Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

USA has 80 GW of hydro capacity and this is only 6% of current electrical consumption. We use an unbelievable amount of energy in this country.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectric_power_in_the_United_States
.
 
billvon said:
Hillhater said:
Note also that even if the hydro and biomass output were doubled in capacity. (Which is Impossible for hydro !)
Why do you think it's impossible? You can keep exactly the same dam and repower a hydro plant to greatly increase generation capacity. And then if you are drawing down the reservoir too much - install more solar.
Germanys hydro generation capacity is 5.5 GW , which they currently use constantly ("River flow" ) for an annual output of 20-21TWh , which is presumeably limited by water availability.
So, sure they could repower the existing dams for more peak GWs but that wont help for overall hydro capacity.
They have already developed the most productive and economical hydro sites with any future developments would have to be expensive , distributed , low capacity , sites......IF the environmental movement allows any at all !
 
Hillhater said:
So, sure they could repower the existing dams for more peak GWs but that wont help for overall hydro capacity.
Of course it will - that's why they are doing it. More power means more power, and more solar means more energy you can store in the form of impounded water. There is only one large hydro plant in Germany that is run-of-river, meaning you can't bank water. For the rest of them, peak power is more important than storage.
 
sendler2112 said:
USA has 80 GW of hydro capacity and this is only 6% of current electrical consumption. We use an unbelievable amount of energy in this country.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectric_power_in_the_United_States
.
Yep, as the book pointed out, in detail, or summarized below, you end up using nearly the entire supply of all the freshwater the USA has in a day if you tried to rely on hydro-electricity in a full-scale wind and solar based renewables grid in the USA for a good few days of backup electricity.

http://www.roadmaptonowhere.com/chapter-six/
Quote from the book "
To put the volume of water in perspective, it would take almost 135 days of America’s total fresh water consumption (irrigation, industry, tap water, the works) to store one day of power at 1,591 GWs, or one “grid day”.

So that’s off the table.
"

If you think you can go 100% wind-solar based renewables in the USA and largely rely on hydro as backup for anything, even a few hours then we may as well be arguing with brick-walls. Unless folks are happy not having fresh water for any kind of consumption, period.
Realistically after its all been said and done, if you go running to hydro-electricity as a solution then you should be banned from making any more posts to this forums thread. If you feel like arguing about it more, read the book above, for the love of god! Even if its just chapter 6.

On another note, have you ever wondered what the KWh/co2 emissions would be on solar + battery storage on a large scale? 200 gCO₂-e/kWh
https://medium.com/@ActinideAge/batteries-emissions-7e54ff9e018a
by adding Li-ion batteries, solar has roughly quadrupled up to about 200 gCO₂-e/kWh. If the Stanford numbers are anything to go by, this is what we’re actually going to get; there’s a lot of both solar and Li-ion batteries planned all over the world. And when you think about it, this isn’t so counter-intuitive. The batteries are extra material in the system but don’t create any extra energy, only shift what is generated by solar to times when it’s more useful.
This probably only based around the idea of dumping the batteries instead of the energy required to recycle them too.
 
It's interesting to see that TerraPower have recently brached to the side of their complex Traveling Wave Reactor and now have a research facility and USA permissions to persue a Molten Salt Reactor.
.
http://uwckb.ans.org/2017/docs/---NEW---_170807_-_MCFR_for_Utilities_-_FINAL.pdf
.
 
Jacobson is suing Clack for saying this:
.
" Jacobson et al. [Jacobson MZ, Delucchi MA, Cameron MA, Frew BA (2015) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112(49):15060–15065] argue that it is feasible to provide “low-cost solutions to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of WWS [wind, water and solar power] across all energy sectors in the continental United States between 2050 and 2055”, with only electricity and hydrogen as energy carriers. In this paper, we evaluate that study and find significant shortcomings in the analysis. In particular, we point out that this work used invalid modeling tools, contained modeling errors, and made implausible and inadequately supported assumptions. Policy makers should treat with caution any visions of a rapid, reliable, and low-cost transition to entire energy systems that relies almost exclusively on wind, solar, and hydroelectric power.
.
"Many previous studies of deep decarbonization of electric power illustrate that much can be done with wind and solar power but that it is extremely difficult to achieve complete decarbonization of the energy system, even when using every current technology and tool available, including energy efficiency and wind, hydroelectric, and solar energy as well as carbon capture and storage, bioenergy, and nuclear energy "
.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/06/16/1610381114.full
.
Here is the Jacobson paper in question which is the blueprint referenced on SolutionProject.org
.
http://www.pnas.org/content/112/49/15060?ijkey=e37769a0327c4d193837ae074d51f6017bdc2139&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
.
 
TheBeastie said:
Yep, as the book pointed out, in detail, or summarized below, you end up using nearly the entire supply of all the freshwater the USA has in a day if you tried to rely on hydro-electricity in a full-scale wind and solar based renewables grid in the USA for a good few days of backup electricity.
Which is why, of course, you wouldn't do that. Silly denier.
 
"Jacobson’s paper has become the bible of alternative energy and is the most referenced paper on the subject used by policymakers and activist groups. And that is scary. Another ideology masquerading as science."
.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/06/26/debunking-the-unscientific-fantasy-of-100-renewables/#5b2b955529f9
.
 
billvon said:
Hillhater said:
So, sure they could repower the existing dams for more peak GWs but that wont help for overall hydro capacity.
Of course it will - that's why they are doing it. More power means more power, and more solar means more energy you can store in the form of impounded water. There is only one large hydro plant in Germany that is run-of-river, meaning you can't bank water. For the rest of them, peak power is more important than storage.
No matter how much "power" you install in the hydro system, and 50GW would be a 10x increase....you can only produce as much energy as you have water supply. Which you have no control over
Even if you reserve all the water for "backup", unless you have dramatically increased your dam capacity , (impossible), or built multiple times more dams/hydro plants (also impossible)
And , in the process you have reduced your RE "base load" capacity by reserving the hydro for backup periods, such that even more wind and solar installations are required.
....But those are not very popular in Germany either , at the moment .
 
Germany has apparently blocked it's data from electricitymap again.
.
https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=US-IPC
.
Washington State and Idaho have been added and are showing off their endowment of hydro. 16GW. Public opinion must be swayed back positive for hydro and ALL 300MW capable and above sites must be developed worldwide regardless of any other considerations. While we still have the affordable liquid fuel and concrete to do it. Streamline eminent domain studies. Hydro is the no brainer of all no brainers for electricity.
 
sendler2112 said:
Germany has apparently blocked it's data from electricitymap again......
.. Hydro is the no brainer of all no brainers for electricity.
Hydro is better than most alternatives, though the environmental groups intensly oppose most new or expanded hydro developments.
And , its not significantly scaleable for primary supply in most parts of the world.
Re Germany and electricity data..
The Energy Charts site is useful..
https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-sources&year=2018&month=4
 
Hillhater said:
No matter how much "power" you install in the hydro system, and 50GW would be a 10x increase....you can only produce as much energy as you have water supply. Which you have no control over.
Exactly. You have all the power you need, but the same energy. This is the opposite problem that renewables have - you have more energy than you could ever need, but the power isn't available when you want it.

That's why they work so well together. Need more energy? Install more solar/wind. Need more power when it's dark and still everywhere? Repower dams and release the water. Have too much renewable energy? Pump water back to the reservoir. (Which Germany is already doing on a small scale.)
 
sendler2112 said:
"Jacobson’s paper has become the bible of alternative energy and is the most referenced paper on the subject used by policymakers and activist groups. And that is scary. Another ideology masquerading as science."
.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/06/26/debunking-the-unscientific-fantasy-of-100-renewables/#5b2b955529f9
.

I like this bit in the article as it points out many of Jacobson's flaws

- assumes unlimited hydroelectric power as backup, with new installations equivalent to 600 Hoover Dams; this is more power than we produce from all sources today.

The amount of land needed for Hydro is massive compared to other renewable sources, interestingly.
As always mentioned, when you got it naturally accuring setup, then hydro is a no-brainer, but once its done, its done, its not viable to somehow magically just create more forever.
DevgtqtU8AAsfU5.jpg


sendler2112 said:
It's interesting to see that TerraPower have recently brached to the side of their complex Traveling Wave Reactor and now have a research facility and USA permissions to persue a Molten Salt Reactor.
.
http://uwckb.ans.org/2017/docs/---NEW---_170807_-_MCFR_for_Utilities_-_FINAL.pdf
.

That is interesting! Also says in that PDF they expect generation costs to be equal to natural gas.
This was my biggest concern about the original Bill Gates Terra power-reactor, it was still water based. Molten Salt just seems so much more bulletproof.


On another subject. Looking at these tweets from the "Climate Council" is just amazingly misleading garbage.
https://twitter.com/climatecouncil/status/1003457922872029185
Dez_qaaX0AEqQ7u.jpg


For us its funny but a lot of people believe this stuff, share these memes on Facebook etc. I think humans do adapt, sooner or later they will get a gutful and naturally seek better information.
I listened to Alex Jones for a little while for entertainment, and while it might be amusing for a few hours or even casual listening for a week, most people realize that they are wasting their time listening to a man whos merely just making up "the world news" as he wished it was rather than what it is.

Unbelievably, I think Alex Jones is very healthy, because it helps people understand the full spectrum of information available on the internet and Alex Jones should be allowed to spew as much stuff onto the internet as he wants because its the very best stuff for adapting to how to process whats real and whats fake much more quickly than the general hyperbolic media the majority of people receiving from mainstream media today, which is technically equally as cancerous.

Alex Jones show is quite well presented, it copies CNN style news presentation, thus tricking the mind to fully accept its information.
But so does the official "Climate Council", its very well presented information, often very slick videos are created that are the equivalent quality of something like CNN or Bloomberg, but its very much next level garbage.

Alex Jones show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QIJCovEdAU
[youtube]5QIJCovEdAU[/youtube]

There are A LOT of people that want Alex Jones banned, but absolutely zero of these very same people would want Climate Councils content banned, this is why both should be allowed to go as hard as they want, because humans are way too biased to be choosing whats allowed to be banned and not be banned, people instead need to be fully exposed and learn to adapt. Even if a lot of programs need to be put in place to help people learn about bad information.
In reality, I don't see how the garbage above is any different than what generally accepted as ways to fight GHG emissions, with renewables that end up really being massive natural gas burning with large amounts of gas leakage at 84x GWP, causing technically more warming then just coal.

Check out Climate Councils main "about" on their Twitter account.
2018-06-04 (5).png


On another subject, Looking at the last 3.2 days of South Australia's electricity with its practically 100% wind capacity only providing 4% of the states' electricity.
This is one of the core reasons why wind/solar are so expensive, because you spend all the money on the infrastructure just to get as little as 4% while still having to spend money to back it up. Its like always requiring at minimum having two cars to go anywhere you need, the costs at the minimum double.
2018-06-04 (4)a.png
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Natural_gas_transmission_leakage_rates#Leakage_Rates_Worldwide_and_in_the_United_States
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/gas-power-plants-methane-emissions-120-times-more-study-purdue-edf-greenhouse-global-warming-climate-a7641471.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Values
 
Germany has been running above 400gm/kWh all winter. Occasionally bumping 500gm. which would have been last night except it was Sunday. The data is back up now. Their 45 GW of installed wind capacity has been running at 5 GW all day. It is sunny today though.
.
https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=DE
.
Whenever you see areas getting a large % of electricity from renewables ie Costa Rica, Ontario, Norway, Washington State, it is from hydro. Salmon, humans, and all other living species must unfortunately bow to whatever inundation is required to squeeze out every last drop of practical hydropower. The impacts will be mitigated as best as possible with our high tech solutions.
.
And don't forget that electricity is only 20-30% of total energy that needs to eventually get transformed and replaced as liquid fuel plateaus and begins to leave us over the next 30 years.
 
billvon said:
......... Need more energy? Install more solar/wind. Need more power when it's dark and still everywhere? Repower dams and release the water. Have too much renewable energy? Pump water back to the reservoir. (Which Germany is already doing on a small scale.)
Thats fine in theory, but unfortunately Germany, (as with many hydro using countries). has already exploited the best , and most practical hydro sites, such that any further developments will be few and expensive.....even if they can overcome the environmental restrictions and protests.
Germany has many (31 ) pumped hydro facilities, but again there are few suitable geographic locations remaining to develope significant further capacity.
 
Hillhater said:
Thats fine in theory, but unfortunately Germany, (as with many hydro using countries). has already exploited the best , and most practical hydro sites, such that any further developments will be few and expensive.....even if they can overcome the environmental restrictions and protests.
That's why I am suggesting repowers rather than new dams or reservoirs. Creating a new lake and changing the course of a river has huge impacts; changing the daily profile of water flow over the course of a day has much less impact.
 
sendler2112 said:
Germany has apparently blocked it's data from electricitymap again.
.
https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=US-IPC

Is the implication that any time the site fails to load the data for Germany it's a deliberate censoring by ze Germans?
 
Thought this might be of interest: links to two presentations by my local utility for how the energy portfolio will evolve from now until 2040 while striving to meet emission reduction goals. CPS Energy is municipally owned and services the 7th largest city in the USA and most of the surrounding suburbs. Also, population is anticipated to grow by another 1 million by 2040. Plans call for closing 3 of the 4 coal plants, and increasing solar and wind, adding battery storage. Hydro is not an option in these parts. The plan leaves some questions open and seems to rely on some as-yet undetermined technologies by having a portion of future generation labeled as "flexible generation," which probably means small gas peakers, unless some other competitive technology comes along. Probably doesn't go far enough toward reducing CO2 emissions, but it's a start. Here are links to the two presentations:

https://www.cpsenergy.com/content/dam/corporate/en/Documents/Environmental/Environmental%20Partner%20Presentation.pdf

https://www.cpsenergy.com/content/dam/corporate/en/Documents/Environmental/Board%20Presentation.pdf
 
Yes, a typical sales pitch there with enough "jargon" to disguise several weaknesess.
Significant % of future supply seems to rely on "Market Purchace" ...which presumably is imported from other generators ? (Quote:- "could be renewable" ?)
" Flex gen" could be anything gas peakers, (ICE diesel generators are also very attractive these days), and even "Demand Management" (shutting down business's, cutting supply to areas, rolling blackouts , etc).. has been known to fall into that category.
I note that much of the financial plan relies on RECs (Renewable Energy Credits) ..which they state.... "Will be added to the electricity bills". !....so not financially viable without state/federal/taxpayer funding.
Some confusing details as well, such as the plan is to be "coal free", but the data for bad weather days clearly shows almost 100% dependency on Coal, Gas, and Nuclear ?
But i was particularly impressed with the creatively renamed "Virtual Storage" ... otherwise known as Coal and gas generators ! :D
 
Hillhater said:
and even "Demand Management" (shutting down business's, cutting supply to areas, rolling blackouts , etc).. has been known to fall into that category.
"Demand Management" isn't cutting supply to some areas or rolling blackouts. The technical term is load aggregation, and it's done by "aggregating" sheddable load. For example, programs that increase your thermostat setting by 2 degrees, or that shut off an ice rink's compressors for two hours, or that defer water pumping until excess power is available again (and cheap,) or that dim indoor lighting by 10%.

Really, when you have to prevaricate to make a point, it's not a very good point to begin with.
 
billvon said:
Hillhater said:
and even "Demand Management" (shutting down business's, cutting supply to areas, rolling blackouts , etc).. has been known to fall into that category.
"Demand Management" isn't cutting supply to some areas or rolling blackouts. The technical term is load aggregation, and it's done by "aggregating" sheddable load. For example, programs that increase your thermostat setting by 2 degrees, or that shut off an ice rink's compressors for two hours, or that defer water pumping until excess power is available again (and cheap,) or that dim indoor lighting by 10%.

Really, when you have to prevaricate to make a point, it's not a very good point to begin with.
" Demand management " as officially practiced in Australia , involves Industries and businesses etc, contracting for power cost reductions in exchange for agreements to reduce usage (shut down ) when requested.
In reality, it has resulted in the planned shut down of entire production plants (Aluminium smelter and "pot" lines) , as well as organised distributed power cuts across residential areas.
" Demand management " or "Load Aggregation". Or any other deceptive wording , is simply a reduction of supply to compensate for a lack of generation capacity.
Basicly it is a cheap substitute for good supply planning.
 
Hillhater said:
" Demand management " or "Load Aggregation". Or any other deceptive wording , is simply a reduction of supply to compensate for a lack of generation capacity.
No, it is a reduction in DEMAND. Companies choose whether they want to reduce their load or even shut down (and get a discount on their power bill) or continue operation. Up to them.
 
billvon said:
Hillhater said:
" Demand management " or "Load Aggregation". Or any other deceptive wording , is simply a reduction of supply to compensate for a lack of generation capacity.
No, it is a reduction in DEMAND. Companies choose whether they want to reduce their load or even shut down (and get a discount on their power bill) or continue operation. Up to them.
Until recently (last 5-10 yrs), power prices were not significant enough for a successful business to even consider taking this type of action to reduce operating costs. And we know what has forced up the cost of power in Australia...
.....fundamentally bad decisions on the part of government and power companies, that have resulted in reduced capacity.
 
As I have described previously in this thread, demand management had existed for a long time in grids centred around fossil generators.

Trying to average out loads across the day and/or matching to available generation is just common frocking sense, not some imagined green/liberal/whatever con.
 
Punx0r said:
Trying to average out loads across the day and/or matching to available generation is just common frocking sense . . .

You're not being very politically correct. It's only common sense when they do it for conventional sources of generation. As soon as it involves any politically incorrect solar or wind, then it becomes "fundamentally bad decisions on the part of government and power companies" "planned shut down of entire production plants" "a cheap substitute for good supply planning."
 
Back
Top