Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

[sendler2112]

Yep. I have a poster like that in my office. But it showed new discoveries ending in 2000, and peak oil happening in 2010.

Our modern economy was built on $20 oil not $200.

Yes. Just as it was once built on VERY cheap labor (slavery.) We moved on.

Yes. Fossil slaves freed the human slaves. Each person in the US has the energy equivilent of 200 fossil slaves standing behind them doing their bidding. Let's try not to return to human slavery when fossil fuels( and essential elements) run out.
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[Hillhater]

That's an interesting chart and seems to back up the decisions being made in electricity supply in many countries as being driven at least partly by economics and not just ideology. "for use when it's available" power, solar and wind are the cheapest source of generation. Of the fossil fuels, I'm surprised to see how much cheaper combined cycle gas is compared to other fossil fuels (and nuclear) and justifies its popularity for both baseload (lower CO2 than coal) and as peakers (it's real charm), filling in around cheap-as-chips, but intermittent wind & solar.

The other genuine surprise is that both solar + storage and wind + storage are cheaper than coal.

Sorry Hillhater but I can't see how that chart makes any argument for coal use. Gas all the way with solar & wind when its available seems to be cheapest option. And the lowest CO2. And the lowest air pollution.

The figures are debateable, Official Australian " Finkel Report" figures put coal at $76 and CCGT at $96. But not to quibble. https://theconversation.com/renewables-will-be-cheaper-than-coal-in-the-future-here-are-the-numbers-84433
You may have missed the fact that the solar and wind with storage, only included 4 hours of storage.
For a more realistic 16 hrs of storage, those numbers get to be $180-$200.
So, if you use solar/wind you need to either store power for peak/night use ( 16 hrs per day) , or use another generation system.
16 hrs of battery capacity.makes the solar option expensive ( surprise !)
..ditto for gas peaker support
..CC gas is only an option for continuous operation
So on those Bloomberg figures, CCgas is the cheap option, but coal is also cheaper than solar/wind + storage.

 

[sendler2112]

-8F/ -22C last night in NY. Central and Eastern USA is one of the few places on Earth that has had no warming in the last 30 years due to the new instability of the Polar Vortex. And there is a Solar Super Grand Minimum beginning.
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https://nextgrandminimum.com/category/solar/
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https://youtu.be/M_yqIj38UmY
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"Shortage of vegetation periods may cause food shortages 2028-2032"

 

[billvon]

Yes. Fossil slaves freed the human slaves. Each person in the US has the energy equivilent of 200 fossil slaves standing behind them doing their bidding. Let's try not to return to human slavery when fossil fuels( and essential elements) run out.

Agreed. Best to put all our efforts into finding replacements while we have those 200 "fossil slaves" behind us.

 

[Punx0r]

You may have missed the fact that the solar and wind with storage, only included 4 hours of storage.
For a more realistic 16 hrs of storage, those numbers get to be $180-$200.
So, if you use solar/wind you need to either store power for peak/night use ( 16 hrs per day) , or use another generation system.
16 hrs of battery capacity.makes the solar option expensive ( surprise !)

No, no, the sceptic in me did go looking for how many hours the storage was good for My assumption is that4 hrs is chosen for a reason rather than arbitrarily, based on cost. I figure it bridges the gap from dusk through the evening peak demand. Once into night-time, demand ought to have fallen sufficiently for baseload generation to cover it (wind & gas, to my mind).

I fully agree that 16hrs storage to make solar 24hr baseload is prohibitively expensive, but I don't think that's realistic, or proper playing to solar's strengths. Not unless way in the future panels cost cents-per-watt and batteries cost $5/kwh and are made from common/non-hazardous materials.

Let's do now what is practicable.

Oh, and by the sounds of it, don't live in NY in the winter?

 

[Hillhater]

You may have missed the fact that the solar and wind with storage, only included 4 hours of storage.
For a more realistic 16 hrs of storage, those numbers get to be $180-$200.
So, if you use solar/wind you need to either store power for peak/night use ( 16 hrs per day) , or use another generation system.
16 hrs of battery capacity.makes the solar option expensive ( surprise !)

No, no, the sceptic in me did go looking for how many hours the storage was good for My assumption is that4 hrs is chosen for a reason rather than arbitrarily, based on cost. I figure it bridges the gap from dusk through the evening peak demand. Once into night-time, demand ought to have fallen sufficiently for baseload generation to cover it (wind & gas, to my mind).
Let's do now what is practicable.

I dont think there is any logic behind the 4 hrs of storage.
The Lazard LCOE figures say they use an arbitary 10 hrs of storage just so that they can do a direct comparason to thermal solar +storage. ?
But you have complicated the question now , with peak and reduced nigh time demand....That makes it much more difficult to estimate the variables. Which is why i just suggested a constant 1MW for 24 hrs.....
....but even with a reduced " base load" of 1/2 MW from CCgas and 1MW of wind/solar with storage for 12 hrs,.
For the same 24 MWh of supply, it still end up more costly than just 24 hrs of CCgas....

 

[billvon]

I dont think there is any logic behind the 4 hrs of storage.

It is to cover the ~4 hours that:

1) utilities have trouble covering during times of high demand
2) solar isn't generating but power prices are still high (here in CA, 5pm-9pm in the summer)

In other words, it's the most useful storage for both utility and consumer.

 

[Hillhater]

That takes care of the evening demand peak, .....
.....but what about the 6-8am peak demand period before the sun get up again ??
..maybe boost another 4 hrs of base load during the night to recharge the battery ?
But that just adds more cost again
4 hours= random duration choice. :wink: .!

 

[craneplaneguy]

Living on a mountainside like I do, when I was off grid for 28 years I played around with the idea of pumped storage. Like the big hydro electric plants do, pump the water uphill into a holding pond or tank during times of excess power, and then when needed drain it back down through a water turbine. My guess is the smaller scale of a home based system would make it way too costly, and when I needed it I didn't have a mini excavator, enough property, and any money for the rest of what such a project would entail. Now that I do.....I'm grid tied and don't need it. One huge advantage to this type of storage, is water is the main component, the same water, used over and over.

I also had an idea of making what would amount to a grand father clock type energy storage system: large weights lifted then slowly allowed to descend while gearing spins a generator. Real Rube Goldberg stuff, but with the large amount of scrap steel pipe I had at the time from a building demolition, it almost happened. Just a few KW to get through the long winter nights, and short cloudy days, the usual bane of off grid living.

 

[Punx0r]

The trouble with that is it's effectively a more difficult/expensive version of hydro.

If raising 1 tonne of mass to up a 30 metre (~100ft) tower and releasing it through a 50% efficient gearing system & generator:

1000 x 9.81 x 30 x 0.5 = 147 KJ = 41Wh

 

[billvon]

.....but what about the 6-8am peak demand period before the sun get up again ??

Around here, houses don't need much power until the sun comes up. On hot days (highest demand days) the minimum demand time is around 4am, at 26GW. Between 6 and 8am it's not much higher - 27 to 29GW. Demand (minus solar) doesn't get really high (45GW) until about 5pm.

4 hours= random duration choice.

Only if you've never seen a demand curve before.

 

[Hillhater]

You must have a different source of data to any other CA demand curve i have seen, bill.
All i have seen show the classic "duck" curve wit a minimum demand ( 12-14 GW) around mid day, and peaks at or above 20GW from 5-7 am, and 6-11pm.
No suggestion of any load above 30 GW ??
A base load would be below 14GW, with that profile

 

[billvon]

No suggestion of any load above 30 GW ?

Hmm. Do you think that the fact that you posted data from March, rather than the summer, might give you a hint as to why there is a discrepancy?

 

[Punx0r]

Clearly, there are going to be seasonal changes in demand with extra peaks during the hottest and coldest months. With traditional baseload plants I guess you'd just size your generators for the worst month of the year, but with intermittant generation like wind and solar, they are also going to have seasonal variation, so it would require more careful matching (and a lot more data to work from).

Do Californians use heating at night in March? I'm wondering if that explains the evening demand peak.

 

[sendler2112]

Electricitymap.org seems to have good real time electricity production data by source for California any time you want to look. The scroll bar between the map and the data is hard to grab but you can click on the left 1/4 of the screen and arrow up and down. Scroll down to see the 24 hour history and point at the the different colors to see percent of capacity and percent of total. And the time seems to display your local time regardless of which country you are looking at so you have to convert.
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It is late in the cooling season and was Saturday so the week days may look different from more industry but California had a low of 18GW at 3:AM and a high of 25GW at 5:30. Solar peaked at 63% capacity factor and it was windy with the turbines showing over 45% CF all day. 1/3 of the peak was covered by gas and 1/3 was imported.
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https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=US-CA
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Germany's wind and solar are both doing 10% capacity factor today and less than 10% each of the total production with 48% of electricity coming from coal and 16% from nuclear.
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https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=DE
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[Hillhater]

The time marker seems out of sync for me ..suggesting solar 2am to 11am, and peak solar at 6am ?
Also, i believe those figures you quoted include rooftop solar rather than just utility supply.
Without RTsolar, the minimum demand from utility shifts to daytime

 

[Hillhater]

No suggestion of any load above 30 GW ?

Hmm. Do you think that the fact that you posted data from March, rather than the summer, might give you a hint as to why there is a discrepancy?

It seems everyone uses the March data for the 24 hr curve.
If you have a summer month curve, i would be happy to see it

 

[sendler2112]

The time marker seems out of sync for me ..suggesting solar 2am to 11am, and peak solar at 6am ?
Also, i believe those figures you quoted include rooftop solar rather than just utility supply.
Without RTsolar, the minimum demand from utility shifts to daytime

The time marker on electricitymap.org for any given country shows yor local time. You have to convert.

 

[classicalgas]

" ... We either ramp it down fast, or go extinct. ...

You lose tremendous credibility when you make statements like this."

Oh? We have a thousand climate scientists saying that global climate change is killing people right now, others pointing out that things like permafrost thaw and ice sheet melting is happening faster than worst case scenario projections of just a few years ago, that were are already seeing crop losses and lowered yields, and forest fires and hurricanes at unprecedented frequency and severity... and that every time time atmospheric co2 went as high as conservative projections put it by the end of this century, mass extinctions occurred. And that was at far slower rates of co2 increase than we are seeing now


http://news.mit.edu/2017/mathematics-predicts-sixth-mass-extinction-0920

Are we really likely to survive when 95% of all species on the planet die out?

 

[billvon]

" ... We either ramp it down fast, or go extinct. ...

You lose tremendous credibility when you make statements like this."

Oh? We have a thousand climate scientists saying that global climate change is killing people right now, others pointing out that things like permafrost thaw and ice sheet melting is happening faster than worst case scenario projections of just a few years ago, that were are already seeing crop losses and lowered yields, and forest fires and hurricanes at unprecedented frequency and severity... and that every time time atmospheric co2 went as high as conservative projections put it by the end of this century, mass extinctions occurred.

Yep. None of that equates to "so humanity goes extinct."

Are we really likely to survive when 95% of all species on the planet die out?

Absolutely. We (and our ancestors) have done so for every other mass extinction. And this time we will have more tools at our disposal.

That doesn't mean we should ignore climate change, of course. But human extinction is a silly threshold to set, because it leads to the wrong argument.

"We're going to go EXTINCT so we have to ACT NOW!"
"New research shows that only 60% of humanity will die off even in worst case projections. So no need to act now after all."

 

[Hillhater]

Oh? We have a thousand climate scientists saying that global climate change is killing people right now, others pointing out that things like permafrost thaw and ice sheet melting is happening faster than worst case scenario projections of just a few years ago, that were are already seeing crop losses and lowered yields, and forest fires and hurricanes at unprecedented frequency and severity... and that every time time atmospheric co2 went as high as conservative projections put it by the end of this century, mass extinctions occurred. And that was at far slower rates of co2 increase than we are seeing now

I wouldnt worry....
As you say, there have been high CO2 levels, high temperatures, mass extinctions, ( not necessarily at the same time or related to each other)...etc etc, before,...
.....and they were not due to any human induced factors..certainly not the burning of fossil fuels on an industrial scale.
So why assume the current change in CO2 concentration, (still at one of the lowest ever levels, incidentally ), is the result of human activity ?
If it is not, then anything we do to reverse our actions , is a wasted effort
Oh, and i wouldnt put too much reliance on those projected figures either,....their models and theorys have not been too accurate so far. !

 

[Punx0r]

So why assume the current change in CO2 concentration, (still at one of the lowest ever levels, incidentally ), is the result of human activity ?

Global CO2 emissions are 35 BILLION TONNES per year

The upswing in CO2 has occurred rapidly since the Industrial Revolution got going

The last time CO2 levels were this high was the Pliocene, 3-5 million years ago

Homo Sapiens have existed for 200,000 years.


It doesn't take a genius to connect the dots...


Some further reading: "Do high levels of CO2 in the past contradict the warming effect of CO2?" https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past-intermediate.htm

 

[Hillhater]

Global CO2 emissions are 35 BILLION TONNES per year..

Actually it more like 900 billion tonnes ! :wink:

The upswing in CO2 has occurred rapidly since the Industrial Revolution got going.....

Ahh !, that shortened "hockey stick" again !..
That is a correlation , not a proof of cause.
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H....The last time CO2 levels were this high was the Pliocene, 3-5 million years ago....

But the root of AGW alarmism theory is temperature,....
.... and that has been higher than alarmist predictions, several times over the recent history of mans existance.. ...without dramatic consequences. ???
CO2 was initially proposed as the indicator of impending temperature change , but that has failed to be true, with temperature not responding in the way predicted by the AGW modeling

Homo Sapiens have existed for 200,000 years.

. Yes,.... And survived ( even thrived) through several higher global temperature periods

...It doesn't take a genius to connect the dots...

.......Obviously not !......but not everyone connects them in the correct order !

 

[billvon]

.....and they were not due to any human induced factors..certainly not the burning of fossil fuels on an industrial scale.
So why assume the current change in CO2 concentration, (still at one of the lowest ever levels, incidentally ), is the result of human activity ?

Because it is. We know how much CO2 we are emitting. We see a similar increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

If you add half a pound of salt to a gallon of water the water will become salty. Only a fool would say "well, but how do we know it was OUR salt that did it? Maybe some magic process took our salt out and put someone else's salt in. THERE'S NO PROOF! I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SALTY WATER!"

Oh, and i wouldnt put too much reliance on those projected figures either,....their models and theorys have not been too accurate so far. !

They have been remarkably accurate so far.

If you want to see some REAL inaccuracies, look at the "skeptic" projections.

 

[Hillhater]

......Because it is. .....

Yep, ! That sums it up. Blind faith,... rather than scientific analysis

If you add half a pound of salt to a gallon of water the water will become salty. Only a fool would say "well, but how do we know it was OUR salt that did it? ?...

Sure, but to put that more in perspective, ...
You would be adding your half pound of salt to Lake Mead, whilst on the other side someone is also adding in 25-30 lbs of salt (it varies and you dont know exactly how much)...and someone else is extracting 25-30lbs at the same time (again the exact amount varies and is unpredictable )...
So how can you be sure its your half pound that has caused the salinity to rise ?