Comment by arh5451
3 days ago
Nice article explaining solar energy policy. I think the article still doesn't address the mismatch between solar energy production and consumption, which needs to be filled by storage mechanisms. Also would have been nice to have a critical look at how the Chinese were able to corner the Solar market via state sponsored means.
It'll probably be fulfilled in 3 stages
1) Gas peakers - where every kilowatt hour delivered by solar or wind is just a kilowatt hour of gas that would otherwise have been burned. We are generally still here - still burning gas while it's sunny and windy.
2) Pumped storage and batteries gets us to 98% carbon free grids with ~5 hours of storage with 90% roundtrip efficiency - https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g...
(98%/5 hours is for australia and will vary for different countries but probably not wildly).
3) Syngas fills in that last 2-5% with ~50% roundtrip efficiency. Every kilowatt hour used in those 5% times - those dark, windless nights will be quite expensive although, counterintuitively still cheaper than an every kilowatt hour generated by a nuclear power plant - https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea...
3 and to some extent 2 will require natural gas to be prohibited or taxed heavily.
My google-fu is failing to resurface the links, but IIRC:
One study determined the cheapest energy grids for many countries. IOW, if you had to rebuild the energy grid from scratch today, what would be the cheapest way to meet your needs?
And the answer was 90 - 95% renewables, depending on country. Solar + wind + batteries for 90 - 95% of the power, with natgas peakers for the rest. And that 90-95% number increases every year.
Another survey noted that while Australia and many other equatorial countries are optimal for solar, Finland is pessimal. Most countries have already passed the point where solar is best in pure financial terms. Finland hasn't, but it's very close. Which is insane, given that Finland is a poor place for solar, but a great place for wind, nuclear & geothermal.
Finland does not have any geothermal. The country lies on two billion years old basement rock with approximately zero geothermal activity.
Wind is the dominanting renewable source, with enough of it for Finland to enjoy the second cheapest electricity in Europe last year. And indeed, even solar is profitable, hindered by the winters but helped by the long days during summer.
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One of the reasons I dont expect the australia storage model I cited to be wildly different to, say, Finland is that areas of the world which dont get a lot of sunlight tend to have a lot more wind and hydro potential per capita.
I doubt there are any places in the world where some carbon free combination of solar, wind, hydro, pumped storage, batteries and syngas isnt economic.
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> 3) Syngas fills in that last 2-5%
Just one note, I believe what you mean is some form of gas made from renewables, most likely hydrogen.
"Syngas" is a term that has a relatively specific meaning in the chemical industry, notably it is a gas mixture of mostly Carbon Monoxide and Hydrogen. I do not think that this is what you mean.
What "critical look" is there to take? How about the way that the US gov't subsidizes the oil and gas industry, and is about to restart the coal industry? For some reason gov't investment in industry is only bad when China does it.
China bad when it's the only country that actually does something meaningful. Cheap batteries are fueling energy transition and the demand is only met by huge overproduction by china.
China is actually carrying our lazy asses.
> China is actually carrying our lazy asses.
Its not laziness, its corruption. The USA has a government that's tainted by moneyed interests who don't want their established gravy train derailed no matter how much it's fucking the entire planets environment. Now add to that, the current administration is too stupid and short sighted to ever incentivize change.
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Seriously, thank you. I’m aware of the complexities and injustices and manipulations and repressions perpetrated by the Chinese state.
But this isn’t Russia or Iran. They’ve also done so so much good while the west studies its own navel and makes “wealth” out of paper and bits.
I’ve often thought “yes, but where’s the goddamn gratitude”. It’s good to see it.
That's a really uncharitable way to read that.
A "critical look" from a US magazine would explore how, with solar power clearly being the future, the US has abdicated its energy dominance to another country. It would discuss the potential ramifications of us not owning our energy infrastructure supply chain the way we do with oil/gas, and what might be done about that.
The New Yorker is a US magazine. From the US perspective, yes, it is "good" when we do it and "bad" when China does it in a way that could negatively impact us.
When the U.S. does it we're "picking sides".
Nobody complains about China investing in its private industry, all wealthy nations do that. Everybody complains that China is a dictatorship that a) treats its people like shit, b) exploits these shitty conditions to gain global market advantage with state-owned companies, and c) keeps foreign companies from exploiting it, too.
Obviously it is more complex than that, but in a nutshell it's part butt-hurt and part amalgamation of state and private enterprise that does not mesh well with classic liberal ideas of freedom and human dignity.
The Government and actions of the United States also does not mesh well classic liberal ideas of freedom and human dignity, so this seems to be a hypocritical complaint.
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The oil industry pays 10s of billions in taxes.
Any disagreement in how much they should be taxed (e.g. 10,20,30,50,90%) can be considered a subsidy.
What people are mostly concerned with is whether a subsidy is distorting via over production. E.g. when China entered the market in solar, most western solar companies following stricter environmental protection requirements went out of business.
> Also would have been nice to have a critical look at how the Chinese were able to corner the Solar market via state sponsored means.
What would be a critical look though? They thought it would be good to invest in it and so they did, other countries also had that choice if they so wished to sponsor it for strategic purposes but they are ruled by a different ideology which made them decide to not do it.
I don't think there's anything to be critical about, they invested a lot in it and are reaping the benefits.
Should we also be critical about how the Internet started as a state-sponsored project? Many things that aren't commercially viable in its initial state of development need state-sponsorship to get off the ground to be exploited by private companies, the Chinese saw an opportunity for that in solar PV, kudos to them.
I think they meant critical as in a critique rather than a criticism. They are requesting discussion and exploration of the history and ramifications of China's policy, what the meaningful ROI and costs have been, and what the other (4-ish) countries that had the capacity for that sort of investment got out of non-investment (investment in other things).
One of the good things about solar is the lack of a mismatch between solar production curve and human needs.
People use more energy during the day.
People, globally, use more energy in the summer.
This might not be intuitive if you live nearer the poles, but that's not representative of where the global population live.
And in some of those places, like California people obsesses about the "peak" that is left after you subtract all the solar energy, even if it's lower than the previous real peak.
Luckily that fake peak is immediately after sunset and so easily beaten with a small amount of battery, leaving a much cheaper and easier problem to solve as the peaks are really what drives electricity costs, dictating transmission size and standby capacity.
this is often repeated, but is not entirely true.
Peak electrical demand does not coincide with solar generation. Generally, peak demand is either early in the morning or the late afternoon, when solar production tapers. In order to make up the difference, you'd need a couple thousand megawatt-hours of battery capacity for most regions. You'd also need this to happen twice a day - either side of typical working hours.
This is true in Tokyo and Mumbai. Tokyo's data is here https://www.tepco.co.jp/en/forecast/html/calendar-e.html
Mumbai's peak electricity demand is typically in the late afternoon, when solar output starts to dip.
The solution to this is not more battery capacity, but varied power sources. Wind, solar, gas, nuclear, etc.
Your link shows that yesterday had the highest peak demand of the month and it was between 1-2pm.
Spot checking July 2019 the oldest year it had, it's peak day also had the peak at the same time.
Do we have different definitions of "late afternoon"?
I also don't understand the link's differentiation between "demand" and "usage", but "demand" is higher and nearer noon it seems.
It's also not clear if home solar is accounted for and is a factor. You'll see a "demand dip" when behind the meter solar is generating if you're only seeing the grid side of things. Some grids estimate and include it or call it out separately.
> I think the article still doesn't address the mismatch between solar energy production and consumption, which needs to be filled by storage mechanisms.
Or just some old gas plants. No one is demanding a 100% solution. Let's get to 85% or whatever first. Arguments like this (which always appear in these threads) are mostly just noise. Pick the low hanging fruit, then argue about how to cross the finish line.
And the bit about China is an interesting article about trade policy but entirely unrelated to the technology being discussed. "Because it's Chinese" is a dumb reason to reject tech.
I'm fully off grid (even had utility power but had them remove it). Cook on electric, have electric water heater, using AC and have enough panels and batteries to not even need a backup generator.
This is very cool. I'm guessing you must live somewhere with mild winters. Insulation can do wonders, but it can be overcast for weeks in the north.
Solar panels are so cheap that it makes sense to overbuild, such that even an overcast winter day meets your electricity needs.
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Storage is the elephant in the solar-powered room
Storage is something that close to nobody demands today, so up to 3 years ago anybody trying to sell it automatically failed.
Still close to nobody demands it today, and a few people are already successfully selling it. So I don't see where you found a problem here.
> I think the article still doesn't address the mismatch between solar energy production and consumption, which needs to be filled by storage mechanisms
There's going to be a beautiful synergy here between electric vehicles and solar. Because an EV battery is already easily enough to power most houses through 14-16 hours of darkness, so if it can be a sink for solar during the day it can then be a source during the night. The future will have a combo of residential battery storage and V2H/V2G which has an attractive property that it scales naturally with population (every new person that moves to a location brings their EV battery with them).
We usually drive to work. That means that when the sun’s shining, the car isn’t home.
Conversely, if we didn’t drive to work, we probably wouldn’t have a car.
On the other hand, we have a big solar array at work so if we had on-site parking (we don’t) we could drive our power home.
It’s probably impractical in reality though, the tax treatment would be chaos and we use the power we generate at work during the day on-site.
Nobody said that you have to use your home or work solar. If you fill up part of your car using some fast charger network (which would still be solar powered), it would still work.
Moreover, even if we take the top 25% percent of commute distances (which is >40km per day), that still leaves you with 10 days until you have to recharge. If you recharge every weekend, you still have plenty of battery capacity for your needs outside of sun hours (you likely will need only 1-2 kWh per day anyway).
I can't see how this could be true. Many people will need to drive the ev to work during the day, and if you discharge it at night then when are you really charging?
It may be true for some who WFH often or in some cases, but not enough EVs will be able to discharge overnight for a v2g battery revolution.
You're not left with a flat battery at the end of the night. Many vehicles are combined in intelligent systems which work together to ensure that the vehicles have the energy they need (which is easy to set in all the systems I've seen) but provide enough grid support to make this work.
Remember that even my little town car (Renault Zoe) has a 52kWh battery.... which would run my house for five days. So the energy stored in these systems can be considerable.
The people doing these things have thought a lot about it. Take a look at this video - it's a bit 'puff piece' but shows what one way of doing it looks like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKItLGPdN0k
There are several scenarios where it would contribute:
1. You have access to a charger at work 2. You’re retired 3. You take public transportation or bike to work (fairly common scenario in Europe) 4. Work-from-home (got more common after covid, I know many people who do it at least once a week now, and that’s generally enough to charge what you need to drive for a week) 5. You charge only during the day on weekends (should be enough to cover the week for most people, even if you feed say 20% of it back to the grid through the week) 6. Rental fleet operators (booking data can inform charge/discharge policy) 7. Residential batteries, where you charge the EV at night with what you got during the day, every day, but set up a policy where you allow both the home battery and the EV battery to discharge if the electricity is expensive enough. I could see myself making decisions about WFH or biking to work based on electricity pricing.
Ideally in that case you’d charge the car from the grid during the workday, when the grid is powered by solar and power spot prices are low.
BYO house solar is optional when there is grid solar (and home solar exports).
Yes, it does rely on charging infra rolling out - either at work or with fast DC charging. But that is happening too. Well, in markets where EV adoption is encouraged - for the US, I guess we'll see.
I think peak energy usage is in the morning and afternoon / early night when people are at home.
Would be stella if people could charge during noon. I don't know how feasible that is.
> Also would have been nice to have a critical look at how the Chinese were able to corner the Solar market via state sponsored means.
What if... (stick with me here because this is about to get crazy)... free market capitalism isn't the best solution for everything...?
The correct solution is to make China pay tariffs in proportion to their explicit and implicit state support for their "private" industries. It is not too late to push back.
You can't make China pay tariffs because it's not the exporter that pays them, it's the importer.
Tariffs in the USA are basically a tax on Americans. The aim being to make imported goods more expensive for Americans so they're more likely to buy local goods which would otherwise be more expensive than the imported version.
I saw lots of mentions of batteries in the article.
US was giving $7500 for each car sold to Tesla. But sure, CHYNAAA
Imo that didn’t do much but push people into tesla that were in the market for new cars already. Teslas are cheap enough on a lease as it is.
They gave that same rebate to all EV manufacturers. It had nothing to do with any one brand.
Whatever the number is in the west, China has on average ~ 10x the amount of subsidies than the west when it comes to manufacturing.
Policy makers are trying to decide whether it’s too risky to shut down all manufacturing of heavy machine capable industries and hand it over to China.
China obviously does not subsidize $75,000 per car.
European analysis resulted in an 18% offsetting duty, meaning Chinese subsidies are lower than American ones.
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West simply decided to de-industrialize itself (at least some countries, not all of them) and asked the other countries to do the dirty work for them so they can focus on finance and such, so of course the West has less subsidies -- and no one is forcing the West's hand NOT to give subsidies. Now it takes triple hard to pick it back, if the West really wants.
> Whatever the number is in the west
So you don't know what the number is?
> China has on average ~ 10x the amount of subsidies than the west when it comes to manufacturing.
And yet you just randomly decide to 10X it for china?
Typical disingenuous anti-china nonsense. What's next? China spends 10X on defense compared to "the west"?
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