Biden Offers Ambitious Blueprint for Solar Energy (nytimes.com) 263
The Biden administration on Wednesday released a blueprint for producing almost half of the nation's electricity from the sun by 2050 -- something that would require the country to double the amount of solar energy installed every year over the next four years and then double it again by 2030. From a report: The expansion of solar energy is part of President Biden's effort to fight climate change, but there would be little historical precedent for increasing solar energy, which contributed less than 4 percent of the country's electricity last year, that quickly. Such a large increase, laid out in an Energy Department report, is in line with what most climate scientists say is needed to stave off the worst effects of global warming. It would require a vast transformation in technology, the energy industry and the way people live.
The Energy Department said its calculations showed that solar panels had fallen so much in cost that they could produce 40 percent of the country's electricity by 2035 -- enough to power all American homes -- and 45 percent by 2050. Getting there will mean trillions of dollars in investments by homeowners, businesses and the government. The electric grid -- built for hulking coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants -- would have to be almost completely remade with the addition of batteries, transmission lines and other technologies that can soak up electricity when the sun is shining and to send it from one corner of the country to another.
The Energy Department said its calculations showed that solar panels had fallen so much in cost that they could produce 40 percent of the country's electricity by 2035 -- enough to power all American homes -- and 45 percent by 2050. Getting there will mean trillions of dollars in investments by homeowners, businesses and the government. The electric grid -- built for hulking coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants -- would have to be almost completely remade with the addition of batteries, transmission lines and other technologies that can soak up electricity when the sun is shining and to send it from one corner of the country to another.
what could possibly go wrong (Score:2)
solar panels create no issues when used.... It is pure magic!
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40% isn't a high goal and is certainly achievable.
Re:what could possibly go wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear power plants have been providing abut 20% of our electricity with about 100 reactors for decades. Double that and it's 40%. Double that again and it's 80% of our electricity from 400 nuclear power reactors providing reliable, safe, and very low CO2 electricity.
In the 1970s we were able to put about one GW of new nuclear power capacity on the grid per month in the USA. The industrial capacity has grown considerably since then. Imagine one new GW scale reactor in the USA per week for 50 weeks per year. (We'll give the workers some holidays.) So that's 400 reactors on the grid in less than a decade. That's with hardly breaking a sweat given that the national economic output today is ten times that of the 1970s. It will take time to get the ball rolling but once that happens we could see a new nuclear power reactor go online every week, except around Christmas and Easter because the workers need their vacations.
I can hear it now, "We can't build a nuclear power plant that fast!" We did it before so we can do it again. Nobody knew how to build a nuclear power plant in 1950 but by the 1970s we were cranking them out by the dozens. We won't have to start from nothing this time. We start from the attitude that it can be done, it must be done, so go do it.
Or we can keep sitting on our hands because building things is hard.
That's an example on what could be done, not necessarily advocating for it to be done. We'll still be building windmills, hydro dams, and such. The solution is there, all we need is a government willing to allow it to happen.
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Re:what could possibly go wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Around 50 roofers a year fall to their deaths in the US every year.
That total will go up when there a lot more solar installers.
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OSHA requires that workers on roofs have safety lines. Tesla was very good about following that when installing our latest set of panels. Yes, there will be people who take shortcuts, but I would expect as the industry grows, it will be more larger companies, and they'll generally be better at following the rules. This is completely different from roofing, where it's mostly small businesses with one or two crews.
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Good. It's not as if... (Score:2)
numbers (Score:3)
I'm not sure I understand where those numbers are coming from. Current solar panels are 25 to 30 years. So barring any damage, by the time he's talking about really ramping this up, wouldn't we also need to replace a ton of existing panels? I'm not sure an improved grid or storage system is the bottleneck. It's ok to be ambitious, but to plan on vast upgrades to solar panel manufacturing, recycling, and materials in over the next few decades seems unrealistic. Within that time span I imagine that it is at least as plausible that more realistic energy solutions become readily available making this just a way to dump money into an industry with no need to complete objectives.
Re:numbers (Score:5, Informative)
Current solar panels are 25 to 30 years. So barring any damage, by the time he's talking about really ramping this up, wouldn't we also need to replace a ton of existing panels?
Most of the panels ever made are still in service.
Solar panel degradation has turned out to be much less than expected.
The panels I bought have a 25 year warranty against reduction in output to below the advertised spec, and a 20 year warranty against manufacturing defects. But it's very rare for a panel to fail without being damaged, and that gets harder and harder. Many panels are rated against golf ball sized hail.
In short, no, and also no, and did I mention no?
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Panels on roofs in warm areas have a hard life. They definitely degrade. All my panels are second hand to me and they are working OK but I can see a discoloration in the central part of each cell. Some are Shell Solar panels and the others are the same but BP branded (BP bought Shell solar when Shell got out of the solar business).
The reason the original owners got rid of the panels is that the new ones can put out much more power in the same space. I have lots of space (ground mount panels). So I don't car
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Panels on roofs in warm areas have a hard life. They definitely degrade.
Sure, but look. If I'm still getting 375W when perfectly oriented in 20 years, and I paid $0.44/watt for them brand new with no shipping (my lady picked them up at Real Goods) then I win, right? I've got what I paid for. And I don't care about discoloration, I care about actual output.
[...]old installations are being continually upgraded already, not because of panels wearing out, but just because the state of the art has advanced.
Correct. And we can hope that this will continue, that they will find new and better ways to get more efficiency out of solar panels. But that's not a reason to not put them in now. The panels could repay their energy investme
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In some states, solar is still low-hanging fruit. But in California, and even more so in Hawaii, there is almost a glut of solar. What is really needed is storage so we can add more solar and not have to throttle it back in moments of over-abundance (which is happening now in Hawaii and maybe in California).
My house has net metering and for my own personal financial situation solar is a total no-brainer. I bought second-hand panels for 20 cents a Watt and put them in myself. It probably paid for itself in o
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this investment in grid scale batteries is NOT going to be free. And probably it is not going to be easy or fast either, truth be told.
Fast and easy no, they can only make batteries so fast. Free, no of course someone has to pay, but it's profitable to operate grid storage so there's little drawback to investment.
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A bump up on the tax rebate (Score:2)
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You can store 20kWH in a household-sized water tank.
I think heating water for my family consumes quite a lot of my electricity anyway, heat it during the day either with PV or direct heat transfer and take the water heating load off at night, one more thing to cross off the list of power consumers.
The stored heat in water can be used to heat the house too with a little more plumbing
Rooftop solar (Score:3)
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I am sure that it will be cheaper for society to install the storage in more industrial sizes. It is just an economy of scale thing. It could be installed near major switch stations, perhaps, as these are already industrialized areas with restricted access.
What I am afraid of is if rich people all get powerwalls and have reliable power, and poor people all use shitty grid power that goes out every few days. I see this as a real possibility.
I have a backup generator but I am thinking about adding batteries b
It's not a blueprint (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not a blueprint. A blueprint is a specific plan for accomplishing something.
This is just an aspirational thing with no actual plans for how to get it done. From TFA:
"But it is not clear how hard the administration will push to advance solar energy through legislation and regulations. Officials have provided only a broad outline for how they hope to clean up the country’s energy system and its cars and trucks. Many details will ultimately be decided by Congress, which is working on a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a much larger Democratic measure that could authorize $3.5 trillion in federal spending."
Nobody would describe a blueprint as "a broad outline for how they hope" to do something.
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Be glad it isn't. Forcing everyone to use solar is not a laudable goal. Giving people some incentive to use a better, cheaper source of electrical energy than coal or natural gas IS a laudable goal, especially if that source happens to pollute less end-to-end or maybe release less CO2. Give people the flexibility to find their own way instead of picking out an industry favored by your cronies.
Northern latitudes don't get enough sun (Score:5, Insightful)
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That sounds logical, but have you really studied the data? Rooftop solar still produces a lot of power in the winter, even in New England. Wind power still works just fine in the winter. It would be trivial to have all new single-family (and probably up to four-family) homes in New England be net-zero with good energy efficiency and solar. Yes, some homes aren't solar candidates due to trees or other shading issues, but most are, and those could overproduce a bit to make the overall new production be ne
Re:Northern latitudes don't get enough sun (Score:5, Informative)
That sounds logical, but have you really studied the data?
I have.
Rooftop solar still produces a lot of power in the winter, even in New England.
Rooftop solar costs more than nuclear power.
Sources:
https://www.powermag.com/iea-n... [powermag.com]
https://www.lazard.com/perspec... [lazard.com]
What's missing now is adequate incentives for storage.
I believe the issue is far too many incentives on intermittent power which is driving the need for storage. If the goal is lower CO2 emissions then all low CO2 energy sources should be incentivized. That means nuclear and hydro should be subsidized as much as wind and solar. The Biden administration made statements showing support for nuclear power before, why not mention support now?
Too exspensive! (Score:2, Insightful)
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Hydrogen is the way to go for vehicles not electric! I worked at a ULine warehouse were they converted ALL their electric forklifts to Hydrogen.
That still doesn't make it the way to go. Most people aren't operating a warehouse. For most people, not having to drive to a filling station is a huge boon. And not having untrained users dealing with hydrogen is a good thing too, frankly. The street I live on has a bunch of kerbside charging points in lamp posts, since no one has off street parking and it's just n
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True. Batteries for bulk energy storage aren't viable right now. Price would have to halve. The thing is, if past performance is any guide [transportenvironment.org] (see fig 11), that's will happen and then some this decade.
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B grade cells are cheap because they are shit. It's not unusual for them to swell for example, fuck that. That just means the next step is a house fire.
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Lithium cells do naturally swell, you just tend not to notice because they are hidden inside your phone or inside a metal can. Swelling doesn't mean they are damaged or no good, and the bus bars they come with are spaced to allow for expansion, as is the norm even for grade A cells.
The B grade cells are an average of around 10% below advertised capacity, but much much cheaper. So as long as space isn't an issue for you they are a good option, and with a home battery you will want to avoid cycling them hard
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Lithium cells do naturally swell, you just tend not to notice because they are hidden inside your phone or inside a metal can.
Lithium cells normally swell when something is wrong with them. You tend to notice any significant swelling because they will often damage your device when it occurs, make the case bulge out, screen adhesive fail, etc. Or if you are an RC enthusiast you notice because your battery packs are mostly just plastic wrapped around foil packet battery cells. When your packs puff up you know to get rid of them* because they are in danger of becoming fires.
* Actually I just eliminate the bad cells and turn them into
Ultra high voltage DC transmission (Score:5, Informative)
China has deployed a one million volt DC electric grid transmission system which, is efficient at several thousand kilometers. They are deploying solar, wind, hydroelectric and nuclear as fast as they can. And not focusing on storage but instead a national transmission grid. Solar in the northwest where it's still light and transmitted to the south east where it's dark in summertime, especially for hvac cooling. Invert that for winter.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/chin... [ieee.org]
We could do the same thing. And in fact we desperately need to upgrade our electric grid anyway.
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It's odd that the US is so reluctant when it's one of the few countries that has enough geographic spread to make long distance transmission a major component of its clean energy stratergy.
China also has district air conditioning. Basically they have a massive and efficient air conditioning unit that chills water and distributes it to businesses all over a city. It cuts energy use for cooling considerably. The early designs were more expensive than using small air conditioning units, but the newer ones comi
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Mostly the old fucks scared of change. Look how angry they over things that other people do and have zero effect on them.
Re: Ultra high voltage DC transmission (Score:2)
They're also building more coal power plants than everyone else combined.
Your point, again?
Storage and solar go hand in hand (Score:3)
I am sure the article goes into this. But there is little point in adding solar unless we also add storage at the same time. I know a lot of people understand this. But a surprising number of people I run into or talk to do not get it. In some sunny states, the grid is already over half solar during the day. In those locations, adding solar may be counter productive because it is starting to knock baseline generation off the grid and force us to use more natural gas peakers in the afternoon and evening.
Of the two challenges, increasing solar and increasing storage, storage is by far the more difficult and more expensive of the two. It is not technically or physically impossible but it will be very challenging to do it in this time frame, and it is very likely that the grid will become less reliable and more expensive in the short and medium term. Especially if we also transition from ICE cars to electric cars and also transition heating and cooking to electric at the same time.
It is not at all clear to me that this is the best way to go. I think the problem is that lithium batteries and solar technology (and wind) are the only ones mature enough at the moment to implement on a wide scale. Flow batteries and thermal storage types of solar power are promising but not mature enough yet to roll out. The sense of urgency surrounding climate change is not conducive to thinking things though carefully.
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Distributed smart storage can really help with this.
With solar you get a peak during the day. A smart heat storage unit could turn itself on when there is excess energy available, and then use that energy later to heat water when the homeowner wants to take a shower. Such units already exist, ranging from basic hot water tanks with immersion heaters to ones that use phase changing materials to increase the heat storage density.
Similarly with electric vehicles a lot of people can charge when electricity is c
Make a special economic zone for manufacturing (Score:2)
Just like China, we need to make a special zone, near the US/Mexico border, with massive incentives for factories. Invite all of the solar panel and related factories in the world to setup shop there. Low taxes, zero import duties, allow immigrant worker visas and training for the hordes from Mexico and Central/South America. Incentives for high tech American workers and scientists, like reduced taxes. DO IT NOW, before western civilization completely turns into a Soviet Chinese state.
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Love cut and paste... (Score:3)
" double the amount of solar energy installed every year over the next four years and then double it again by 2030 " ...
so:
2022 2x
2023 2x
2024 2x
2025 2x
2026 1.2x
2027 1.2x
2031 1.2x
So, if we adopt this plan, within 4 years, our cumulative effort will start to substantially decline.
Where do I sign up?
Makes no sense (Score:2)
Makes no sense. We convert everyone to using electric cars, which will mostly be charged at night, and at the same time we convert 50% of supply to a form of power generation which only produces the power to charge them during the day.
This is not even considering what powers the air conditioners during hot summer evenings.
And when its all done, no-one has shown that this will in fact lower US CO2 emissions. Nor has anyone shown that lowering US CO2 emissions will lower global emissions.
For that matter, no
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As for batteries, there are not enough raw materials globally to make enough batteries to do it. There are probably not enough to convert all automobiles to EV, never mind when you get started on the much bigger task of installing grid level batteries which will supply power all evenings.
Last I checked there wasn't a shortage in supply of sodium or sulphur, both of which make for perfectly fine grid scale batteries.
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Makes no sense. We convert everyone to using electric cars, which will mostly be charged at night, and at the same time we convert 50% of supply to a form of power generation which only produces the power to charge them during the day.
This is not even considering what powers the air conditioners during hot summer evenings.
And when its all done, no-one has shown that this will in fact lower US CO2 emissions. Nor has anyone shown that lowering US CO2 emissions will lower global emissions.
For that matter, no-one has shown that previous coolings were preceded by falls in atmospheric CO2. To buy into this you have to believe it works both ways, on the upside and the downside.
It makes no sense however you look at it.
I decided to step beyond this debate on CO2 emissions because no matter what anyone thinks on CO2 emissions there are many other problems on energy to worry about, and nearly all the solutions for those problems will lower CO2 emissions. If we are to reduce our dependence on foreign energy, as one example, we need to find alternatives to natural gas and petroleum. Those alternatives will be onshore wind, geothermal, hydro, nuclear fission, and synthesized fuels. Alternatives that have lower CO2 emissions
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And what do cars do doing the day? Sit in parking lots and ramps while people are at work. If only they could be somehow plugged into a solar grid to charge during the time of the day with the most sun...
Yes, if only. This is not trivial though. Running wires to parking spots in parking lots and parking ramps is trivial but paying for it is not. Who would be responsible for paying for installing the wires? The utility? The government? The businesses that built the parking spots for employees and customers? If your answer to this involves some government funds or mandates then expect the politicians that enact and enforce any laws forcing people to pay for this in their taxes to lose elections. This
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Gotta love Slashdotters who consider energy storage a magical far-off technology.
Re: sheer stupidity (Score:3, Insightful)
Gotta love slashdotters who don't understand quantitative information.
The average daily residential load is like 30 kwhr. The average industrial load is quite a bit more than that, but nevermind. Sometimes, in a place like the northeast, it's cloudy for weeks on end and in the winter it's dark for 17 hours a day.
You'd need several Teslas worth of batteries just to tide one house over those periods. That's probably $100k of batteries. For each and every residential customer. And even if they're *magically* b
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Unless we unlock useful fusion power, AGI, or some new & exotic (and manufacturing-friendly) physics, there is essentially zero
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As someone that worked in solar (and currently in semiconductors,) you're just entirely wrong.
Learn where to buy your batteries. If you haven't learned this lesson yet, I can't help you.
And you can use lead-acid batteries, still. Those can be refurbished by even the most brain-dead hillbilly.
2 grand for 20kWh storage at a fucking auto-zone. You ain't getting that out of a Tesla powerwall.
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That's probably $100k of batteries.
So you haven't bothered to check at all then, and ended up with a wildly wrong number. Great job Mr. Nutjob.
Also, it's not like we haven't figured out how to move electricity from one place to another, and that the wind stops blowing for weeks on end in winter. Batteries aren't the only way to store energy either, we can store it as heat for example. Believe it or not about a third of UK homes already have a heat storage system.
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Even simpler analysis is to compare the ROI of solar vs the ROI of taking that same money and buying a S&P500 index fund. Residential solar is still not cheap enough to make sense.
Re: sheer stupidity (Score:2)
It's not dark in places. It's dark in the whole country, all at once, for hours on end. Every day, too.
And your heat pump or air conditioner will eat through a Tesla Powerwall in about 2 or 3 hours on a really cold or really hot night. And if you run it like that every day (whether it's in your house or "in the cloud") then you'll need a new one every few years.
Just look at the spec sheets and the price tags. I am. I'm looking into a whole house battery. It's disappointing so far.
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And your heat pump or air conditioner will eat through a Tesla Powerwall in about 2 or 3 hours on a really cold or really hot night.
Denmark routinely stores heat from summer to winter. Storing it for a few hours is comparatively trivial.
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Denmark routinely stores heat from summer to winter.
I had not heard of this before. Thanks for the heads up. For anyone else curious, here's a link:
https://ramboll.com/projects/r... [ramboll.com]
It looks like Denmark is also doing some experiments lately with shorter term (a few days) storage by heating stones to 600 degrees C. (There's a ton of recent articles if you google: denmark store heat stone)
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It's dark in the whole country, all at once
Nope. The east gets dark about 3 hours before the west.
So we install east-west HVDC transmission lines.
Then morning sunshine in Florida can power California waffle irons, while afternoon sunshine in California can cook dinner in New York.
Then we install wind turbines from the Texas Panhandle to North Dakota. The wind still blows at night.
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Or, we could use hydro, geothermal, and nuclear fission in addition to wind, solar, and HVDC power lines. Energy sources that are reliable, generally abundant as well as low in CO2 emissions.
Hydro has inherent energy storage and can ramp power up and down very quickly, very helpful when paired with wind and solar. Geothermal and nuclear fission have inherent energy storage too, and by adding Brayton cycle turbines and thermal energy storage they can have some room to vary output as fast as a natural gas s
Re:sheer stupidity (Score:5, Funny)
Lol. It gets dark at night, checkmate greenies!
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We could go back to going to bed when the sun goes down,
You will be so tired foraging for bugs all day that you will look forward to the sleep.
or reading by candlelight!
Don't be ridiculous. Whale oil lamps FTW!
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"It also calls for deploying tools to expand transmission of solar energy such as storage, microgrids and forecasting, which will play a "role in maintaining the reliability and performance of a renewable-dominant grid," the Department of Energy said."
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You’re right. Better shoot an email over to all those guys who did the math and let them know they’re wrong.
Why? (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Wind is about half the price of solar.
Wind energy is 3 cents per kwh.
Solar energy is 6 cents per kwh.
Also, wind turbines don't stop working when it gets dark.
Having some of each leads to a more stable grid, but wind, not solar, should be the primary source.
Can't use the "n-word". (Re:Wind, not solar) (Score:5, Insightful)
Wind is a far better source of renewable energy. It's pretty obvious that the people pushing solar have bought the administration's support.
Those that have followed the solar money find that there's lobbying from the natural gas industry for more solar power. Why would the natural gas industry support more solar power? I'm glad you asked. It's because the more intermittent solar power gets added to the grid the more natural gas backup generators are used.
Sure, batteries and pumped hydro storage is a thing but there's already a shortage of those. So utilities look to other energy storage. The most common storage is tanks of natural gas.
Onshore wind is better than solar but still needs natural gas backup. Onshore wind costs less than solar, doesn't deprive use of the land under them like solar panels, and better matches usage patterns with winds peaking at sunrise and sunset where there's more demand from people using lighting, cooking, and HVAC. Onshore wind is profitable as it is so they are not lobbying the government for subsidies like solar power has been.
Getting more solar power on the grid is an excuse to burn more natural gas. If this keeps up then the Biden administration may face a natural gas price spike. The resolution to that is reversing their ban on new pipelines, especially those bringing in gas and petroleum from Canada.
I expected to see at least a mention of the "n-word" as part of the energy plan, and I don't mean "natural gas". I guess Biden forgot what he promised during the campaign for getting more energy.
Okay this is just silly (Score:2)
As for who's pushing solar, for some stupid reason a lot of Americans find windmills hideous to look at. I ca
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Natural gas producers aren't going to want any competing power sources.
I agree. Solar power doesn't compete with natural gas, that's why the natural gas industry supports solar power subsidies.
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Natural gas producers aren't going to want any competing power sources.
I agree. Solar power doesn't compete with natural gas, that's why the natural gas industry supports solar power subsidies.
So what you're saying is that solar reduces the carbon footprint of natural gas. It's interesting that you pointed that out because retired nuclear power plants can have the turbines converted to natural gas thus reducing the EROEI and carbon foot print of gas/solar combination. Perhaps this is the future of nuclear power that Biden was referring to?
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So what you're saying is that solar reduces the carbon footprint of natural gas.
No, it increases it.
Without solar power utilities buy a mix of highly efficient CCGT natural gas power as "base load", and less efficient SCGT for "peakers". With solar power there's far more need for "peakers" to manage the intermittent nature of solar power. This means more CO2 per kWh from natural gas, perhaps more than the reduction in CO2 emissions from the added solar power generating capacity. A more detailed explanation is here: http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co... [roadmaptonowhere.com]
I say that solar power does not co
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Re:Can't use the "n-word". (Re:Wind, not solar) (Score:5, Insightful)
So you are saying...
Stop right there for a second. In my experience anything that start with, "So you are saying," is almost certain to be a straw man.
And your solution to that is to build more nuclear that you just said isn't a good fit for a grid with lots of renewable energy.
Where did that come from? I made no such claim.
Due to the incredibly high cost of nuclear...
Solar power had incredibly high costs too. Research and development brought costs down. Research continued with computer simulations and non-nuclear prototypes to test materials, heat transfer, and more. Research is only half of what is needed to lower costs. The other half is development, and development means building things.
Development of nuclear power came to a near standstill since the Carter administration and Three Mile Island. For nearly 50 years Democrats held the belief that renewable energy options would replace nuclear power. That changed last summer when the Democrats released their official party platform document which showed they added support for nuclear power as a plank in their party platform.
What changed the minds of Democrat leadership last summer? For decades experts would go before Congress to explain that without nuclear fission power on the grid there would be an energy shortage. This likely sunk in as it was about this time many nuclear power plants faced an expiration of their operating licenses. Democrats had to know that if dozens of nuclear power plants closed one after the other that it would be impossible to fill this loss of generating capacity with wind and solar. It was renew the licenses for the nuclear power plants, issue licenses to build more natural gas power plants, or see an energy shortage. They chose to renew the licenses. That only delayed the inevitable closing of these nuclear power plants. They will have to close due to age at some point. Then what?
The USA will build more nuclear power reactors. We will do so very soon and build them by the dozens. With that will come development of the technology and lower costs.
... the more likely outcome of this is that eventually all nuclear and fossil fuel plants go away, and we just have renewables, long distance transmission lines and a few plants that burn waste wood a few times a year to cover exceptional events.
The more likely outcome is an "all the above" energy policy that includes hydro, geothermal, nuclear fission along with the wind, solar, and storage that Democrats have been propping up for decades.
The building of new nuclear power will start with 3rd generation plants that already have been approved by the US NRC. In time the 4th generation demonstrators being built now will evolve into full scale production reactors. This is almost certain to happen. Nothing is absolutely certainly to happen since there's always room for some wild thing to happen. The largest barriers to new nuclear power reactors has been Democrats in US Congress, and they just signed off on a party platform that says they will see to it that more nuclear power plants get built. Once built we can expect a civil nuclear power reactor to operate for over 80 years.
So, when will renewable energy replace nuclear power in the USA? The year 2135?
The political barriers to nuclear power are evaporating and the industry is getting their poop in a group to build nuclear power plants at a rate never seen before.
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R&D? Nuclear power is 80 year old technology at this point, it went through a heavy R&D phase before it became obvious that it wasn't going to deliver.
Nuclear power is 30 years old and this point because development stopped for the last 50 years. Those 30 years where in the BC years, "before computers". We can do far better in designing reactors today with CAD, better materials, and more.
Funny how nuclear is just about to solve all our problems if only we would throw some more billions at it.
If the idea of government subsidies bother you then I think it would be a great idea to end all energy subsidies. I'm not seeing the nuclear power industry ask for billions of dollars, they are asking only for permission to develop the technology. They want to be regu
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Why not both?
Solar runs in daytime during peak demand when people are awake. Wind continues to runs at night to power the fridge.
With COVID and more people working from home during daylight hours, solar means using your own roof.
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Nothing else propping it up besides those government subsidies because they would go out of business otherwise. The sun blankets us with free energy daily. Why not make use of it?
Re: Stupidity is a strategic weakness (Score:4, Insightful)
Because storing electrons is objectively more expensive to do at the scales necessary than storing hydrocarbon molecules. Or nuclear fuel rods.
Numbers matter. Just because it feels green doesn't mean it's technically feasible at scale.
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But with V2G, we get the storage for free as we convert the vehicle fleet to EVs. You can't beat free.
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Nothing is free. I once tried to estimate how much it would cost to wire up just a simple 120 VAC outlet, 20 A or 30 A, to every parking space in a parking garage to get an idea of the scale on implementing the idea of load shifting car charging from night time to the day when people were at work and the sun shining on solar panels. That's not V2G but it's where we'd have to start.
First you'd need an outlet. Okay, about a buck. Then each outlet needs a circuit breaker, five bucks. No big deal. Oh, thi
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Are hydrocarbons really cheaper though? I mean if you actually paid for all the damage they do, rather than relying on externalizing that cost.
Re: Stupidity is a strategic weakness (Score:3)
Everything does "damage." Producing solar panels and mining/refining/pulling copper wire does damage. So does making batteries. And semiconductors for high voltage applications.
It's just a different kind of "damage."
Civilization is about making tradeoffs between different kinds of "damage" and collectively deciding that some kind is acceptable.
Introducing a counterpoint about "damage" in a discussion about monetary cost is, I suspect, the product of a delusion that it is possible to live without causing "da
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To avoid a race to the bottom, funded by the faux-communist market-destroying autocracy that is China.
Re:Not realistic at all. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think the 18% tariff is more likely to result in manufacturing outside of China than ruin the Earth.
Trade wars are neither good, nor easy to win, but once you're in one, you may as well make the most of it.
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Besides which manufacturing is only a small part of the business. There is a lot of work available for installing solar panels and maintaining them, which obviously can't be outsourced to China because it requires someone to be physically present at the installation site.
Cheap panels just means more of that kind of work.
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Maybe because you get the low-hanging fruit first.
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So it could increase from 4% in 2021 to 40% by 2035 i.e. an increase of about 2.6% per year over 14 year but then only increase by 5% over the next 15 years an increase of about .34% per year.
How does this make any sense? Why would the increase slow down so fast?
My best guess is an expectation of a large increase in demand for electricity after 2035 perhaps from transport and heating moving from fossil fuel to electricity. There is no mention of this in the article and I don't understand why demand would wait until 2035 to ramp up so fast.
Any ideas?
It would help if slashdot editors would link to actual reports instead of paywall sites written by reporters. Here is the actual report site [energy.gov] and the actual report [energy.gov] wherein you can read all the details and not have to speculate.
The U.S. must install an average of 30 GW of solar capacity per year between now and 2025 and 60 GW per year from 2025-2030. The study’s modeling further shows the remainder of a carbon-free grid largely supplied by wind (36%), nuclear (11%-13%), hydroelectric (5%-6%) and biopower/geothermal (1%).
So in 2035 the plan is to have the grid almost entirely decarbonized (95%) - the goal of retiring fossil fuels from electricity production would be nearly done. Solar power is not expected to do all the lifting, just like now (wind turbines, etc.). I have yet to see any study proposing
Re: 38% or 42% approval rating depending who you a (Score:3)
The disease has a 98% survival rate. Meaning, Joe Rogen only had a 2% chance of dying. Actually much less than 2% chance of death once taking into account that he is healthy and not a senior. Only an idiot would use that for determining that a particular treatment (out of a whole cocktail btw) was responsible. If you cross street blind folded at 2am and survive, does it mean crossing streets blind folded at 2am is safe? Of course not. Learn statistics man. People with no scientific or math background should
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Who cares if it's made from stem cells? I certainly don't, but let's be factual about it. It's made from fetal stem cells harvested before GWB made the ban on it, what.. 20 years ago?
Also why is Joe's performance such a partisan issue? He sucks, he needs to go.
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Maybe we can ask Tesla [youtu.be], but anyway why bring up hydro in the middle of a drought? [youtu.be]
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why bring up hydro in the middle of a drought?
Because hydroelectric dams can store up water from years with an excess of water for those with a shortage. That's flood control on top of drought control. Because hydroelectric dams can ramp power output up and down quickly as backup for intermittent wind and solar, and as a means to manage variable demand to the steady supply of power from coal, CCGT natural gas, and 3rd generation nuclear power.
The more non-hydro power is added the less we need hydro for "base load" power which runs down the reserves b
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Here's the difference between solar & wind.
When the wind blows & the sun shines, you store the energy.
At night, or in the event of an emergency (super hot or super cold), if you run out of stored energy, you can't
make more.
A coal fired power plant, nuclear power plant, hydro dam, can "ramp up" power ON DEMAND.
You can't "fire up" a wind or solar power station, to meet an critical demand.
In practice, nuclear does not ramp up. It just doesn't. Coal ramps up slowly. Natural gas ramps up pretty quick. Hydro ramps up very fast. And batteries ramp up fastest of all. Embarrassingly fast. For the most part, in today's grid, sudden demand is met by natural gas power plants. Batteries could do the same thing if we had enough of them.
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Sounds like the Trump administration's last ditch effort to keep the coal industry alive. It didn't work.
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Wow. Can't believe you got modded troll. We need more meta-moderation I guess. What you say is true.
What a lot of greens want to do is simultaneously electrify everything and green the grid by switching it to all renewable. So the idea is that somehow we will electrify aviation (at least short hop aviation) and switch to electric for heating and cooking and electrify cars and delivery trucks (many believe that Tesla is well on its way to electrifying long-haul trucking but I am not so sure) etc. I am not te
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Some things can't be electrified, for those things there are carbon-neutral biofuels like green diesel and butanol.
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Land is something the US has in abundance, especially West of the Mississippi. Which is why "upgrade the grid" is a big part of this plan.