
The US can reach 90% clean electricity by 2035 without increasing consumer bills - MilnerRoute
https://gspp.berkeley.edu/news/news-center/the-us-can-reach-90-percent-clean-electricity-by-2035-dependably-and-without-increasing-consumer-bills
======
hairytrog
Exciting. But here are some problems.

\- Unfortunately, they are averaging the entire US, which is made of several
grids, so the bad days are not that bad in their analysis. To fix those bad
days, you'd need hella more storage, hella more capacity. e.g. 3-4x the
renewables capacity than the normal need.

\- Such a system has a very low resiliency because it depends on national
grid. If Covid has taught us anything, it is the need for resiliency in the
face of rare events. In this case unfavorable weather, broken transmission,
etc.

\- Cost projection is rosy... The panels, batteries, and storage are already
very close to the material cost. Need some pretty fundamental tech transitions
to improve further.

\- If there is no policy change, nukes and nat gas will not be competitive 99%
of the time because solar/wind are nearly free electricity and bid extremely
low power prices that nuke/gas can't compete with. So even though they will
provide the backbone and dispatchibility needed for on-demand power, they do
not currently have the financial incentive to do so. We need resiliency and
dispatchibility payments.

Report is Berkeley and GridLab, mostly policy wonks

A much better report from MIT:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S25424...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2542435119303009)
or [http://energy.mit.edu/research/utility-future-
study/](http://energy.mit.edu/research/utility-future-study/)

Both are harder to read and give worse news, so probably won't be part of the
policy discussion...

The report itself: [http://www.2035report.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/06/2035-Re...](http://www.2035report.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/06/2035-Report.pdf?hsCtaTracking=8a85e9ea-4ed3-4ec0-b4c6-906934306ddb%7Cc68c2ac2-1db0-4d1c-82a1-65ef4daaf6c1)

And the data explorer: [https://www.2035report.com/data-
explorer/?hsCtaTracking=aefa...](https://www.2035report.com/data-
explorer/?hsCtaTracking=aefa383f-f7b1-45c3-99c8-9413fdc3a3c7%7C98cb714c-8c3e-4475-b718-610a20b81491)

~~~
ip26
Instead of dispatchability payments, why not demand response? Thermostats,
electric cars, water heaters, dryers, smelters, and data centers can all turn
on a dime if an incentive is there.

Also, what's wrong with policy wonks?

~~~
xyzzyz
Most data centers needs non-stop 24/7 reliability, and there are very few use
cases where it makes sense and is even possible to delay your workload waiting
for lower energy prices. Smelters have complicated processes, and they cannot
really turn on a dime. Lastly, data centers and smelters are expensive capital
investments, and typically the economic calculation requires them to be run
non-stop to recoup the capital investment.

~~~
nordsieck
> Most data centers needs non-stop 24/7 reliability, and there are very few
> use cases where it makes sense and is even possible to delay your workload
> waiting for lower energy prices.

Perhaps your parent was thinking of EC2 spot instances?

> Lastly, data centers and smelters are expensive capital investments, and
> typically the economic calculation requires them to be run non-stop to
> recoup the capital investment.

I suspect this is true for almost all commercial operations.

Residential electric car charging is the only thing I can think of that's

1\. A relatively large draw

2\. Relatively time insensitive

In general, people aren't going to delay their dinner or wash by a few hours
to save a few cents in electricity fees. They might be ok with car charging
being delayed as long as it's full when they leave in the morning.

~~~
xyzzyz
_Perhaps your parent was thinking of EC2 spot instances?_

Maybe, but the whole reason cloud providers offer ephemeral instances is
precisely because letting the machines sit idle is a waste of capital.

 _I suspect this is true for almost all commercial operations._

I'm not sure if that's the case. I think it depends on the efficiency of
production, ability to stockpile the product and the demand. Not all factories
operate around the clock, because round the clock labor is also very
expensive.

 _Residential electric car charging is the only thing I can think of that 's
(...)_

I think a relatively easy development here would be to install large water
tanks in people houses, and heat them up/cool them down when energy is cheap,
and reuse stored energy when energy is more expensive, to save on heating/AC.
But yes, energy these days is so cheap compared to labor and to value added
that a complex schemes of idling production when energy prices are high is
probably a non-starter in developed countries.

~~~
fomine3
A system that heats water in tank for bath by heat pump at idle time is
popular in Japan since mid 2000s (named "Eco Cute"). It expects unused power
is found in midnight because of nuclear plants keeps generating power all
time. It looks works well until 2011 earthquake. After that, not much nuclear
plants working so the assumption isn't very good. Modern systems has connected
to HEMS to heat water when power is generated by solar panel. AFAIK currently
not connected with smart power grid.

------
manfredo
A few things stick out to me:

* This study assumes that we can ramp up purchases of solar and wind generation to match this graph: [https://imgur.com/lMU252r](https://imgur.com/lMU252r) while costs continue to decrease. That's not how markets work. Rapidly buy solar panels and the cost of solar panels go up. Put solar panels in all the places where it's easy to install and now you have to pay extra to put them in places where it's not so convenient.

* This study thinks we can achieve this with only ~200 MWh of storage. This is an optimistic projection. To put this in perspective, daily US energy use is 11.5TWh. We're giving solar and wind generation only ~15% allowed variability before we're dipping into gas. Yeah, it does say that it's only 90% clean electricity, but even reaching this figure is optimistic.

~~~
philipkglass
How did you get 200 MWh? From page 20 of the report:

"In summary, retaining existing hydropower capacity and nuclear power capacity
(after accounting for planned retirements) and about half of existing fossil
fuel capacity, combined with 150 GW of new 4-hour battery storage, is
sufficient to meet U.S. electricity demand with a 90% clean grid in 2035, even
during periods of low renewable energy generation and/or high demand. Under
the 90% Clean case, all existing coal plants are retired by 2035, and no new
fossil fuel plants are built beyond those already under construction. During
normal periods of generation and demand, wind, solar, and batteries provide
70% of total annual generation, while hydropower and nuclear provide 20%.
During periods of high demand and/or low renewable generation, existing
natural gas plants (primarily combined-cycle plants) cost-effectively
compensate for remaining mismatches between demand and renewables-plus-battery
generation—accounting for about 10% of total annual electricity generation,
which is about 70% lower than their generation in 2019."

150 GW of batteries with 4-hour discharge is 600,000 MWh.

[http://www.2035report.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/06/2035-Re...](http://www.2035report.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/06/2035-Report.pdf)

~~~
manfredo
The graph displays 150 GW, with no duration specified. 4 hours of 150GW
storage, or 600GWh of storage, is still only 5% of the nation's current daily
electricity consumption.

And that's probably going to be an even smaller share in 2035 as more vehicles
go electric.

------
pkaye
In my county in California, the county purchases the electricity while PG&E
provides the infrastructure. The 50/50% solar/wind plan is only around
$4/month more than the standard plan.

[https://ebce.org/residents/](https://ebce.org/residents/)

~~~
koheripbal
California is sunnier than most parts. That makes a big difference.

~~~
m463
California also charges people up to .48/kwh so there's a good incentive for
people to get solar.

------
ehutch79
Moving to clean electricity is not strictly about money. Even if it is for
you, factor in the difference in health costs of people around a bunch of
burning coal, vs solar or wind. also environmental cleanup. etc.

------
ctdonath
Not convinced.

I’m using utility solar for about 20% of my electricity needs, precisely to
experience what’s claimed. Average cost is 50% above regular sourcing, and
rising significantly.

[https://twitter.com/ctdonath/status/1274157769889918978?s=21](https://twitter.com/ctdonath/status/1274157769889918978?s=21)

~~~
MattGaiser
Is that a price of power rise or a price of transmission rise?

~~~
ctdonath
That’s the curious bit: power generated per flat panel-rental fee is
decreasing.

Rental cost is consistent.

~~~
MattGaiser
Are people willing to pay a green premium for it?

We have a company near me that has some of the cheapest power sources from
wind, but they used to market with the slogan “pay more for power.”

------
alblue
The UK has recently ended its coal-free streak for power generation; up until
a few days ago we had been coal free for 67 days, the longest time since the
start of the industrial revolution.

[https://twitter.com/alblue/status/1274290853817827328](https://twitter.com/alblue/status/1274290853817827328)

The plan is for the national grid to close coal plants by 2024 leaving just
natural gas (the gas, not the American car fuel) as a high carbon source in
our power grid.

------
tareqak
I wonder if there is a way to quantify the health benefit of a solar
installation on a roof, and/or associate battery storage as a dollar value on
a per roof / per home basis.

------
coding123
I was thinking about going big and buying about 100 panels for my 12 acre
property. Anyone have any success in small scale solar farming with a utility?

------
sigzero
The questions are always "How much will it cost?" "Is it worth it?" "Do we
have the political will to do it?"

~~~
kelnos
My opinion is that it doesn't matter how much it costs; it is worth it at any
cost, because continuing down the path of making our planet uninhabitable for
humans is not a winning strategy.

However, I don't think we have the political will to do it, which is really
the only thing that matters in the end.

------
abvdasker
But it won't.

------
egypturnash
One more reason to not re-elect Mr. I Love Coal.

------
m463
Ever since watching "Planet of the Humans" I find myself scrutinizing anything
that says "renewable energy" because it might be burning trees.

This article did mention solar, wind and batteries and carbon-free so it might
be ok.

------
H8crilA
People are so focused on $$ when it comes to (green or other) energy. The real
problem is not $$ but Joules. Building any type of a power plant costs energy
itself, and unfortunately unlike capital, which is just a concept that you can
argue with and win, there is absolutely no arguing with physics:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#ER...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#EROEI_and_payback_periods_of_some_types_of_power_plants)

The energy amortisation time of green power generators (the time it takes to
pay back the Joules) is orders of magnitude higher than any dirty energy. This
problem is well visible once you count all of the world's energy usage and
just plot it. The rollout is anything but fast:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption)

~~~
csours
Interesting chart, but it does not seem to consider the cost of the
installation, just the fuel, or it seems to assume a very long amortization
period for nuclear/fossil fuel generation plants.

With wind and solar, all you have is the plant. There's no EROEI on the fuel
because there is no energy investment in the fuel for wind and solar.

~~~
H8crilA
For a very long time solar panels would cost more energy to manufacture than
they would output through their lifetime. This is no longer the case, but the
amortization period is still large.

Fuel is not the problem. The power plants are the problem.

~~~
csours
They show the payoff period Germany and in Southern Europe. I wonder what the
payoff period is in Texas.

~~~
H8crilA
It's probably better, but don't forget that this is inherently a global
problem. Scotland is running 100% renewable - so what, who cares? Not only
it's not enough (the country is small), they also import a lot of goods with
manufacturing energy footprints that released co2 elsewhere.

Even if the US switches to 100% renewable the problem is far from solved. Look
at the population pyramid of Nigeria, for example. Those people will want
homes (cement, steel) and cars and flights.

~~~
csours
I think I understand where you're coming from, but I would say 'don't let the
perfect be the enemy of the good'.

Grand jumps in capability rarely (if ever) happen in the real world.

Gradual change can feel like a capitulation, but it's often the safest and
best overall.

If you try to force huge change and fail or things go wrong or the system is
deficient in some way, there can be a big backlash.

The CO2 released in production and deployment of solar cells is regrettable,
but as soon as that solar cell comes online it starts displacing fossil fuel.

