
The grid of 2030: all renewable, 90 percent of the time - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/the-grid-of-2030-all-renewable-90-percent-of-the-time/
======
liber8
The problem with this article, and nearly all others pushing for adoption of
wind power, is that it ignores reality.

>>When there is not enough renewable energy direct from source, and the stored
energy reserves are insufficient to bridge the shortfall, top up the remaining
few percent of the demand with fossil fuels.<<

We don't have any way to "top up" the remaining few percent of demand with
fossil fuels. You can't simply flip a switch on a coal fired or nuclear power
plant and have it instantly produce power. These massive processes need
tremendous lead time to start producing electricity. So, in theory wind could
provide a lot of power, but since we have no idea when the wind will die and
when we will need to "top off" the shortfall, we keep coal fired plants
churning.

This is one reason why, as the largest utility in Germany states[1], it takes
roughly 24MW of wind power to take just 1MW of fossil fuel power offline:

"As a result, the relative contribution of wind power to the guaranteed
capacity of our supply system up to the year 2020 will fall continuously to
around 4% (FIGURE 7). In concrete terms, this means that in 2020, with a
forecast wind power capacity of over 48,000MW (Source: dena grid study),
2,000MW of traditional power production can be replaced by these wind farms."

Storage, and the near-immediate ability to use what is stored, would help this
tremendously, but we don't have that capability, and we don't seem to be well
on our way to getting it, even by 2030.

[1][http://www.wind-
watch.org/docviewer.php?doc=eonwindreport200...](http://www.wind-
watch.org/docviewer.php?doc=eonwindreport2005.pdf)

~~~
DennisP
But you can do it with natural gas. We use gas plants that way right now.

------
SMRTN
One great idea, is to store energy by ammonia NH3, split water into H2 and O
(brown or grey, and you can actually clean the water this way) by electrolysis
at as little as 1.2 V (Stan Meyer) and then using a reverse Fuel cell to bind
the N in the air (N is about 80%) to store NH3 at as low as 120 PSI/10 Bar in
existing nursing tanks. It can be used to run an existing (lightly converted)
diesel generator or a fuel cell again at a higher efficiency level. No need to
use H2 which requires massive amounts of energy to be cryogenically frozen or
compressed in carbon fibre tanks. And you can run your diesel engine
car/truck/train/ship.

Another novel and new invention is www.aquionenergy.com who has an
environmental battery made of carbon and salt :)

Essentially its best to start capping our consumption levels and increasing
efficiency. Have a look at the current wasted energy in our system:
<https://flowcharts.llnl.gov>

------
EEGuy
Wind and solar can be complimentary: Watch the Cal-ISO renewables graph
(second graph on on this page:
<http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html> ; the first graph is demand
and reserves ).

On many days, the wind power goes up at night and down during the day, very
much in complement, though in larger scale than, solar generation. More solar
will more nearly equalize the two -- on good days.

California is nowhere near having an overcapacity of renewable sources to
worry about; just look at the first graph where the lowest demand (2 AM to 4
AM) is 22 GW on 12/14/2012. The highest the solar gets is not quite 1 GW. The
wind is more variable, anecdotally as high as 3+ GW and as low as a flatline
near zero for the whole state all day and night.

------
DennisP
It's good to see that there's an optimal solution that gets us reasonably
economical power from 99.9% renewables.

What I'm wondering is whether we can get there from here. We can't simply
dictate the end result we want and have it appear.

What we could use now is some kind of economic simulation, taking into account
the cost of shutting down fossil plants early, the capital cost of building
all that wind and solar (and the upfront capital is the bulk of the cost,
since operating costs are low), the actual utilities and regulatory structures
currently in place, etc.

Then we can see whether what sort of policy changes we might need, to get an
end result like this, and what it will cost to put all this in place.

------
hleszek
Why don't we have our energy prices directly depending on the availability ?
Each house should have a big meter showing the variable price and people will
then use energy hungry appliances only when the energy is cheap.

This way we act as a buffer allowing better ressource usage.

Even better, appliances like dishwashers and washing machines could be
connected to the network to read the price level and run automatically when
the price is lower than a fixed amount.

Even better, for industries which are using energy automatically, they should
bid for the excess energy and when there is a big surplus, the energy will be
really cheap and will be used instead of going to waste.

~~~
frankus
There's already something called time-of-use metering, which is like what
you're suggesting but based on long-term trends rather than a spot price.

Right now it's only cost-effective with large loads, and only economical if
it's largely automated.

(By point of comparison, most people already can't be bothered to switch off a
100W room light when they leave. That means we just don't GAF about saving
pennies per hour if it means we have to push a button every so often).

However, seeing how heating and cooling are the only residential loads that
are really worth worrying about _, and both can typically be advanced or
deferred by an hour or so without any problems, you could probably solve 90%
of the problem by smartening up a handful of appliances in each home.

Industrial users can often do similar things. A cold storage facility, for
example, could do most of it's cooling when power is cheap and then coast
through the expensive periods. And they use enough electricity to pay someone
(or buy an automated system) to handle it for them.

_Once you solve heating and cooling, everything other than cooking (basically
lighting and entertainment) is getting more and more efficient every year. And
most people don't cook enough to make that a significant load.

------
InclinedPlane
Solve the storage problem first, then everything else follows. Otherwise this
is a recipe for disaster.

The problem with building out solar or especially wind power generation is
that it's unreliable, it doesn't produce power when you want it. This means
that you need to supplement power generation with low latency backup systems.
Unfortunately, those systems tend to be gasoline-powered generators. Building
those and operating them is expensive and also not so beneficial from a total
CO2 emissions perspective. More so when you compare the whole system to simply
replacing the windmill and the generator with a natural gas generator, which
is more reliable, cheaper, and produces less total net CO2.

~~~
don_draper
Germany gets 25% of their power from renewable energe.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany>

It's possible

~~~
reitzensteinm
Yes, but that doesn't contradict InclinedPlane's point in the least.

It's easy to generate a lot of renewable energy when you've got the old power
plants ready to cover any shortfalls in generation capacity. Just because you
can acheive 25% under those conditions by prioritizing renewables does _not_
imply that you can push renewables up to 90%+.

The wind can stop blowing for quite some time, even on a country wide scale.
You either have to store the energy, import it from other countries or have
backup power stations to cover the shortfall.

The (free) book Without Hot Air is a fantastic read for more information. It's
written by a no nonsense physicist that dives pretty deep into possible plans
for a future energy grid, including all the messy details.

And the details are _messy_. Any renewable energy plan that doesn't sound like
a momentus undertaking is cheating by 1) Only talking about electricity, not
total energy 2) Discounting embodied energy of imports 3) Keeping a country
sized fossil fuel infrastructure around to fill in the gaps 4) Importing
energy

Sometimes all four.

------
pressurefree
even if i came up with a disruptive idea that was poorly executed

<https://sites.google.com/site/verticalwindfarm/>

it still doesnt matter because everyone gets screwed.

[http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print...](http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/453200)

apparently there is no value in ideas.

also the only scholarship i ever got was from Chevron. the irony will save us!

------
willholloway
The takeaway is electricity prices will fall significantly and the worst
climate change effects will be avoided as the market rapidly replaces our
fossil fuel infrastructure with a renewable one.

------
programminggeek
This is probably a bad idea, but couldn't you store energy basically having
wind/solar power water pumps to pull water from one location to another?
Something like 2 lakes side by side with a dam in the middle pulling energy
off the transfer between when energy is needed and then water being pumped
back in the reservoir when energy is being claimed from wind/solar?

~~~
pilom
This is addressed in the "Renewable Energy - Without the Hot Air" Report

[http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c26/page_18...](http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c26/page_187.shtml)

basically the author says that what you describe is the best option right now
but there are only so many places you can put those facilities because they
require very specific geography.

That being said building lakes and dams is really bad for the river eco system
and really expensive to buy land out from under people to flood it.

~~~
dodo53
I really should get around to reading that. His info theory book/lectures
was/were very good. <http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/itprnn/book.html>

