Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

liveforphysics said:
What if you just had 2x the pannels? Pannels cost will approach cost of roofing materials alone. Sun just keeps shining auto-magically.
This mindset works for low population densities but is not applicable to where millions of people live in large cities.
 
liveforphysics said:
craneplaneguy said:
Ask somebody who is off grid and REALLY needing some middle of a long winter's night charge on their expensive house battery how much a gallon of gasoline is worth......
...... You will not see a true off grid home without a serious backup generator, something no one likes to talk about much!

What if you just had 2x the pannels? Pannels cost will approach cost of roofing materials alone.

Your generator is only going to give you about ~10kWh useful per gallon, if you feel comfortable with a 10gal gas can and your generator you may also feel comfortable with a 100kWh battery. .......

?? Increasing the number of panels wont make the sun shine any quicker.
Photo Voltaic panels available for the same price as coated steel roofing sheets.....yea,..sure !
And an extra 100kWh of battery ($75k ?) instead of a $500 emergency backup generator ? .. hmm ?, difficult decision ? :roll:
 
liveforphysics said:
Your generator is only going to give you about ~10kWh useful per gallon, if you feel comfortable with a 10gal gas can and your generator you may also feel comfortable with a 100kWh battery. The biggest difference is, the sun's going to shine anyways, but the gasoline relies on a complex web of pumping and transporting and electricity spent refining and then fuel spent transporting it again to a gas station, then you spend more energy to pick it up and bring it home. Sun just keeps shining auto-magically.
Yep. But if your goal is dealing with occasional blackouts, a generator is going to be a much more useful item.

On the other hand, if your goal is living through the First Zombie Apocalypse, solar + big battery makes a lot more sense.

BTW if you want the best of both worlds, get a grid tie solar system with a Secure Power output, plus either a cheap UPS or a generator. That way you get solar power during the day without batteries - and if you want power at night, use the UPS or the generator. UPSes don't store much energy - enough for some lights and maybe a fan - but they are very, very cheap.

(Note - gasoline generators aren't a great idea for blackout backup power because gasoline goes bad after a while. Propane never goes bad and it keeps generators cleaner. Which is one reason almost all whole-house backup generators are propane or natural gas.)
 
Economic growth may well be closely coupled to energy consumption, but over 20+ years several Western countries have shown significant reductions in per-capita CO2 emissions while also significantly increasing GDP. I believe the primary reason for this is a reduction in coal use (often replaced by natural gas).
 
Punx0r said:
I believe the primary reason for this is a reduction in coal use (often replaced by natural gas).
Sort of. I think the primary reason is increased efficiency. Look at lightbulb efficiency, aircraft engine efficiency, vehicle efficiency, A/C efficiency etc. That's partly tied in to coal power, since coal plants are very inefficient - around 35%. Modern natural gas plants are closer to 50%, with CCGT plants being over 50%. Note that you can't do that with coal, since turbines will not handle the combustion products of coal. You can do that by reducing the coal to syngas first, but that step takes energy as well - and decreases overall efficiency further.
 
The nice thing with coal to syngas is that the carbon is avaialable for sequestration before any combustion. If we had something to do with it.
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Solar PV can be a nice carbon reduction to the electrical portion of our energy right now without any major changes if we let it just skim what it can off the top of the baseload when it is sunny and take the fossil fuel plants off of idle for the rest of the time. Smart grids can help solar make a good contribution without storage by increasing the heating or cooling during peak solar production and then coasting on thermal inertia in the buildings when it gets dark. If EV's could charge only during mid-day they would be running on solar. But they would have to charge at work to do this and this would be a big change in infrastructure since most EV's charge at home, at night right now.
 
sendler2112 said:
The nice thing with coal to syngas is that the carbon is avaialable for sequestration before any combustion.
Sure. But keep in mind that if you remove the CO from syngas (leaving basically hydrogen) you are going to be down to something like 10% efficiency - because you are getting rid of all the carbon (which is more than half the heating value of coal) and using a lot of energy in the process (since producing syngas requires energy.)
Smart grids can help solar make a good contribution without storage by increasing the heating or cooling during peak solar production and then coasting on thermal inertia in the buildings when it gets dark. If EV's could charge only during mid-day they would be running on solar. But they would have to charge at work to do this and this would be a big change in infrastructure since most EV's charge at home, at night right now.
I don't think it will be much of a change in infrastructure. Here at my company we have about 30 level II chargers and about 120 level I chargers (fancy name for an AC outlet) that people charge at. They use the energy generated by our 417kw solar power system. But even without solar, putting in outlets is pretty easy; they are a few dollars at Home Depot.
 
sendler2112 said:
Jil said:
and its technical/economical ability to become the main source of energy in the next decades.
For intermittents go to more than 40% of the grid is all dependent on the ability to build enough storage. The argument I keep seeing presented here is based on the faith that "we did it before".
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What we did before was all the gift of incredibly dense energy from fossil fuel. We need to make sure we get the decisions right for 100% replacement including liquid fuels before the crude oil runs out which is much sooner than most people think. At which point we have lost the dense energy that "did it before".

Crude oil isn't going to run out. It would, if we continued to use ever increasing quantities - but only in the same way that there's a finite amount of water in the oceans. Technically true, but irreverent for any sensible discussion. What happens in reality is that oil that's easy to obtain runs out. If demand persists, we move on to the next easiest option to obtain more. With more constrained supply comes price increases. With price increases, we see demand tempered. Oil will not run out, it will become *uneconomical* for many of its current, wasteful uses. If we continued with consumption and prices rise due to true scarcity, then we would see the same shift to renewable sources as we're seeing now. Unfortunately we do not capture the *true* cost in oil/gas/coal. The true cost is the disastrous effects all this combustion is having on our sealed life support system.

The decisions that you're referencing, who do you think makes them? You might say politicians or CEO's or even us individuals, but the only answer is money. If you want to influence moving away from fossil fuel sources the only option is to make them *more expensive*. Plenty of countries have done this, those with strong moral obligation and the resources to pay for increased energy prices. Germany, Denmark etc lead the way by leveraging additional costs on fossil sources or subsidizing renewables. Those subsidies allowed an industry to grow to support them. Thanks to economies of scale and consistent technological improvements from increased R&D budgets the reality is renewables no longer require subsidies, they're making fossil sources uneconomical on their own. I'm not going to go out of my way to convince anybody of this, there's plenty of evidence out there, much of it linked in this thread. Don't bother spouting numbers from 5 years ago, this is a recent shift.

In order to accelerate this trend which is just now at tipping point, the cost delta must be increased. Manufacturing capacity stems from demand, demand will stem from financial delta. If replacing an aging coal plant with solar/wind/storage is cheaper, selfish business desire will make it happen. If it's *much* cheaper, it will happen much faster. We might have reached a critical junction where this process is self sustaining, but we can still ACCELERATE it further.

Your capacity concerns are irrelevant. No one person/country/company needs to solve those problems, the aggregate of business decisions will decide our fate. What makes a difference is moving the needle on those business decisions. Influence policy to capture the *real* cost of continuing to burn things. Hold accountable to the public businesses with environmentally disastrous practices. Influence personal consumption by making changes in your own life and in turn inspiring change in others around you.

Armchair engineering the optimum spread of technologies and arguing the merits of your picks doesn't help shit. You should be encouraging the growing perception that renewable energy is a feasible replacement, not naysaying the incredibly encouraging progress that is being made.
 
This article states coal gasification plants achieve 40% which is on par with a coal burning plant.
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https://energy.gov/fe/how-coal-gasification-power-plants-work
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My building has 55 employees and 2 level two chargers. And that is only because it is a Mercedes dealership. I will have to look closer but I don't recall seeing any level 2 chargers at the city building or county office building of my small town which employ 600. There may be a couple. Charging level 1 isn't going to help much if you are trying to get all EV charging done between 11AM and 4PM so it is all solar without taking away from the solar baseload you are trying for also. Most people that commute by EV charge them at night which for the majority of grids is considered helpful.
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Just adding 30 level 2 chargers at my dealer at 5kW each is 340A at 440V which would need a new dedicated service from the pole. It would really be a big change to do 300 charge stations at either office building. You would need a dedicated high voltage feed and their own transformer station. Beyond what Tesla already does at any it's mid sized dealers which usually have 1 MW of Supercharging.
 
Ohbse said:
Crude oil isn't going to run out. It would, if we continued to use ever increasing quantities - but only in the same way that there's a finite amount of water in the oceans.
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Well that's pretty ridiculous comparing remaining oil to the ocean. There will be some oil stranded but you might as well say it has run out if it has an EROEI of 1:1. And there is not much time left for oil. Which we are still hooked on.
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Ohbse said:
Armchair engineering the optimum spread of technologies and arguing the merits of your picks doesn't help shit.
I noticed while rereading the #noappforthat manifesto that he used a term that I feel is quite applicable and will start using more. "tactical decision". We are making tactical decisions right now that will affect the level of misery our descendants will suffer as they try to coast down from the current fossil fuel high 50- 100 years from now. If we foolishly do not consider the best plan utilizing a system view we could find out too late that the path we took was inadequate and would no longer have the dense fossil fuel wealth we would need to build the gigantic things to change course.
Ohbse said:
You should be encouraging the growing perception that renewable energy is a feasible replacement, not naysaying the incredibly encouraging progress that is being made.
That is the view of many in the general public but I feel it is quite underinformed regarding the need for vast amounts of storage to ever allow solar PV to maintain a stable grid.
 
Ohbse said:
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The decisions that you're referencing, who do you think makes them? You might say politicians or CEO's or even us individuals, but the only answer is money. If you want to influence moving away from fossil fuel sources the only option is to make them *more expensive*. Plenty of countries have done this, those with strong moral obligation and the resources to pay for increased energy prices. Germany, Denmark etc lead the way by leveraging additional costs on fossil sources or subsidizing renewables. .......
Unfortunately that model is broken. Both Germany and Denmark are rethinking their energy markets.
Those countries ( and add our own state od South Australia in there too) have not leveraged subsidy and rebates costs onto Fossil fuel sources, but onto Electricity costs generally such that they have the highest power costs in the world.
The energy market had been deliberately manipulated to fund RE investment
If it could be a free open market without subsidies, and consumers could choose between sources at true costs, then the situation would be different.
RE (Wind, Solar) generation costs are no where near competitive with thermal options in a free market



....Armchair engineering the optimum spread of technologies and arguing the merits of your picks doesn't help shit. You should be encouraging the growing perception that renewable energy is a feasible replacement, not naysaying the incredibly encouraging progress that is being made.
Why should anyone encourage a "perception" that may be false ?
If it is as economical as you believe, it will sell itself. Money will certainly drive the direction
If it is not as simple as you think, with potential major implications not being disclosed, then it is essential that these issues are identified and explained before real problems occurr, and i dont mean just crippling high energy costs.
Note, several states here have now advised of new "Demand Management " schemes for the coming summer..
( EG.. Dont run A/c below 26degC, turn off pool pumps, reshedule industrial smelters, etc, etc) in order to reduce peak demand by possibly 200MW.
There is a real danger of "rolling blackouts" this year.
This is a DIRECT result of lack of government policy to maintain sufficient "base load" as coal fired generation has been shut down, The energy "market" is like many countries , with grants, subsidies, tax breaks , etc for RE projects..so that is all that has been built..obviously good business with much money to be made..too much to the wrong people !
What is needed is a balance of technologies to enable a reliable, consistent, supply, which will need to be planned and managed , not just left to somehow hope it develops by chance.
 
Hillhater said:
Unfortunately that model is broken. Both Germany and Denmark are rethinking their energy markets.
Those countries ( and add our own state od South Australia in there too) have not leveraged subsidy and rebates costs onto Fossil fuel sources, but onto Electricity costs generally such that they have the highest power costs in the world.
The energy market had been deliberately manipulated to fund RE investment
If it could be a free open market without subsidies, and consumers could choose between sources at true costs, then the situation would be different.
RE (Wind, Solar) generation costs are no where near competitive with thermal options in a free market

Just because other countries have imperfectly achieved the outcome, doesn't make the outcome impossible for others. You're correct, subsidies were not sourced from where they should have been, primarily due to political will - a force that is dramatically shifting as people realise the coming storm. They did however subsidise things anyway, now resulting in a self sustaining industry that would not have been possible without initial assistance.

Why should anyone encourage a "perception" that may be false ?

Let me rephrase, we should be encouraging recognition of a recently developed new reality, that renewables are cost competitive *today*

If it is as economical as you believe, it will sell itself. Money will certainly drive the direction

Correct, it is. Right now. en masse. See enormous projects for wind/solar and storage being greenlit in countries without subsidies or with corrupt incumbent governments that have skin in the energy game.

If it is not as simple as you think, with potential major implications not being disclosed, then it is essential that these issues are identified and explained before real problems occurr, and i dont mean just crippling high energy costs.
Note, several states here have now advised of new "Demand Management " schemes for the coming summer..
( EG.. Dont run A/c below 26degC, turn off pool pumps, reshedule industrial smelters, etc, etc) in order to reduce peak demand by possibly 200MW.
There is a real danger of "rolling blackouts" this year.
This is a DIRECT result of lack of government policy to maintain sufficient "base load" as coal fired generation has been shut down, The energy "market" is like many countries , with grants, subsidies, tax breaks , etc for RE projects..so that is all that has been built..obviously good business with much money to be made..too much to the wrong people !
What is needed is a balance of technologies to enable a reliable, consistent, supply, which will need to be planned and managed , not just left to somehow hope it develops by chance.


Everything you have described regarding Australias energy situation is correct, but your perspective is flawed. Your government has failed (in dramatic fashion!) to govern. Governing doesn't mean picking which power plants to run, it doesn't even mean subsidies necessarily. They should not be deciding which coal plant gets shut down or looking to build their own generating assets. Governments are notoriously inefficient things. They should be setting policy which shape the cost factors and in turn shape decision making. Set a cost for failing to supply essential demand. Industry will respond by hardening supplies, building more resiliency, improving disaster planning etc. Set a cost for burning things and poisoning your own populace and accelerating climate change, industry will respond by finding cost effective alternatives. If renewable energy is not cost competitive in Australia, but appears to be everywhere else, then clearly Australia has made some poor policy decisions. It's perhaps not the fact that renewable is expensive, but that you've made dirty fueled sources far too cheap. What you actually pay as a consumer is actually a different discussion, largely driven by profits. For another example of how *not* to do it see the Australian broadband initiatives. Turns out a state own monopoly with ever changing goals based on the whim of constantly changing governments that's still somehow expected to make a profit as the top priority isn't an effective way of delivering world class connectivity to the nation. Huh. Perhaps it'll be somehow different with power?

You don't shove a car sideways, tires screaming in a cloud of smoke every time you need to change lanes. You turn the steering wheel.
 
sendler2112 said:
Ohbse said:
Crude oil isn't going to run out. It would, if we continued to use ever increasing quantities - but only in the same way that there's a finite amount of water in the oceans.

Well that's pretty ridiculous comparing remaining oil to the ocean. There will be some oil stranded but you might as well say it has run out if it has an EROEI of 1:1. And there is not much time left for oil. Which we are still hooked on.

I stand by my point. EROEI is dependant on the efficiency of your extraction methodology. Driven by profit motive, industry has found ever more efficient means of economically extracting products thought to be impossible not that many years ago. See the US domestic oil market. There are huge reserves just in the US, but LOW prices (due to geopolitical effects combined with stagnant demand) mean that these aren't economic to tap right now. Russias reserves are enormous, Alaska's similarly so. NZ has very substantial untapped oil that we choose to leave in the ground. We might not if somebody was willing to pay $400 a barrel.
sendler2112 said:
Ohbse said:
You should be encouraging the growing perception that renewable energy is a feasible replacement, not naysaying the incredibly encouraging progress that is being made.
That is the view of many in the general public but I feel it is quite underinformed regarding the need for vast amounts of storage to ever allow solar PV to maintain a stable grid.

If we were building a hypothetical grid from scratch, say on an island and we opted for exclusively PV, then yes - of course we would require substantial storage. That is not the case. If 100% of the daytime energy requirements are met by PV and we burn gas for the (comparatively much lower) overnight demand, then that's a *huge* win. The fact that it's not ALL sourced from the sun doesn't negate the benefit from MOST of it being clean. You seem to be defeated by the fact that it's a big task.. but the sooner we start making improvements, the better. Assuming that we apply something approaching the true costs of fossil generation (via carbon tax, emissions standards etc) then every bit of solar, wind or geothermal that comes online is going to be displacing the dirtiest of sources. Raising awareness of the fact that it's POSSIBLE is huge because policy is written by politicians, politicians are elected by people, most people have zero idea of the current state of clean energy.
 
Hillhater said:
What is needed is a balance of technologies to enable a reliable, consistent, supply, which will need to be planned and managed , not just left to somehow hope it develops by chance.
Yes. And everybody needs to keep in mind this discussion keeps mainly focusing on replacing what are using now as electricity. Which is now down to 1/4 of all energy consumption. Much of the rest that is overlooked and taken for granted goes to areas that we can do without even less like liquid fuel for agriculture, heavy mining, processing and heavy transportation. And gas for heat. It gets very cold where I live and it is sometimes dismally cloudy and snowy for days at a time. All across the Northern USA. I personally don't see how many big cities above 40 latitude will be viable in the winter with zero fossil fuel use.
 
Ohbse said:
I stand by my point. EROEI is dependant on the efficiency of your extraction methodology. Driven by profit motive, industry has found ever more efficient means of economically extracting products thought to be impossible not that many years ago.
We are already drilling in 3,000 feet of water, fraking shale, and digging up tar sands at 12:1 to get crude now. How long do you envision before crude is $200/ barrel? Do you really think the current pricing will hold out for another 50 years? What does $200 oil do to the world economy? We are nowhere close to replacing liquid fuels for agriculture and heavy mining/ transport. Not even in 50 years. An electric version of this tractor would take 2,300 kWh per day. How many similar farm machines and 10 times larger earth movers, and giant cargo ships, are running at this very moment? Where will we get all of those batteries?
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sendler2112 said:
This article states coal gasification plants achieve 40% which is on par with a coal burning plant.

Right - but those plants don't sequester the carbon (in the form of CO) from the syngas; they use it as-is after taking out just the contaminants (H2S, etc) and leave the carbon. From the article: "In Integrated Gasification Combined-Cycle (IGCC) systems, the syngas is cleaned of its hydrogen sulfide, ammonia and particulate matter and is burned as fuel in a combustion turbine (much like natural gas is burned in a turbine)." You mentioned that "the nice thing with coal to syngas is that the carbon is available for sequestration before any combustion." If you do that, you lose much of the energy in the syngas, drastically lowering the remaining energy available.

I agree that if you do not sequester the carbon it's a lot more efficient. I doubt that it reaches 40% though; that's almost as good as a natural gas plant, and methane is much easier to work with than coal. I wonder if they mean that burning the syngas alone is that efficient? That's believable, although that's also cheating - since the plant does not use syngas as a feedstock, it uses coal.

My building has 55 employees and 2 level two chargers. And that is only because it is a Mercedes dealership.
OK. That's a lot more per employee than my company has - 30 for 10K people, so at the same penetration rate you'd have .3 chargers if you have 55 employees and 45 customers at any given time. Having two chargers means you have much more available than we do per person.
I will have to look closer but I don't recall seeing any level 2 chargers at the city building or county office building of my small town which employ 600. . . . Just adding 30 level 2 chargers at my dealer at 5kW each is 340A at 440V which would need a new dedicated service from the pole. It would really be a big change to do 300 charge stations at either office building. You would need a dedicated high voltage feed and their own transformer station. Beyond what Tesla already does at any it's mid sized dealers which usually have 1 MW of Supercharging.
Even at that 600 person building, adding 2 level 2 chargers and 10 outlets would get you more charging than we have now per person - and that certainly wouldn't need any unusual electrical service.

As time goes on that will change, of course. At very high penetrations of EV's (say 50%) that 600 person office would need 150-300 charging locations, and at that point you'd need a buildout similar to the one my company has. By that point you'd probably be using a local solar array to share between grid tie and EV charging to help handle the load.

Charging level 1 isn't going to help much if you are trying to get all EV charging done between 11AM and 4PM
Charging between 9am and 4pm (peak solar hours) at level 1 gives you 10 kwhr which is enough for 35 miles - which would cover most commutes in the US.

Of course (as you mention) in the short term utilities will want you to charge at night, since they have baseline generation that they can't use at night, and it's cheaper for them to run it than to try to shut it down or throttle it. As baseline generation declines it will make more sense to charge during the day.
 
Ohbse said:
They should be setting policy which shape the cost factors and in turn shape decision making. Set a cost for failing to supply essential demand. Industry will respond by hardening supplies, building more resiliency, improving disaster planning etc. Set a cost for burning things and poisoning your own populace and accelerating climate change, industry will respond by finding cost effective alternatives.
This is key. To make progress we have to:

1) Assign a real value to externalities. Here in the US, about 7500 people a year are killed due to coal power plant particulate pollution. That is a big improvement over the stats in 2004 (24,000 people) but it is still a cost. No one likes to put a price on the taking of a human life, but it sure as heck ain't free (in societal costs OR healthcare costs.) The SOx those plants emit cause acid rain that damages buildings and bridges. The contamination to water tables, waterways and farms due to slurry and ash storage/disposal has a cost. The carbon dioxide they emit causes warming, which results in increased damage from flooding, relocation of shore communities and farm losses.

All that has to be included in the power cost if it is going to reflect what that energy source truly costs.

2) Do real time pricing for power. People find innumerable ways of saving as much money as possible. If the price of power mirrors, in real time, its abundance or scarcity, then people will reduce their use of it when it gets expensive, and use a lot of it when it gets cheap (or free.)

3) Make the infrastructure available. Now that's things like EV chargers, usually done via incentives to private businesses. That way people can make a realistic choice between transportation alternatives. In the future it may be catenary power (for trucking) or dynamic roadways (for car charging.) Or even hydrogen, although I am not a fan of hydrogen as a fuel right now.
 
Ohbse said:
Just because other countries have imperfectly achieved the outcome, doesn't make the outcome impossible for others. You're correct, subsidies were not sourced from where they should have been, primarily due to political will - a force that is dramatically shifting as people realise the coming storm. They did however subsidise things anyway, now resulting in a self sustaining industry that would not have been possible without initial assistance....
but its not self sustaining,..!.
there are still huge subsidies and tax concessions for RE., in all the countries mentioned.
And no one has set a workable model to avoid the issues that "early adopter" countries ..High energy costs, grid instability, unreliable supply, etc.
Your proposal to " shape the cost factors" is just rewording for "Carbon tax" or the parallel "Renewable discount Certificates" etc that have all been tried , and all just lined the pockets of the generators by increasing retail costs.



Ohbse said:
Everything you have described regarding Australias energy situation is correct, but your perspective is flawed. Your government has failed (in dramatic fashion!) to govern. Governing doesn't mean picking which power plants to run, it doesn't even mean subsidies necessarily. They should not be deciding which coal plant gets shut down or looking to build their own generating assets. Governments are notoriously inefficient things. They should be setting policy which shape the cost factors and in turn shape decision making. Set a cost for failing to supply essential demand. Industry will respond by hardening supplies, building more resiliency, improving disaster planning etc. Set a cost for burning things and poisoning your own populace and accelerating climate change, industry will respond by finding cost effective alternatives. If renewable energy is not cost competitive in Australia, but appears to be everywhere else, then clearly Australia has made some poor policy decisions. It's perhaps not the fact that renewable is expensive, but that you've made dirty fueled sources far too cheap.....l.
Australia has not made fuel sources too cheap, (they are international prices), all that has happened here is the same as Denmark and Germany....incentives for RE generation simply attracted corporate greed to build RE so they could harvest the subsidies , with no responsibility for the "Big Picture" of total supply requirements.
that worked for a few years , until the % of RE became significant ( 10%) and the aging base load fossil generators started to be shut down, This is exactly the same fro Denmark and Germany, but they are fortunate to have interconnects with thermal generators who can rescue them if necessary...we are an island Nation with no lifeline.
America, has not yet seen these issues since you still have a huge amount of thermal generators for base load.
 
What's not self-sustaining is burning things in a closed loop.
 
billvon said:
That's a lot more per employee than my company has - 30 for 10K people,
So you made my point. You said 30 charge stations like it is a lot. But not for 10k people. That is no oportunity for ev transportation disruption at all if you want to charge them from solar only during the day. How many cars in the lot? If you just want to install 15 amp 110 oulets you would need 1 per car. That's what i'm saying it is a great idea and we need to do it but it is a lot of work and infrustructure.
 
billvon said:
....Charging level 1 isn't going to help much if you are trying to get all EV charging done between 11AM and 4PM...
Charging between 9am and 4pm (peak solar hours) at level 1 gives you 10 kwhr which is enough for 35 miles - which would cover most commutes in the US. .....

.....Of course (as you mention) in the short term utilities will want you to charge at night, since they have baseline generation that they can't use at night, and it's cheaper for them to run it than to try to shut it down or throttle it. As baseline generation declines it will make more sense to charge during the day.

either night or day charging is going to add 10kWh per car, per day, to the existing demand.
even if only 50% of cars are EVs that would be a massive new demand on the supply system.
Overnight grid charging would need a huge increase in capacity (Thermal presumably ?) ?100m cars x 10kWh ?? :shock:
Daytime (work) solar supply, 10kWh per employee would suggest something like an extra 10-12 panels needed per employee ( in addition to current use) So any employer with 100+ car drivers, will need their own small solar farm. Not easy in most urban industrial areas....and no mention of who pays ! .............. more batteries ??
 
Ohbse said:
If 100% of the daytime energy requirements are met by PV and we burn gas for the (comparatively much lower) overnight demand, then that's a *huge* win. The fact that it's not ALL sourced from the sun doesn't negate the benefit from MOST of it being clean. .
We agree on this. Even just for electricty, not to mention the other 75% of energy, solar PV will have to rely on a non-intermittent source at night. Nobody wants nuclear so it will be fossil fuel for as long as it lasts. At least solar can stretch what we have for a few hundred years. But we will eventually burn every last bit of it that we can get our hands on despite horendous ecological consequences. The human population went from 1 billion to 7.5 in 8 generations. All due to the density of abundant fossil fuel. It allowed us. And we can't continue without it. Not for a long time to come. Solar, wind, and nuclear can help stretch what we have left and dilute it's consequences by time, but starving people with no jobs will demand whatever it takes to survive.
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Why assume we've hit peak energy but not peak population? That sounds Malthusian. Yes, population has grown rampantly in the last ~100 years, but we've also seen that in many developed countries it boomed, flatlined and is now declining. It reasonable to assume that developing countries will follow a similar trend.
 
Punx0r said:
Why assume we've hit peak energy but not peak population? That sounds Malthusian. Yes, population has grown rampantly in the last ~100 years, but we've also seen that in many developed countries it boomed, flatlined and is now declining. It reasonable to assume that developing countries will follow a similar trend.
10-11 Billion population isn't my idea. This is the number published everywhere. But regarding peak energy, the standard of living will slope to fit the per capita energy availability. Countries with a negative growth rate will have an easier time reducing carbon emissions. Women's education and planned parenthood world wide are crucial. As is making enough energy for everybody to keep all of the economic plates spinning.
 
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