Renewable Power

[Londo_Jowo]

Here in Texas we keep adding wind power to the grid and at times provides almost 50% of the load! This state has enormous untapped solar potential too which I'd love to see developed. Unfortunately the state is run by oil and gas men, but wind is still growing.

The market doesn't deal with "free" things like wind and the sun that well so the future will be interesting.

You may want to go back and read your link again, wind produced 45% on a given day in February. It will be far less of a percentage during the hottest months of the year when the peak electricity demand for the state is seen.

 

[Vdubchaos]

Power companies don't want this sort of thing. Why would they want to lose business/profits?

THUS, our politicians don't want it either (after all, companies pay them the most).

Mind you, they will do a great job pretending!

And all that aside, let's face it and be honest here. Solution to world problems is NOT technology.......solution is less consumption and less consumerism. Which no body seems to talk about.......because again, it kills company profits and jobs.

Alternative is less people......

I don't care what technology you come up with, humans will continue to ruin this planet until it shakes us off like a toxic virus that we are.

 

[interchange]

Offshore wind is likely the best yield target for boosting our power grid in today's economy.

However, our sources of energy production are driven by market forces. Fossil fuels are simply cheaper. Governmental incentives to produce more "renewable" energy (no such scientific thing, but that's not particularly relevant to the topic) are a big challenge. R&D grants, etc., are of limited efficacy. A good way to have a lot of wasted money is to fund a project through a grant source. Increased regulation & taxation on fossil fuels if it is enough to artificially make the cost of fossil fuel energy production higher than renewable sources would do the trick. I'm uncertain of how that would impact our economy or the taxpayer, or if it's even necessary anyway. It's no surprise that more homogenous, less and more stable populous, more centralized and socialized, more socially progressive states with already high taxation and regulation are leading the way in these efforts.

I feel quite assured that, if costs of renewable energy go down or costs of obtaining fossil fuel sources go up, our production of renewable energy will be easily scaled.

Therefore, the argument for renewable energy at this junction is environmental. It's a good argument.

Other notes:
1. Fossil fuels are so much easier to store than anything else. For transportation fuels, this is of enormous importance. For electricity generation, it's still pretty important. Renewable sources are not necessarily easy to scale or predictable production sources. There is massive hourly and seasonal variation in electricity demand.
2. Hydrogen is not the answer. While there are many who are pursuing technological advances, it is never going to be particularly cheap. It is not mined from the ground. You have to produce a highly volatile gas and safely compress it and store it. While it's possible (and is currently a billion dollar industry) to produce a compact, clean, high-efficiency power product, it is never going to be easy. Also keep in mind that it requires a lot of energy to produce. It is not an energy source so much as a storage medium, and it's a poorly efficient one.
3. Electric vehicle technology is getting better. If we new oil was disappearing in 5 years, we could at this juncture replace oil as a transportation fuel. It would be more expensive and have significant limitations, but it is reasonably cost effective. As a current consumer technology, it is only artificially practical (producers lose money on these cars, and consumers only get savings through government subsidy). From an environmental standpoint, it is only as clean as the source of energy it is being charged with (in many places, electric vehicles are worse for the environment), and that's not counting the carbon footprint of the cost to produce. Battery capacity and efficiency are not likely going to make huge strides, but the ability to quickly charge batteries and/or quickly replace them mitigate this hugely.
4. In reference to #3, the gap here is maybe in the supply chain. Increasing costs of transporting goods could be really bad for the consumer. Maybe we could somewhat un-fubar our agricultural system if it were more financially important to source food locally, but I suspect transportation of goods to need to be much more expensive for that to happen. It would be much more destructive to other industries.
5. There is still plenty of oil. The rising costs of foreign oil sure spurred us into action for our local production. Without touching our oil reserves, we have the capacity currently to produce oil at lower cost than we were paying foreign oil in the recent past. Before that, peak oil, etc. caused plenty of concern and actions to investigate alternate energy sources and methods of increasing our own supply. However, not a whole lot happened until market forces made it profitable for us to use new methods of producing oil. Magically afterward, OPEC has driven down costs in an attempt to shut down our new oil production. Sadly, it has hurt many Americans who suddenly had new jobs, but our economy is a lot more diverse than oil production. And it's not like that prevents us from getting more oil in the future if it's cost effective. If anything, it helps our capacity because it provided incentive for our oil producers to become more cost efficient.

 

[K1052]

2. Hydrogen is not the answer. While there are many who are pursuing technological advances, it is never going to be particularly cheap. It is not mined from the ground. You have to produce a highly volatile gas and safely compress it and store it. While it's possible (and is currently a billion dollar industry) to produce a compact, clean, high-efficiency power product, it is never going to be easy. Also keep in mind that it requires a lot of energy to produce. It is not an energy source so much as a storage medium, and it's a poorly efficient one.

Hydrogen will most likely be used as a utility scale storage medium to absorb and keep excess renewable production for later use. Technically there is little that's not well understood about doing this and the base challenges aren't much more than dealing with natural gas. Producing hydrogen via electrolysis more cost effectively is the largest barrier and researchers have been making some progress in that area. It is merely a question of cost and scale at this point.

From an environmental standpoint, it is only as clean as the source of energy it is being charged with (in many places, electric vehicles are worse for the environment)

The vast majority of electric vehicles are sold in states with aggressive Renewable Portfolio Standards. The generation mix that you'll be powering from is a lot different in say Montana than it is for California and Washington (where a lot of these cars are sold in the first place).

 

[KMFJD]

The major issue is storing renewable power not creating it

 

[Screech]

Hydrogen will most likely be used as a utility scale storage medium to absorb and keep excess renewable production for later use. Technically there is little that's not well understood about doing this and the base challenges aren't much more than dealing with natural gas. Producing hydrogen via electrolysis more cost effectively is the largest barrier and researchers have been making some progress in that area. It is merely a question of cost and scale at this point.

Perhaps, but h2 is a pretty poor way to store energy because the round trip efficiencies kill you compared to other systems. Batteries are expensive but if we are talking about a way to store energy for later use, hell even hydrogen-halide splitting at least reduces the overpotentials some. But then you have to deal with the fuel cell also.

This is an area I've found interesting for quite some time so I'm happy to go into more detail but I realize this might be OT.

edit:

The major issue is storing renewable power not creating it

this.

 

[K1052]

Perhaps, but h2 is a pretty poor way to store energy because the round trip efficiencies kill you compared to other systems. Batteries are expensive but if we are talking about a way to store energy for later use, hell even hydrogen-halide splitting at least reduces the overpotentials some. But then you have to deal with the fuel cell also.

It's still probably the best scalable way to store for use days, weeks, or months away. Now that some research is focused on it hopefully they can make some further gains in efficiency and cost.

 

[interchange]

These things won't be implemented until there is need.

As (if?) we transition to renewable energy sources, more flexible fossil fuels can be used to fill the gaps (e.g. supplement during peak usage or be used for transportation fuels for the supply chain).

 

[Screech]

It's still probably the best scalable way to store for use days, weeks, or months away. Now that some research is focused on it hopefully they can make some further gains in efficiency and cost.

As a medium, it is the most scalable, yes. Of course, you have to get that energy back out I'm personally hoping the research in Al based batteries comes to fruition -- if they get those to compete with lithium ion in terms of energy density it will probably be the best news ever published in renewable energy, IMHO of course. Still years away but very promising.

edit

These things won't be implemented until there is need.

or until it makes economic sense. With renewables right now, it makes sense with subsidies.......with solar panels getting cheaper in $/watt over time, it is starting to make sense in some places even without subsidies. Of course, the powerwall is a bit expensive for most people, so making the storage economical becomes the big problem. You also have to deal with balance of systems cost.....easier for a utility scale than individual homeowners.

 

[Darwin333]

I think it would also help if people realized Nuclear has a major role in reducing emissions for power generation. On top of that they also need to realize renewable in terms of Solar and Wind are not efficient from a land use scenario. To replace a sizeable amount of the nations energy needs with solar. The entire state of Connecticut or something would need to be covered in panels. That isnt realistic. Until Fusion is possible renewable will be a minority player in power generation. If approached as a minority generation method with more nuclear I think we could get more done from an emissions point of view.

Do you have any idea how much wasted rooftop space we have in this country? From a land use scenario solar, specifically distributed generation, doesn't need to take up any valuable land.

Of course this requires an update grid but we need to do that anyway.