If one spot has a really bad week in winter and uses up their 2 days, they can start to borrow storage from other places. There are all sorts of questions around this OVERBUILD strategy - but a number of independent models are starting to come together and say the same thing. But there might be reasons to attack these models - but this idea that there isn't enough land just needs to die!

Consider - if we cover HALF the world’s rooftops with solar, it would provide all today’s electricity needs. theconversation.com/solar-panels-on-half-the-worlds-roofs-could-meet-its-entire-electricity-demand-new-research-169302 Cover ALL the world’s rooftops and you’ve got enough to electrify transport and industry. Singapore's Dr. Thomas Reindl points out that floating solar panels on just a tenth of human made fresh-water reservoirs is ALL today's electricity use. The solar panels reduce evaporation of our precious fresh water, and the water keeps the solar cool and efficient. If we cover ALL our water reservoirs it is 10 TIMES today's electricity! youtu.be/2hwpXCjmkRo So ALL our rooftops and ALL our water reserves would be 12 TIMES today’s electricity use. (And I haven’t even mentioned off-shore wind yet.) Even Japan with their huge population and tiny islands can power themselves 14 times over. Indonesia can float enough solar in their calm oceans to power THE WORLD. This myth that solar and wind will take up too much land just needs to die - and it stinks of fear from big oil.

I'm still a fan of nuclear but Lazard says renewables are 1/4 the cost of nuclear. That's plenty of room for overbuild in Australia - even if as Professor Andrew Blakers says 15% of the cost is storage, 15% is transmission - and the other 70% is wind and solar. It's just so cheap! By the end of the year solar could be 1/5 the cost of nuclear per kwh. AND I KNOW that's not the same as baseload - but that's the raw data we feed into the models that calculate it all based on Australia's weather over the last 40 years. (Griffith's Uni does this.) It still comes up around $70 per mwh - but could be heading down cheaper and cheaper.

[cyrilr]

Mar 3, 2023 16:12:59 GMT 9.5 eclipse said:

Aug 17, 2022 3:05:09 GMT 9.5 David B. Benson said:

The Finite Factor Standing In The Way Of The Renewable Revolution
Irina Slav
2022 Aug 15
OilPrice
oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/The-Finite-Factor-Standing-In-The-Way-Of-The-Renewable-Revolution.html

Not enough room for the required solar panels and wind farms onshore.

OK - I've been a fan of nuclear since you guys spent all that time with me learning the basics back in 2010? Forever ago.
But now that we're here in 2023 there's a few things to note.
Renewables have been on a economies-of-scale cost reduction to ridiculously low price. We used to ask how to do a 100% grid - and winter was a terrible bottleneck! It looked like you had to store power for months just to get through winter.
Then as news of the price reductions got out and solar was 10% the cost of over a decade ago - I started to see a new trend in renewables papers.
Massive OVERBUILD. That is, if winter halves your renewables output, then double your renewables! Don't even try 100% - do 200%!

The modelling shows with enough HVDC transmission around Australia, and with decent overbuild, most places can get by with 2 days storage from off-river pumped hydro. If one spot has a really bad week in winter and uses up their 2 days, they can start to borrow storage from other places. There are all sorts of questions around this OVERBUILD strategy - but a number of independent models are starting to come together and say the same thing. But there might be reasons to attack these models - but this idea that there isn't enough land just needs to die!

Consider - if we cover HALF the world’s rooftops with solar, it would provide all today’s electricity needs. theconversation.com/solar-panels-on-half-the-worlds-roofs-could-meet-its-entire-electricity-demand-new-research-169302 Cover ALL the world’s rooftops and you’ve got enough to electrify transport and industry. Singapore's Dr. Thomas Reindl points out that floating solar panels on just a tenth of human made fresh-water reservoirs is ALL today's electricity use. The solar panels reduce evaporation of our precious fresh water, and the water keeps the solar cool and efficient. If we cover ALL our water reservoirs it is 10 TIMES today's electricity! youtu.be/2hwpXCjmkRo So ALL our rooftops and ALL our water reserves would be 12 TIMES today’s electricity use. (And I haven’t even mentioned off-shore wind yet.) Even Japan with their huge population and tiny islands can power themselves 14 times over. Indonesia can float enough solar in their calm oceans to power THE WORLD. This myth that solar and wind will take up too much land just needs to die - and it stinks of fear from big oil.

I'm still a fan of nuclear but Lazard says renewables are 1/4 the cost of nuclear. That's plenty of room for overbuild in Australia - even if as Professor Andrew Blakers says 15% of the cost is storage, 15% is transmission - and the other 70% is wind and solar. It's just so cheap! By the end of the year solar could be 1/5 the cost of nuclear per kwh. AND I KNOW that's not the same as baseload - but that's the raw data we feed into the models that calculate it all based on Australia's weather over the last 40 years. (Griffith's Uni does this.) It still comes up around $70 per mwh - but could be heading down cheaper and cheaper.

Nuclear industry in the Wst screwed itself up royally, for sure. China, Russia and S Korea seem to be the only suppliers that kept themselves sane and capable.

But I don’t see how fitting 500 GWp of solar on the LV grid in a grid with 100 GW average draw is going to work. Like trying to put a 500 hp engine in 100 hp car. Ya gonna break it unless you replace literally everything.

Here in Holland we get 10% capacity factor from pv. So we need 900% overbuild. That’s crazy. Utilities are already complaining about the overloaded LV gird at 10% penetration. You would need resistance dump banks at every street corner for this to work. And then you are dumping most energy generated. Which is also crazy. And you still generate nil power in winter - right when energy demand peaks...

[cyrilr]

As an example here in Holland the average draw is about 15 GW and basically never over 20 GW. The LV grid takes only a fraction of that because households and small businesses use only a fraction of the electricity. Hard to find data but probably in the 5 to 10 GW range somewhere.

We get about 10% capacity factor with PV on rooftops (as little as 4% for badly installed ones, like facing north, with about 11% for ideally installed south facing). Using all rooftops we would have to use east and west and some north facing rooftops. We would get around 8% capacity factor.

To get 15 GW average over the year would need (15/0.08)= 188 GWp of PV (DC rated).

Putting 188 GW of intermittent uncontrollable power on a 5 or 10 GW LV grid. I don't know what to say. If we spend a fortune on resistance banks at every street corner and God knows how much in upgrading the LV grid. We'd have to go for industrial voltage (380V) probably. And we haven't supplied industry and heavy electric transport and so on, which guzzles half our electricity consumption. And we still get next to nothing in winter. We get about 1% capacity factor in Winter on average through the winter months. So 2 GW only. So we can't shut down our fossil plants. We'd need to install all this PV, make huge infra grid investments, and can't close down a single fossil generator basically.

How is this a plan?

[cyrilr]

Sept 15, 2022 2:52:29 GMT 9.5 David B. Benson said:

EU proposes an e0.18/kWh price cap on solar, wind
2022 Sep 14
PV Magazine
www.pv-magazine.com/2022/09/14/eu-proposing-e0-18-kwh-price-cap-on-solar-wind/

That is 18 Euro-cents per kiloWatt-hour.
Once again we see that free market principles fail in the electricity markets.

But the renewables people keep telling me that solar now costs 2 cents per kWh in sunny areas and 4 cents per kWh in cloudy areas.