[HN Gopher] Renewables supplied 65% of new US utility-scale gene...
___________________________________________________________________
Renewables supplied 65% of new US utility-scale generating capacity
in Q1 2023
Author : kieranmaine
Score : 85 points
Date : 2023-05-16 17:39 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (electrek.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (electrek.co)
| m463 wrote:
| Aside from solar and wind, I wondered about biomass renewables
| (after watching Michael Moore's planet of the humans)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE
|
| glad to see it's not the majority of "renewables" and that they
| are mostly solar, wind and hydro.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| To put in perspective: American generating capacity was 1.2
| million MW. The additions amount to maybe 4000 MW. So an increase
| of 0.3%
|
| Gonna take a while to change over
| jeffbee wrote:
| Why isn't it 100%?
| reaperman wrote:
| Because to eliminate non-sustainable baseload power the US
| electricity grid doesn't have enough cheap local energy
| storage, transmission losses are significant over inter-
| regional distances, and we don't have enough cross-continent
| transmission capacity.
|
| Right now there's no sustainable source for baseload power.
| Perhaps SPARC/ARC will change that in 20 years, or perhaps
| continuing advances in energy storage will let us store excess
| energy while the sun shines and the wind blows and use that
| stored energy as reliable baseload power.
|
| Wind power is really cheap. Electrical utilities are now
| comfortable with it and don't consider it an experimental
| technology. The profit margins are quite healthy. As soon as
| there's an _economically profitable_ way to store 120 hours of
| regional electricity usage, most utilities will jump towards
| that over continuing to buy expensive fuel for their current
| baseload plants. Right now the marginal costs of natural gas
| and coal power are cheaper than energy storage, and the
| _service / operational_ risks are well known and well-
| controlled vs. the scary operational unknowns of advanced
| energy storage solutions. Not talking about environmental
| risks; utility companies don't really give a damn about those,
| even if a lot of their employees personally do.
| _Microft wrote:
| _> transmission losses are significant over inter-regional
| distances_
|
| Not necessarily: (ultra) high-voltage DC transmission lines
| have losses in the low single digit percentage per 1000km
| (~600mi).
|
| This is not just theoretical either - for example, there is a
| transmission line over 3200km/2000mi with _12GW_ capacity in
| China for example (not under construction either but
| completed).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-
| voltage_electricity...
| ricw wrote:
| Last I read it was 1.5% per 1000km. That's negligible on
| the grand scale of baseload and price differential between
| cross-continental regions.
| beembeem wrote:
| > Right now there's no sustainable source for baseload power.
|
| To push back on this, there is a centurys' old technology for
| this in hydro. There's also an emerging field of geothermal.
|
| The Pacific Northwest (both sides of the border) has an
| abundance of hydropower that was installed decades ago and
| provides clean, reliable, baseload power.
|
| Geothermal has its challenges, especially at utility scale
| where geographic location is important and not typically
| close to population centers. On a smaller scale it is not
| geographically a problem, but not as economically viable for
| individual homeowners. It makes more sense when a large
| corporate is investing in it [1].
|
| [1] https://news.microsoft.com/2022/04/20/microsoft-redmond-
| camp...
| passwordoops wrote:
| To push back on the push back, being in Quebec, I always
| thought we were safe because of the Hydro (we're at 98%
| Hydro power - really this and the abundant supply of water
| are why I still stay here), but it looks like we're hitting
| the limit and will have trouble meeting demand in 10 years
| time [0], especially considering exports to New York and
| other northeast states.
|
| Also, dams are expensive. You're looking at $2B per
| project, at least here, and you need to flood an _immense_
| amount of land.
|
| Really, we should get over our paranoia and lift the
| artificial hurdles on nuclear so the plants can be built
| faster and cheaper. Or, at least in the states, bite the
| bullet and leverage your extensive gas fields to develop a
| solar industry [1]
|
| [0] https://www.electricityforum.com/news/canada-energy-
| shortage
|
| [1] https://doomberg.substack.com/p/a-serious-proposal-on-
| us-ene...
| beembeem wrote:
| Thanks for linking those sources. I think this is the key
| part of the article:
|
| > increased demand over the coming years, including data
| centres, cryptocurrency miners and greenhouses.
|
| Price them out. Don't give sweetheart deals to uses that
| aren't beneficial to the local economy. Additionally,
| these uses don't necessitate baseload. Crypto should be
| using cheap, renewable variable power sources. I'm
| genuinely curious what greenhouses means in this case.
| Heating indoor crops in the winter? Geothermal would be
| more effective for this. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD_3_gsgsnk
| chasd00 wrote:
| i thought hydropower screws up the ecosystem of rivers
| pretty badly. LIke fish unable to spawn and all that.
| beembeem wrote:
| I present you the most amazing solution to this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z3ZyGlqUkA
|
| Not to mention that the dams in Washington state do
| account for spawning/migration and slow down flows at
| certain points of the year.
| reaperman wrote:
| These have to be manned? Like 24/7 or...how much human
| labor is involved here? What % of salmon make it into
| human hands and through these tubes?
|
| Earlier attempts at fish ladders saw rates as low as like
| 3% for certain species of fish, per ladder/dam. Even if
| 50% of salmon got up them, if they have to pass 5 of them
| on the way to the spawning ground that meant 97% of
| salmon wouldn't make to the spawning grounds.
|
| Also, obviously, the ecological effects aren't just
| "tasty fish can't make babies". The impact on seasonal
| floodplains and sedimentation is huge by itself.
| reaperman wrote:
| Hydropower is generally renewable but really is not
| considered sustainable. I know I slipped that in and moved
| the goalpost because TFA is titled "renewable" but I said
| "sustainable" on purpose. So your comments on hydro are
| fair, and I'm glad you brought it up because it's an
| important discussion to be had.
|
| Geothermal completely slipped my mind! _facepalm_ Obviously
| the consensus view is that geothermal is sustainable. I
| have some mild concerns about how many years a installation
| in a non-geologically /thermally active area can run before
| it changes the temperature of its lithic heat sink enough
| to significantly reduce power output, but many
| installations are proving the success of the technology
| overall, and that's more an economic challenge
| (lifetime/ROI of installation) than a question of
| sustainability.
| beembeem wrote:
| > how many years a installation in a non-
| geologically/thermally active area can run before it
| changes the temperature of its lithic heat sink
|
| I would imagine this varies, but is a much smaller
| problem than e.g. heating up water habitats (data center
| cooling) or burning fossil fuels.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > Hydropower is generally renewable but really is not
| considered sustainable.
|
| Unfamiliar readers have to note that here sustainable is
| not used in its normal meaning but in the one used by
| some environmentalists. Hydropower can definitely be
| sustained indefinitely. It does cause flooding in some
| area previously I flooded and disturbs fish which some
| people view as an issue.
|
| It's really hard to have a good discussion about climate
| change because some people constantly push unrelated
| agenda into the mix.
| reaperman wrote:
| > Hydropower can definitely be sustained indefinitely.
|
| That's absolutely not what "sustainable" means.
|
| The difference between "renewable" and "sustainable"
| isn't a fringe concept. It's been pretty well accepted
| for about 55 years now.
| hackermatic wrote:
| Still, it's depressing and confusing that we know the stakes
| and are still putting money into the status quo (natural gas)
| instead of racing to solve these problems. I get that people
| need power now and not later, but power companies are also
| supposed to be thinking long-term, and their new natural gas
| plants may very well be stranded assets or simply banned in
| the next 10-20 years.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| But we already have a lot of natgas plants. I'm willing to
| bet that we could have handled all of our baseload
| requirements on all 3 mainland grids using the existing
| natgas plants as peakers.
|
| Sure, once we hit 60% or so of our power from renewables
| we'll need to have a proper strategy for handling
| intermittency. But we're far from that number now.
|
| Too meet our commitments, all natgas plants will need to be
| shut down or have carbon capture added by 2035. If you
| amortize your capital costs over 12 years instead of 50
| years, that natgas plant doesn't look so cheap any more.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Some new gas plants are sold as being compatible with
| hydrogen mixes and/or pure hydrogen.
|
| https://www.ge.com/gas-power/future-of-energy/hydrogen-
| fuele...
| binarymax wrote:
| So the idea is to use excess power to make and store
| hydrogen? How efficient is making hydrogen?
| generic92034 wrote:
| Isn't it infinitely more efficient than just letting the
| potential power be wasted? If supply surpasses demand
| eventually wind farms are shut down. That has to change,
| IMHO.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > How efficient is making hydrogen?
|
| https://www.iea.org/reports/electrolysers
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243
| 512...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Yeah, we need to generate a _lot_ of green hydrogen
| anyway, to decarbonise fertilizer, steel production,
| aviation fuel and a bunch of other stuff (Ideally we 'd
| force fossil fuel producers, the number one users of
| hydrogen today, to replace their hydrogen with green
| hydrogen as part of the process of kick starting this).
|
| And in that world, using some of your stored hydrogen or
| ammonia as emergy reserve makes sense, though you'd want
| to avoid actually using it too much as if you do then
| you'd probably have been better spending the money on
| more generation and/or batteries.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Right now there 's no sustainable source for baseload
| power._
|
| Only if you refuse to consider nuclear as "sustainable",
| which makes no sense technically but unfortunately has a lot
| of political traction.
| reaperman wrote:
| I do refuse to. I understand the statistics favor fission's
| overall safety record, but I've read _Voices from
| Chernobyl_ [0] and I'm not okay with the costs of what
| happens when control is lost / the facility is subjected to
| violence. I'm not okay with how long an area is
| uninhabitable after a major contamination, and how food
| grown around Chernobyl continued(s?) to poison unknowing
| people around Europe for many years and this contamination
| is covered up by Putin's henchman in Belarus[0]. I do
| understand that it's better than coal after factoring in
| all effects of air pollution. But I don't believe that's
| the dichotomy when we have other options to invest in wind
| and solar, which carry infinitely less risk.
|
| 0: https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=EA979C3CF64D8EF8C12
| 613A...
|
| > He was producing stool 25 to 30 times a day. With blood
| and mucous. His skin started cracking on his arms and legs.
| He became covered with boils. When he turned his head,
| there'd be a clump of hair left on the pillow. I tried
| joking: "It's convenient, you don't need a comb." Soon they
| cut all their hair. I did it for him myself. While I was
| there with him, they wouldn't, but when I left--they
| photographed him. Without any clothes. Naked. One thin
| little sheet on top of him. I changed that little sheet
| every day, and every day by evening it was covered in
| blood. I pick him up, and there are pieces of his skin on
| my hand, they stick to my hands. I ask him: "Love. Help me.
| Prop yourself up on your arm, your elbow, as much as you
| can, I'll smooth out your bedding, get the knots and folds
| out." Any little knot, that was already a wound on him. I
| clipped my nails down till they bled so I wouldn't
| accidentally cut him. None of the nurses could approach
| him; if they needed anything they'd call me. [After he
| died] They had to cut up the formal wear, too, because they
| couldn't get it on him, there wasn't a whole body to put it
| on. It was all--wounds. The last two days in the hospital--
| I'd lift his arm, and meanwhile the bone is shaking, just
| sort of dangling, the body has gone away from it. Pieces of
| his lungs, of his liver, were coming out of his mouth. He
| was choking on his internal organs. I'd wrap my hand in a
| bandage and put it in his mouth, take out all that stuff.
| It's impossible to talk about. It's impossible to write
| about. And even to live through. It was all mine. My love.
| They couldn't get a single pair of shoes to fit him. They
| buried him barefoot.
|
| ...
|
| After that, in the maternity ward, the skin started coming
| off my hands. My veins swelled up. And I was so indifferent
| to everything. I didn't want to get out of bed. [Cries] I'd
| get to the hospital and then turn around. By then I was
| pregnant myself.
|
| N.B.: The baby she was pregnant with, due to extremely
| rapid cellular growth, saved her from the radiation she
| received from performing bedside hospital care for her late
| husband, because the baby absorbed most of the radioactive
| elements. After his birth, the child Andrei died as a young
| schoolboy, essentially sacrificing his life for his mother,
| after spending half his life sick, reportedly very ill two
| weeks every month.
|
| > In Belarus, very little has changed since these
| interviews were conducted. Back in 1996, Aleksandr
| Lukashenka was the lesser-known of Europe's "last two
| dictators." Now Slobodan Milosevic is on trial at The Hague
| and Lukashenka has pride of place. He stifles any attempt
| at free speech and his political opponents continue to
| "disappear." On the Chernobyl front, Lukashenka has
| encouraged studies arguing that the land is increasingly
| safe and that more and more of it should be brought back
| into agricultural rotation. In 1999, the physicist Yuri
| Bandazhevsky, a friend and colleague of Vasily Borisovich
| Nesterenko (interviewed on page 210), authored a report
| criticizing this tendency in government policy and
| suggesting that Belarus was knowingly exporting
| contaminated food. Yuri has been in jail ever since.
| ars wrote:
| The way you write this makes it sound like you care about
| the single solitary stories, but the huge numbers of
| people harmed by the lack of nuclear power doesn't matter
| to you because it's to many people to think about.
|
| All other forms of power have _killed_ far far far more
| people. But the one dramatic story is what you care
| about?
| reaperman wrote:
| In total a land area about the quarter of the size of
| California was contaminated with over 37 becquerel of
| radiation due to Chernobyl, including 10,000 farms in the
| UK alone.
|
| The solitary story was to get people to read the book.
| The debate is if fission is sustainable for the
| environment. I talked about contaminated agriculture and
| how much that was covered up and missing in the
| statistics -- people still living in contaminated land
| and eating contaminated food today.
|
| "The huge numbers of people" is what I'm concerned about
| and why I advocate for wind and solar. I'm not in favor
| of the fossil fuel status quo. The radiation and
| pollution from coal ash and effects of global warming on
| agriculture are massive. But that's not an argument for
| "fission is ecologically sustainable", that's an argument
| for "even though it's not, we should still build dams and
| fission power plants anyways". Which is a fine argument.
| It's just a different one.
|
| A fission disaster or attack on a fission plant can take
| half of Californias agriculture out of the picture over
| night.
|
| You can't say fission and wind have similar risk at the
| tail ends. Yeah, statistically it hasn't happened, but
| the risk exists.
|
| Besides, new fission plants will take 20 years to build
| and by then we'll have _actually clean_ baseload energy
| from fusion reactors. This video[0] is from 7 years ago,
| but it provides an amazing breakdown of the physics of
| fusion energy. The timeline and physics predicted in the
| lecture have come to pass perfectly since then, and SPARC
| is on track to produce true net positive energy in 2025.
| ARC will be capable of providing electricity to the grid
| within 10-12 years, far faster than a fission reactor
| could get online in the USA.
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4&t=2414s
| ars wrote:
| If you live in an imaginary perfect world, sure.
|
| But in the real world not building nuclear power causes
| actual real contamination from Coal and other fuels.
|
| You can shut down the nuclear plants after you finished
| your wind/solar buildout. Not before.
|
| Not to mention a grid with _only_ wind /solar is
| impossible. Nuclear is a PERFECT complement for them!
|
| You are being your own worse enemy by opposing nuclear.
| The exact thing you don't want is happening because you
| oppose the one thing that could help.
| reaperman wrote:
| I'm not proposing shutting down existing plants. I'm
| opposing beginning new 20 year construction projects in
| the USA for new fission plants vs. investing in:
|
| - Energy storage
|
| - Energy transport
|
| - Nuclear fusion, such as ARC.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4&t=2414s
|
| It's the "perfect world" people who think fission plants
| will never contaminate 100,000 sq. km. of farmland ever
| again. I'm personally okay with spending a little more
| money on developing storage technologies. However, I'd
| also like to quote myself again:
|
| > That's not an argument for "fission is ecologically
| sustainable", that's an argument for "even though it's
| not, we should still build dams and fission power plants
| anyways". Which is a fine argument. It's just a different
| one.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I 'm not proposing shutting down existing plants._
|
| This makes no sense if you actually believe the
| "Chernobyl comparison" claims you have been making. If
| those claims were actually true, you should be arguing
| for shutting down every nuclear reactor on the planet,
| right now. So why aren't you arguing for that? (To be
| clear, I would still disagree with you, but at least you
| would be taking a consistent position.)
|
| OTOH, if you are reasonable enough to admit that your
| "Chernobyl comparison" claims do not justify shutting
| down existing plants, then they don't justify building
| new plants either. Existing plants are going to be
| _higher_ risk than any new plants we build in any of the
| areas you have been posting about.
| reaperman wrote:
| Sure, I support eventually decommissioning existing
| fission power plants. When there's something installed to
| take their place, like stationary electrical storage
| facilities, solid oxide fuel cells, pumped hydro, fusion
| power plants, literally anything.
|
| Not just creating energy shortages by removing fission
| with no backup plan for base power.
|
| There is a difference between spending 20% more on a new
| storage technology over a new fission power plant, vs.
| 120% costs to remove something that's working and replace
| it with something new. That money can do a lot of good
| elsewhere.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> A fission disaster or attack on a fission plant can
| take half of Californias agriculture out of the picture
| over night._
|
| Nonsense. I don't know where you are getting your
| information from, but it's fearmongering with no basis in
| fact.
|
| _> new fission plants will take 20 years to build_
|
| Newer designs have shorter build times since they are
| simpler and can be made smaller, with more components
| made in factories instead of fabricated on site. And even
| for older designs, the 20 years is not the time it
| actually takes to build them; that's a few years. The
| rest of the 20 years is the time required to overcome
| NIMBY lawsuits--if that is even possible. In fact it
| mostly hasn't been, which is why virtually no new nuclear
| plants have been built in the US for quite a while. But
| that's a political problem, not a technical problem.
|
| _> and by then we 'll have actually clean baseload
| energy from fusion reactors_
|
| Practical fusion has been about 20 years away for the
| past 40 years or so. It would be very nice if we finally
| get it, but I would not bank on any claims about the
| timeline given past history in this area.
| reaperman wrote:
| > Nonsense. I don't know where you are getting your
| information from, but it's fearmongering with no basis in
| fact.
|
| https://www.oecd-
| nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2019-12...
|
| > The releases during the Chernobyl accident contaminated
| about 125,000 km2 of land in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia
| with radiocaesium levels greater than 37 kBq/m2
|
| Land area of California: 423,971 km2
|
| So, a third of the land area of California could be half
| of its agriculture affected and reach levels of radiation
| which trigger intervention actions in the EU.
| robbiep wrote:
| Wait until you find out about the sorts of atrocities
| that are committed in American schools on an almost
| monthly basis
| travisporter wrote:
| It sounds gruesome sure, but coal mines have had more
| gruesome accidents.
|
| They do say that newer nuclear plants simply will not
| have a Chernobyl or Fukushima style meltdown by the way
| they're designed. How to prove that conclusively - that
| may be tough
| pdonis wrote:
| _> They do say that newer nuclear plants simply will not
| have a Chernobyl or Fukushima style meltdown by the way
| they're designed._
|
| _No_ nuclear plant other than Chernobyl has _ever_ had
| the possibility of a meltdown like the one Chernobyl had.
| As I posted upthread, Chernobyl is not a good proxy for
| _any_ commercial reactor that has ever been built.
|
| Older plants do have the same decay heat removal failure
| mode that Fukushima has, but avoiding it is easy: don't
| put the backup power and switchgear where it might get
| flooded. (I am still surprised that the designers of that
| particular reactor at Fukushima missed this--particularly
| since other similar reactors on the same site did _not_.)
| Newer designs avoid that failure mode by having the
| coolant circulate by natural convection, so even with all
| power off, cooling flow still continues and decay heat
| still gets removed. This has been well understood for
| several decades (and US nuclear submarines have been
| using this capability for that long--they do it to remain
| quiet by avoiding the noise of coolant pumps, but the
| decay heat removal protection remains the same).
| reaperman wrote:
| And if they're attacked?
| pdonis wrote:
| Attacked for what purpose? Reactor fissionable material
| can't be used to make bombs.
|
| Anyway, if being attacked is a possibility, physical
| security for such plants isn't a hard problem.
| mfitton wrote:
| I'm completely ignorant about nuclear power plants, so
| forgive me if this is a stupid question, but when we say
| that nuclear power plants today don't have the
| possibility of a similar meltdown, are we taking into
| account actions of an adversary?
|
| For instance, if someone dropped a sufficiently-sized
| bomb on a well-designed, modern nuclear power plant,
| would it melt down?
| pdonis wrote:
| _> if someone dropped a sufficiently-sized bomb on a
| well-designed, modern nuclear power plant, would it melt
| down?_
|
| No. It would just shut down. A big enough bomb could
| potentially spread some radioactive material around the
| plant area, but any adversary with access to a bomb that
| big and the ability to deliver it anywhere they chose
| could do much, much more damage by targeting other
| places.
| reaperman wrote:
| > potentially spread some radioactive material around the
| plant area
|
| I mean, I may be totally misunderstanding this. I thought
| this is what contaminated Europe's farmland more than the
| meltdown itself. Am I wrong?
|
| I'm not sure it's appropriate to just hand-wave it away.
| Pretty much all the farmland bombed across EU since WW2
| could be used for agriculture shortly after each war
| ended. Whereas plenty of farmland still shouldn't be used
| today after being contaminated by "some radioactive
| material" that was spread around by Chernobyl.
|
| There's been some renewed analysis of this with the
| ongoing war in Ukraine which points to situations where
| more modern nuclear plants could indeed still be
| significantly worse than wind/solar:
|
| > Nuclear plants use a number of auxiliary safety
| systems, such as diesel generators and external grid
| connections, to keep reactors cool. Zaporizhzhia also
| uses a spray pond, a reservoir in which hot water from
| inside the plant is cooled. If those systems failed, then
| the nuclear reactor would heat up swiftly, triggering a
| nuclear meltdown.
|
| > "The main danger here is damage to the systems needed
| to keep the fuel in the reactor cool - external power
| lines, emergency diesel generators, equipment to
| dissipate heat from the reactor core," Acton said. "In a
| war, repairing this equipment or implementing
| countermeasures could be impossible. In the worst case,
| the fuel could melt and spread large amounts of
| radioactivity into the environment."
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/18/europe/zaporizhzhia-
| nuclear-p...
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I 've read Voices from Chernobyl_
|
| Chernobyl is not a good proxy for _any_ commercial
| nuclear reactor. It was built by the Soviet Union for
| experimental purposes with a flagrant disregard for even
| minimal safety standards, even given the knowledge at the
| time. No other country has ever tried anything even
| remotely similar.
|
| That said, _even counting Chernobyl_ , the harm done by
| nuclear reactors per unit of energy generated is _orders
| of magnitude smaller_ than the harm done by fossil fuels.
| [1]
|
| _> wind and solar, which carry infinitely less risk_
|
| This is nonsense. Nothing is zero risk. Per unit of
| energy generated, wind and solar are comparable to
| nuclear in terms of overall harm done. [1] In other
| words, they have about _equal_ risk. They certainly do
| not have "infinitely less" risk.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-
| energy-p...
| reaperman wrote:
| Vs. fossil fuels is a red herring, the debate is whether
| or not fission is sustainable for the environment.
|
| _Statistically_ , you're right. But the potential harm
| from a nuclear event is clearly infinitely greater than
| wind and solar. Chernobyl's fallout restricted farming on
| 10,000 farms in the UK and affected 4 million sheep
| exceeding EU becquerel limits at the time. _In the UK_.
| In total a land area about the quarter of the size of
| California was contaminated with over 37 becquerel of
| radiation.
|
| _Statistically_ , it doesn't happen. But the risk IS
| THERE. Wind power can't take half of California's
| agriculture out of the picture over night.
|
| You can't say fission and wind have similar risk at the
| tail ends.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> the potential harm from a nuclear event is clearly
| infinitely greater than wind and solar_
|
| Nonsense. Your posts about this are pure FUD. Chernobyl
| is simply not a valid case when assessing the risks of
| actual commercial nuclear plants.
| taylodl wrote:
| > we don't have enough cross-continent transmission capacity
|
| There's a simple reason for that - it costs roughly $1
| million per mile to build new transmission and requires
| lawyers and real estate people working in multiple
| jurisdictions. Only the largest of utilities are able to
| afford this investment and commit the required resources.
|
| Even that's not enough - you still need to solve the so-
| called Community Energy Storage problem. You need a buffer
| between the generation and consumption of power so that they
| can vary from one another. That's even more investment.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Why are we leaving nuclear out of the discussion? Its the
| perfect moderator for electricity consumption and its not
| carbon emitting, would this be a better solution to push out
| natural gas and coal more quickly?
|
| It also doesn't have the same distribution problems
| nasmorn wrote:
| If you commission a new plant today it will not produce
| before 2040. That is the single biggest issue
| [deleted]
| tracker1 wrote:
| It really is... Unfortunately there's not perfect answer
| and any near term solutions will need to include a
| variety of sources. I also think we should be working on
| water pipelines as well. Energy preservation is another
| issue, and where Hydrogen is likely one of the better
| solutions... but that will require a combination of more
| effective water filtration and desalinization along with
| transportation of clean water nearer to where energy is
| generated.
|
| We should definitely be breaking ground on more nuclear
| plants in more stable (geographically) locations. I'm
| less convinced that current solar tech is a better net
| good considering what goes into building the things. I
| have similar reservations on electric cars for that
| matter. I think the tech is very cool and we will go
| through a lot of revisions.
|
| Of course I also have some skepticism on the eminent
| dangers of global warming or man's influence in part or
| whole. Considering there are relatively recent times
| (about 3-8k years ago) where the understood earth
| temperature was a bit higher than even the projections
| for the end of the next couple centuries at worst.
|
| Edit: and I'm still waiting for the flying cars I was
| promised.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| There's still substantial political support for subsidizing
| fossil generation in the US.
|
| There's been a recent flurry of sanity but even that is fought
| at every step.
|
| e.g. the latest on Manchin trying to make it easier for fossil
| fuels
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/us/politics/biden-manchin...
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Without fossil fuels everyone starves to death.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Just to be sure, you know you're not supposed to eat them,
| right?
|
| I _hope_ you 're referring to the strangely popular
| misinformation that claims fossil fuels are a necessary
| component of fertilizer, which they aren't.
|
| But if they were, it would be yet another good reason not
| to burn them to generate electricity when we have
| alternatives that are cheaper and cleaner.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| https://www.al.com/news/mobile/2022/12/alabama-power-on-sche...
| [deleted]
| kieranmaine wrote:
| To provide some context on why this is important, the IEAs's
| report "Credible Pathways to 1.5 degC: Four pillars for action in
| the 2020s" (https://www.iea.org/reports/credible-pathways-
| to-150c) states:
|
| "Capacity additions of renewables need to triple from 2022 levels
| by 2030, reaching around 1 200 GW annually, representing on
| average 90% of new generation capacity each year"
| melling wrote:
| Can someone provide more context? The United States already
| produces a lot of electricity so the "new" electricity is
| likely a small fraction of the existing amount. That's why it's
| always the feel good headline of "new electricity"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unit...
|
| The real problem is that we're still using an incredible amount
| of coal globally.
| philipkglass wrote:
| In 2022 American production of coal generated electricity was
| down to 854 terawatt hours from its peak of 2,016 terawatt
| hours in 2007. It's declining even more this year:
|
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960
|
| _In our March Short-Term Energy Outlook, we forecast the
| wind share of the U.S. generation mix will increase from 11%
| last year to 12% this year. We forecast that the solar share
| will grow to 5% in 2023, up from 4% last year. The natural
| gas share of generation is forecast to remain unchanged from
| last year (39%); the coal share of generation is forecast to
| decline from 20% last year to 17% in 2023._
|
| This is a dramatic decline in coal as a percentage of the
| electricity mix and in absolute consumption terms.
|
| There's a graph of historical American electrical sources
| here going back to 1950:
|
| https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-.
| ..
|
| You can see how the big brown wedge at the bottom (coal)
| peaked and then declined. Replacing coal was financially
| attractive in the US because the bulk of coal plants were
| already decades old by 2007 and starting to reach natural
| end-of-life. It will take longer for global coal consumption
| to decline because other parts of the world have built more
| coal plants in more recent years, and the purely financial
| breakeven point for plant replacement (neglecting pollution
| externalities) is further in the future.
| melling wrote:
| Yes, natural gas is pushing coal out in the United States.
|
| Of course, I said "globally " where those market forces
| aren't the same.
|
| https://www.worldometers.info/coal/coal-consumption-by-
| count...
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Today new electricity is tomorrow old electricity. We are
| playing the long game here.
|
| A sub-1.5 degree scenario (I initially wrote _credible_ but
| who am I kidding there is no credible sub-1.5 degree
| scenario) requires significant energy for both transportation
| and decarbonisation. This energy needs to be produced without
| emitting more carbon. That requires massive investment in
| non-carbon emitting energy production now.
| edouard-harris wrote:
| In practice, the real number is probably closer to 36% than to
| 65% (and likely even lower).
|
| Here's the problem: the article doesn't account for the capacity
| factors of the various new installed sources they mention [1]. A
| capacity factor is the _actual_ electrical energy produced by a
| generating unit, divided by the _maximum_ possible electrical
| energy that generating unit could have produced if it were
| operating continuously at full power. And under real-world
| conditions, most renewable energy sources produce at _far_ below
| their theoretical capacity maximum.
|
| For example: wind turbines have a capacity factor around 36%, and
| solar installations are under 25% [2]. If we apply these factors
| to correct the numbers in the article, the picture becomes much
| bleaker: the headline 1475 MW of new wind capacity drops to just
| 531 MW, while the headline 2530 MW of installed solar drops to
| 632 MW. Now let's generously assume that the 100 MW of hydro and
| 29 MW of biomass from the article both operate at a 100% capacity
| factor. Under those assumptions, total new installed renewable
| capacity drops from 4134 MW to 1292 MW -- more than threefold.
| [3]
|
| And of course, the real-world shortfall is even worse than this.
| Electricity markets need to clear _continuously_ , and the
| capacity factor for solar when the sun isn't shining is not 25%,
| but 0%. That means if the hours of peak demand coincide with
| hours during which solar is offline (which they do during much of
| the year) there is no amount of solar you _can_ install that will
| keep the grid online. To sum up: there is no way to escape the
| need for reliable baseload power. [4]
|
| [1] At least, the article doesn't mention correcting for capacity
| factors. And the FERC source document it cites gives me a blank
| page when I click on it in Firefox, meaning there is no way to be
| sure whether anyone applied this correction. I'm assuming they
| didn't, because citing high "headline" capacity numbers like this
| is unfortunately very common in discussions about renewable
| energy sources.
|
| [2] Capacity factor numbers are for installations in the United
| States during 2022, from the Energy Information Administration:
| https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
|
| [3] From the article: 2530 MW of solar, 1475 MW of wind, 100 MW
| of new hydro, 29 MW of new biomass, 2259 MW of natural gas.
|
| [4] Even battery installations don't get you there. Between 2022
| and 2026, the US is expected to add only 24 _minutes_ worth of
| battery storage to its grid. This includes residential, non-
| residential, and grid-scale installations. Sources: https://pv-
| magazine-usa.com/2022/09/14/u-s-installed-a-recor...
| https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
| doctor_eval wrote:
| If I'm reading your comment correctly, 24 minutes of added
| battery capacity is 1.6% of the number of minutes in a day,
| which is actually greater than the nameplate capacity increases
| in solar and wind. This seems more significant than you
| suggest.
|
| I would also assume that 24 hours is more storage than is
| actually required given the mix of wind and solar and the
| geographical coverage of the grid.
|
| How much battery storage, in minutes, is considered "enough"?
|
| Do the battery figures include only batteries or other storage
| like pumped hydro?
|
| I am not an expert and am interested in knowing why I'm wrong.
| kieranmaine wrote:
| To reach your value of 36% are you assuming that a gas power
| plant has a capacity factor of 100%?
|
| Depending on the type of gas power plant the capacity factor
| could be 56.7%, 13.7%, 13.6% or 18.8% based on https://www.eia.
| gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph....
|
| The energy infrastructure update released in Dec 2022, did not
| take capacity factor into account -
| https://cms.ferc.gov/media/energy-infrastructure-update-
| dece..., so this may be the case with the new dataset.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-05-16 23:01 UTC)