[HN Gopher] The booming business of knitting together the world'...
___________________________________________________________________
The booming business of knitting together the world's electricity
grids
Author : BayAreaEscapee
Score : 162 points
Date : 2021-10-17 14:07 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| lb1lf wrote:
| Norway mostly generate electricity from renewable sources, some
| 99% of our annual production (~120TWh, if memory serves) is
| hydro-electric.
|
| We've seen prices becoming more volatile in later years as our
| domestic market has become more interconnected with that of
| continental Europe.
|
| Normally, I'd be all in favour of being part of a larger, working
| market; however with European countries phasing out coal (makes
| sense) and nuclear (makes less sense), supply is being cut while
| demand soars; hardly a recipe for stable prices.
|
| It would be nice to serve base power needs by nuclear power, then
| use hydro (which can be regulated up and down much faster than
| thermal power plants) to handle the peaks.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > Norway mostly generate electricity from renewable sources,
| some 99% of our annual production (~120TWh, if memory serves)
| is hydro-electric.
|
| Wind accounted for 6.4% (9.9 TWh) of electric production in
| Norway in 2020. Total production in Norway in 2020 was 154.2
| TWh.
|
| https://norwaytoday.info/news/wind-power-production-in-norwa...
| timeon wrote:
| Not only continental Europe. Connection to UK is not cheap.
|
| But this network is not there because they are phasing out some
| power plants. Import from Norway is relatively small.
| cinntaile wrote:
| I wouldn't want to be Norway in a year with unusually little
| rain without being part of a bigger market.
| hkon wrote:
| My electricity bill for september is 10x (ten times) what it
| was one year ago, very similar kwh. I like being connected to
| the bigger market alot :D /s
| bergesenha wrote:
| We can store several years of surplus.
| cinntaile wrote:
| You can but that doesn't help if there is no surplus water
| to store. You can store 82TWh and your yearly consumption
| is about 500TWh. NO3 and NO5 are pretty much at their
| lowest points in the last 28 years, it's not a problem at
| all though because right now that's about 71% and 61%
| respectively. There are of course up- and downsides to
| being connected. An important upside would be that when
| you're connected to other markets you can import
| electricity when the price is low and pump the water back
| into the reservoirs to release it when the price is high
| again.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I am highly skeptical of increasing dependencies between
| countries on energy when I see this sort of headline:
| https://news.sky.com/story/france-threatens-to-cut-off-uks-e...
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| There's a bit of a backlash again shutting down right now.
| Fingers crossed Germany doesn't get what it wants for the EU
| for a change, and that pans out.
|
| ( _Editted to make clear I meant EU wide, not within Germany_ )
| wongarsu wrote:
| A couple years of worse prices from phasing coal out more
| quickly seem like nothing compared to the long term effects
| of climate change.
|
| If we're taking about nuclear: I don't see any chance of
| Germany halting its phase-out of current nuclear plants. New
| plants meanwhile don't seem sensible economically
| didericis wrote:
| If we want to adequately prepare for the long term affects
| of climate change it seems like dykes, irrigation projects,
| improved farming methods, displacement preparation for
| affected third world areas, and solutions to mitigate
| effects regardless of source would be wiser. Freeman Dyson
| spoke about this. There's by no means a guarantee that
| stopping anthropogenic climate change would stop the long
| term deleterious effects of natural climate change from
| still occurring.
|
| Making the power grid less responsive and more weather
| dependent is making civilization less adaptive to climate
| change with no guarantees of stopping climate change, so
| treating a phase out of coal without adequate replacement
| like it's beneficial in the long term doesn't make sense to
| me. Reducing coal makes sense, but not at the expense of a
| less adaptive more weather dependent power grid. Nuclear
| salt reactors seem like the obvious choice for a
| replacement from all angles, including CO2, access to fuel,
| energy output, independence from weather, etc. The only
| reason why they're not replacing coal and renewables seems
| to be regulation and PR. I think the R&D for a lot of them
| are already done, and they're much cheaper to maintain and
| produce/believe a lot of modern designs are quite simple.
| Most of the expense seems to be from regulatory burden and
| old laws about different reactors.
| wongarsu wrote:
| We are building plenty of dykes. But every additional
| centimetre of sea level rise we cause is at least one
| more centimetre of dyke we have to maintain along all
| shores, indefinitely. And on top of that all the
| additional defences against intense rainfall in cities
| and along all major rivers. From a purely monetary
| standpoint it's hard to find an investment that pays
| greater dividends for a society over the decades and
| centuries than one that reduces climate change
| didericis wrote:
| That assumes we know definitively to what degree reducing
| anthropogenic climate change will reduce overall climate
| change, and that creating energy grids with more problems
| and less adaptability (which lessens our ability to
| create the kind of infrastructure we would inevitably
| need to protect vulnerable areas from natural climate
| change) and the downstream losses from that will prevent
| interventions that we might need to do anyway with less
| energy and wealth.
|
| Nuclear seems like a great option because it avoids
| needing to resolve that cost benefit analysis. It reduces
| CO2 without causing energy grid problems. The newer
| reactors in particular seem like a pretty definitive win
| on all fronts. There are a bunch of promising sounding
| companies trying to get into that space and it sounds
| like the major roadblock for all of them is regulatory,
| not technicals or R&D expense at this point (seems like
| there are existing designs which have been prototyped/are
| ready to go, just can't get built due to red tape; one US
| company moved to Indonesia out of frustration, design
| seems safe and low cost ->
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR-500?wprov=sfti1)
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| The first step I think is making nuclear count as "green"
| for the the EU subsidies, and natural gas not.
|
| Even if no one builds nukes with that plan, then at least
| all the green parties will be having more public internal
| battles over the issue.
|
| See https://www.politico.eu/article/france-
| injects-e30b-into-str... for example for Macron staking his
| campaign on the nuclear subsidies.
| makomk wrote:
| The big risk here isn't just worse prices, but the grid
| failing entirely and people not being able to get
| electricity at any price. And even if it doesn't quite go
| that far, a whole bunch of businesses will fail and a large
| swathe of people will have to choose between heating and
| putting food on the table - and there's no clever tricks
| with subsidies or redistribution of cash that can avoid
| that, because the whole reason the prices are so high is
| because there's not enough energy for everyone.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Heating in the EU is mostly oil and gas. It needs
| electricity to run, but not enough that electricity
| prices are a major issue.
|
| In the end the question is how fast the market reacts.
| Plant shut downs are predictable events years into the
| future, and in the event of an impeding black out energy
| prices on the spot market are going to be insane. That
| seems like a great incentive to build anything you can
| get past Nimbys fast enough. And the biggest industrial
| consumers shut down anyways as electricity prices rise
| (bad for the economy, great for the grid).
| patall wrote:
| The last nuclear power plant in Germany will get shutdown in
| less than 15 months. With that in mind, there have been no
| investments into them for years. You won't be able to keep
| them running by simple maintenance. That ship has sailed for
| years. What do you expect to happen?
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| A big issue is that Germany, in trying to classify gas but
| not nuclear as "green", is trying to get every other
| country to do the same.
|
| The insanity must at least be stopped at Germany's
| boarders.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| There's only 8GW remaining nuclear capacity in Germany.
| Shutting that down won't be a major challenge or matter that
| much in the grand scheme of things. 8GW is only a tiny
| percentage of the overall market. Germany had 22GW 20 years
| ago. 16 is gone, the rest will be gone in a few years. It
| won't matter. Wind and solar each provide close to 3x the
| capacity nuclear ever did.
|
| Likewise, nuclear darling France is looking to reduce nuclear
| from about 70% of their energy supply now to about 50%
| anticodon wrote:
| AFAIK, because of this Germany also has now the highest
| electricity price in Europe.
| heurisko wrote:
| > Wind and solar each provide close to 3x the capacity
| nuclear ever did.
|
| The difficulty is that the renewables don't provide
| baseline power.
|
| Ironically, this baseline is now sometimes coming from
| French nuclear power plants.
|
| I respect Germany's concern about nuclear, but the
| Energiewende hasn't always been practical.
| labawi wrote:
| Baseline power is a concept suitable only to describe a
| grid that operates in a specific configuration (cheap
| slow stable source + expensive dispatchable source), but
| not in any way a principal requirement.
|
| You can have a stable power grid with ample supply and 0%
| "baseline" generation no problem (other than the usual
| generic ones).
|
| If you have specific concerns about renewables please be
| more specific. Yes, they have different issues and
| different benefits. They are surmountable.
| liketochill wrote:
| I think baseline means power plant that is always
| available, except for outages planned well in advance,
| and runs 24x7 at a given output. Generally baseline power
| doesn't depend on the weather.
|
| You could have a stable reliable grid consisting solely
| of wind and solar but it would also require a lot of
| storage, which would be insanely expensive in order to
| achieve the level of reliability we take for granted
| today.
|
| I am sure we will find the limit of penetration for wind
| and solar, and already people are willing to give up and
| accept blackouts like in California instead of brushing
| under the power lines and cutting down trees which might
| fall on them proactively, which is expensive, they just
| have a blackout on hot windy days.
| labawi wrote:
| Had trouble finding baseline power definition, but here
| is one: https://www.collicutt.com/understanding-
| power/reliability-in...
|
| Baseline power is slow to change. Not all always-
| available power is slow, thus not all is baseline. It is
| not even a desirable quality except for the associated
| low running costs.
|
| To a large degree, storage is interchangeable with
| transport, so we would not necessarily need a lot of
| storage even if we wanted to disqualify sources other
| than wind and solar.
|
| That being said, in long term, I think we will have a lot
| of storage and storage-equivalent in industrial chemical
| and technical processes once they switch to electricity,
| in consumer batteries (EVs), generally more flexible
| load, etc.
| liketochill wrote:
| Thanks for finding a definition.
|
| Baseline / baseload power sources not only is always
| available, but it is always generating as well, at a
| relatively constant output.
|
| I would disagree that it is not a desirable quality.
|
| Storage and transmission are interchangeable, both are
| expensive. I agree storage will win out since it is
| easier to build unless the transmission path is
| underwater.
|
| Demand response will continue to generally be emergency
| reserves, since it means that there is power not being
| generated and consumed that could have been.
|
| Peak shifting is viable, as long as my car is charged in
| the morning I don't care when it happened - although how
| long do cars take to charge at home? There isn't that
| much flexibility in there. I also don't want my battery
| cycles used to provide $1 of electricity.
|
| Interesting times!
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Baseline is a hard political requirement. The alternative
| is just turning people's power off when there isn't
| enough sunshine. Literally no electable party will make
| that choice; it's electoral suicide. They'll all choose
| to produce power with coal before they'll choose to turn
| their citizens lights off.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The grid could use intermittent sources + storage and the
| lights never need to go off. And it can be cheaper than
| coal (w. associated environmental costs) or nuclear,
| especially with projected cost declines.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Three comments.
|
| First, this is still baseline power, it's just coming
| from batteries. The imperative to always keep the power
| on remains, but there are several ways to do it from an
| engineering perspective.
|
| Second, we're not there yet. Until we have enough
| batteries to cover that, baseline will need to be
| provided by some other form of power generation.
| Currently this is natural gas (America) and coal (almost
| everywhere else). On the balance I think it would be best
| for us all if it was nuclear until we have enough grid
| level storage to make this discussion moot.
|
| Third, if you interpreted my comment as anti-renewables
| then you misread me. Renewables are great, I have them on
| my house, but it's important to acknowledge that always
| keeping the power on is a political reality. We need to
| engineer around that requirement for now, and hopefully
| one day that'll be trivial for renewables.
| labawi wrote:
| So .. if we plot the electricity demand curve, baseline
| would be a level line going through the (weekly) bottom
| of the curve. Baseline power is below the line and the
| rest is above, correct?
|
| Renewables and more specifically storage is not ready, so
| the part that is below base line is currently served by
| gas (and some coal/nuclear) and the part that is above is
| delivered by renewables without need for storage?
| p_l wrote:
| Yes. Baseline is essentially the line below which demand
| doesn't drop.
|
| A problem with renewables is that they still need storage
| to work as peakers, because in many places renewable
| production doesn't happen in peak times.
| labawi wrote:
| So, is below baseline powered by gas and coal? If so,
| why? Wouldn't it make more sense to cover as much as you
| can with renewables, including as much below and above
| the baseline, then cover the rest with gas for now and
| HVDC/storage/demand shifting/.. later?
|
| I.e. calculate _demand_ - _renewables_. Cover that. Don
| 't see the point of baseline.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Another way of thinking about "baseline" power is that is
| produces power 24/7. Energy demand fluctuates a lot
| during the day[1]. Cheap, reliable sources of energy
| serve as a "baseline", and additional "peaker" plants
| spin up to serve the spikes in demand during the day.
|
| Solar and wind are unreliable power sources. That is OPs
| point - you can't compare nuclear and solar kw for kw
| because they are not the same. Nobody has near enough
| storage to allow solar to be treated as a 24/7 reliable
| power source.
|
| [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Exactly. Baseline power is a very poorly and loosely
| defined term that has no base in reality that people
| wield to argue against much cheaper renewable energy
| without actually providing any numbers. "we need
| unspecified amounts of nuclear, coal, and what not to
| deal with unspecified capacity loss for an unspecified
| number of days/months/years while some unspecified
| apocalyptic circumstances wipe out 100% of all solar and
| wind power on this planet. As soon as you start
| specifying any of that it becomes clear that is it pretty
| easily mitigated otherwise.
|
| Wind power is rarely zero; certainly not everywhere.
| Solar of course is but at a rather predictable schedule,
| which is why it is often combined with battery and wind.
| If you can have extra energy generation, you can charge
| some batteries. The rest is just math related to how much
| energy generation and battery capacity you need.
| labawi wrote:
| > very poorly .. defined term .. that people wield to
| argue
|
| I thought you were exaggerating until I read the sibling
| comments (thankfully on the bottom).
|
| I'll leave it to them to figure out how serve the maximum
| demand with the minimum number.
| heurisko wrote:
| I'm the author of the comment. The definition of base
| load: The baseload[1] (also base load)
| on a grid is the minimum level of demand on an electrical
| grid over a span of time, for example, one week.
|
| A renewable system has to meet this minimum demand too,
| otherwise the lights go out.
|
| > The rest is just math related to how much energy
| generation and battery capacity you need.
|
| I'm very pro-renewable, but aware of how difficult this
| is going to be. These are massive social and engineering
| tasks. For example, to look at the numbers in the UK,
| we're talking about construction of big new hydroelectric
| storage stations, or millions of batteries (potentially
| as EVs). [2]
|
| The need for renewables to provide baseload power demand
| depends on big infrastructure development. Germany hasn't
| kept pace with this need, relying on French nuclear
| instead, which is why I said their Energiewende hasn't
| always been practical.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load [2]
| https://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_189.shtml
| sremani wrote:
| >> You can have a stable power grid with ample supply and
| 0% "baseline" generation no problem (other than the usual
| generic ones).
|
| Yes, if we have a future battery technology that can save
| a days worth of City's power consumption - something like
| this is phantom able.
|
| With out sophisticated high capacity battery storage
| 'baseline' is a requirement.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Batteries are for diurnal leveling. You don't need 24
| hour storage for diurnal leveling.
|
| For long term or rare event storage, something like
| hydrogen will likely be cheaper. Efficiency is lower, but
| that's a good tradeoff to get lower per-kWh-capacity
| cost.
| p_l wrote:
| Baseline power is a concept as long as you don't go for
| blackouts and utility-controlled demand (which can mean
| that no, you're not going to cook now, because there's
| not enough power).
|
| Baseline is the floor of the _demand_ for power. It doesn
| 't disappear just because you don't have plants that can
| operate on schedule, it just becomes very expensive to
| mitigate the intermittent supply in absence of fairy
| magic storage and 10-25x overbuild in generation.
| labawi wrote:
| I find this very fascinating.
|
| Do then I understand correctly, that if we have baseline
| power, from static output nuclear or whatever, then we
| don't need blackouts, controlled demand, and you can cook
| anytime because there is enough power?
|
| As you say, baseline is the floor of the demand that
| holds everything else above (except the weekly instant
| with minimum demand that it merely matches).
| p_l wrote:
| Baseline power is essentially the lowest the demand ever
| goes to. I.e. at any point during a given schedule
| window, the demand does _not_ go under that. Then you
| have peak power, which is the highs of demand.
|
| The problem with lacking power plants that can provide
| stable scheduled power is that you then can't meet even
| that minimum, or peaks that happen outside of power
| generation peaks (While solar has happy correlation with
| daytime power usage, apparently the high peaks at least
| in Poland aren't when the solar output is highest, and
| wind tends in many areas to peak during the night).
|
| Ultimately, what you want is supply synchronized with
| demand - and either you make supply side capable of
| following demand, or you need to start telling people
| there's no energy for whatever they need it for.
|
| The benefit of having static power generation from
| nuclear power plants or whatever else is that we could
| then concentrate the storage to help the peaks, which is
| much easier and less resource intensive than trying to
| totally smooth out lack of predictably dispatchable
| power.
|
| Also, in case you end up with not enough storage to cover
| peaks with renewables, it's much easier to have
| controlled demand from big industrial power sinks provide
| the latitude to respond to peak demand rather than find
| out you don't have enough power for the base minimum
| pretty much all the time and have to institute rolling
| blackouts on unpredictable schedule.
| labawi wrote:
| > Ultimately, what you want is supply synchronized with
| demand
|
| Agree. We need to provide this, with allowances from
| inter-region transport, storage and acceptable demand
| shifting.
|
| In fact, average generation must match average
| consumption (+losses) over storage timeframe. Peak demand
| dictates what generation (+ storage) is needed, at that
| time. Nondeferrable demand - unschedulable generation
| dictates how much schedulable generation (+ storage) you
| need.
|
| Minimum demand dictates ... how much static generation
| can you use without throwing away energy or using
| storage, but you want to use storage, so you can use
| more, and you want to use solar/wind so you need to
| subtract that, and now we're getting quite disconnected
| baseline demand, so I really don't see the point of
| baseline power.
| fulafel wrote:
| Indeed, lots of people have the concept of base load as
| qualitatively different kind of electricity lodged in
| their mental model too firmly. Electricity consumers
| expect it because suppliers have provided it for a long
| time.
| heurisko wrote:
| Baseline/baseload as the minimum you need to provide to
| meet demand over a period of time. [1]
|
| The concept doesn't become irrelevant just because you're
| using renewables. Renewables still need to serve baseline
| power demand, through interconnection or storage.
|
| They can't do this at the moment, and Germany is relying
| on countries with nuclear that provide this.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load
| labawi wrote:
| Your reinterpreted definition is misleading. If you have
| enough generation to serve baseload, you have enough to
| power a single instant over a week. You need to serve the
| entire load.
|
| Please read the article you linked more carefully. It
| even has a nice graph with an informative title: https://
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Renewables_need_flexible_...
|
| Germany may be importing energy, but more baseload
| generation is only one solution, and probably not even a
| particularly efficient one - you'd have a lot of leftover
| energy in peak times.
| heurisko wrote:
| I elided a few words from the Wikipedia article, it is:
| The baseload[1] (also base load) on a grid is the minimum
| level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of
| time, for example, one week.
|
| It was unintentional to reinterpret the original
| sentence.
|
| If I were to clarify my original comment, it would be to
| add I was referring to the concept "baseload/baseline
| demand", not "baseload generators". It's true you don't
| need baseload generators to meet the baseload demand.
|
| My point was, as in the graph, Germany hasn't provided
| flexible backup to their renewables. They've relied on
| baseload nuclear generators from France being the backup.
| labawi wrote:
| I have issue with this:
|
| > .. you need to provide to meet demand ..
|
| To put it bluntly, if you have enough to power baseload,
| you have nothing, except maybe pitchforks in your face.
|
| WRT baseload demand, I don't see how it's relevant to
| pretty much anything. Baseload power - I don't see how
| one would use it as a backup, unless you're throwing
| energy away, or it's variable, hence not baseload.
| nine_k wrote:
| It's wrong framing.
|
| France is not trying to reduce the amount of energy
| produced by nuclear generation, e.g. by actively phasing it
| out.
|
| Instead, France strives to produce more energy with solar
| and wind generation, increasing its ratio to 50%. This will
| shift the ratio of nuclear down to 50%.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Well they gave a rather large amount of plants reaching
| their end of life pretty soon and a clear plan to not
| replace most of that with new nuclear plants. Hence the
| decreasing ratio. No framing, just announced reality. Not
| surprising, most nuclear nations have similar plans.
| cm2187 wrote:
| It's not clear the 50% target is still current [1].
|
| [1] https://www.ft.com/content/d06500e2-7fd2-4753-a54b-bc16
| f1faa...
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Based on the latest thing from Macron's admin I linked
| before, I think France is changing the plan.
| cinntaile wrote:
| He just wanted to make sure the right couldn't use
| nuclear as a campaign point so he said France would focus
| on SMRs. They're still reducing their nuclear power from
| today's levels to about 50%, so their long term strategy
| isn't affected by this play. This is not surprising.
| Having as much nuclear power as France has at the moment
| is not the most optimal energy mix in today's energy
| landscape.
| liketochill wrote:
| Shutting down the last 8GW seals in the loss of know how
| and makes it much harder to get any nuclear again.
|
| Wind and solar are great, but of course some other
| generation and storage is require to have power on a calm
| cloudy week.
| TomK32 wrote:
| Well, Europe's nuclear power plants are on average more than 35
| years old, they simply can't be operated for centuries, instead
| the are becoming unreliable. In 2019 France had 5580 reactor
| days with zero production. Regarding new builds in Europe,
| those still being built are behind schedules, OL3 in Finland
| with a 12 year delay.
| https://eu.boell.org/en/2021/04/26/nuclear-power-european-un...
|
| You can build a lot of wind and solar parks in that time and
| updated old one-way dams with pumps to have them a large scale
| batteries. All that decentralized, thus creating jobs all over
| the country.
| polote wrote:
| Telling that nuclear is a bad technology (compared to wind
| and solar that are not even competing with nuclear) then
| suggesting to use a WAY worse technology (reverse dams). Is
| there any advantage of having a reversible dam compare to a
| nuclear plant ? I'm not asking of being better, but only ONE
| advantage, I don't see any.
|
| That's actually the positive thing about covid, is that we
| had a preview of how the climate crisis is going to be
| handled. That's going to be a mess, everyone will think they
| are an expert
| Arnt wrote:
| You asked for one, so one is what you'll get:
|
| The possible liability from a nuclear accident so large
| that it basically isn't insurable, because insurance
| agencies won't promise to pay a sum that large. A dam may
| be located in such a spot that the worst-case liability is
| insurable, ie. the electricity can be fairly and properly
| priced in our present model of society.
|
| (Not necessarily. If the dam could flood Paris and the
| smaller cities further down the Seine, insurance agencies
| might refuse to insure that one fully, of course.)
| gambiting wrote:
| That's just one of few reasons why nuclear power plants
| shouldn't be owned by private corporations. They should
| be owned and ran by national operators, so then you don't
| have the issue of insurable events or worry about private
| operators not paying for decommissioning the plants at
| the end of their livespan. Power generation is a matter
| of national security, so nations should be paying for
| those plants from the national budget.
| Arnt wrote:
| Worry about insurable events doesn't go away -- the
| central bank can only print money as long as trust in the
| currency stays, and that trust isn't infinite.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > the central bank can only print money as long as trust
| in the currency stays, and that trust isn't infinite.
|
| The central bank can print money without bound. Some of
| the _effects_ of money printing changes with confidence
| in the currency, but the core effects that it targets don
| 't really change until people radically change behavior
| to reduce use of the currency as a medium _or even
| measuring stick_ for routine transactions.
| Arnt wrote:
| If people stop treating it as money, then is the thing
| the central bank prints still money? It can print more of
| the thing, sure.
|
| Anyway, this isn't relevant to my argument upstream -- it
| just changes the reason why nuclear reactors aren't
| properly pricable in our market economy, from "can't be
| insured due to worst case" to "worst case can destroy the
| currency". (It also doesn't rule out other argumens, pro
| or contra.)
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I mean, obviously they have the advantage of not requiring
| nuclear fuel.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Of course wind and solar compete with nuclear. At large
| penetration, wind and solar make the grid unfriendly to
| nuclear, as the price drops too often for a nuclear power
| plant to be economical. Both renewables and nuclear are
| inflexible, and are competing for the ability of the grid
| to deal with inflexible sources.
|
| If you look at model solutions to a
| renewable/storage/nuclear grid, the solutions tend to flip
| from "mostly nuclear" to "mostly renewable" with little
| overlap, depending on cost assumptions.
| redisman wrote:
| Nuclear should be subsidized to keep them online for
| sure. All governments should want a backbone that can
| work under any circumstances (excerpt flooding I guess )
| pfdietz wrote:
| A bigger subsidy issue is wind/solar being given credits
| for power produced. So, they keep pumping out and putting
| power onto the grid even when prices go negative. Only
| when the negative price is lower than -subsidy do they
| curtail. This is terrible for existing nuclear plants.
|
| What the grid really needs is transparency at the
| customer level of real time power costs.
| p_l wrote:
| I'd like to see a system that prioritised power
| purchasing depending on predictability, not instant
| price.
|
| So first buy goes to power plants (including virtual
| power plants) that can provide stable power generation
| given a specific window of time - whether that that's
| nuclear, hydro, or solar+wind+battery+hydrogen - so long
| as it's close to zero emissions and will pump out
| required power no matter the weather over specified time.
|
| Let wind/solar fight over peak power, or consolidate into
| virtual power plants with storage operators (it should
| also incentivize buildout of storage, so win-win in my
| book)
| pfdietz wrote:
| I would like to see uncertainty and intermittency exposed
| to consumers, with contracts that allow power to be
| curtailed in various ways. The less you value
| consistency, the less you would pay (up to a point.) Or,
| if you contract for a certain level of reliability, you
| could stipulate the payment you'd get if that were
| violated.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Why do you think pumped storage hydro plants are worse
| (thank what) ?
|
| They are not ever strictly power plants, rather they
| provided the much needed buffer to store energy during
| fluctuating demand and/or supply.
|
| Pumped storage is also completely compatible with both
| nuclear base load (store extra from base load that can't be
| easily throttled) and unpredictable renewables sources
| (store extra when needed, cover - reasonably short -
| periods of no supply from the source.
| riffraff wrote:
| > and updated old one-way dams with pumps to have them a
| large scale batteries.
|
| can that be done in all cases? Most dams I've seen IRL didn't
| seem to have an area downstream big enough to collect the
| water to be able to pump it back up.
| lazide wrote:
| Long distance (relatively) water pipelines are not to
| expensive as long as it isn't vertical cliffs and unstable
| slopes on the way, so a catchment at the lower drainage or
| even a low dam can provide the necessary temporary storage,
| even if 5-10 miles or more away.
|
| Still not super cheap of course, so then the classic 'what
| will this get us for the cost, and does it pencil out as
| profitable' (generally a good proxy for worth the time and
| expense) starts to come into play.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Thinking about it, many hydropower schemes are already
| built as cascades - that could be retrofitted as pumped
| storage quite easily, if you can interconnect the dams
| for reasonably cost.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Regarding new builds in Europe, those still being built
| are behind schedules_
|
| Given China appears able to build quality reactors quickly,
| this would seem to be the result of European policy
| preferences with respect to nuclear.
| ericd wrote:
| Not saying they're not, but I'd be curious what measures of
| reactor quality you've seen?
| GordonS wrote:
| Number of severe incidents divided by number of reactor
| days?
| rgbrenner wrote:
| China has the newest plants in the world:
| https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/age-
| profile-o...
|
| We don't know how they'll perform as they age. If we
| calculated quality as you suggest, they would probably
| win.. but we would expect brand new plants to have fewer
| issues than 30 year old plants.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > but we would expect brand new plants to have fewer
| issues than 30 year old plants.
|
| That's a strange expectation to have. Ever heard of the
| bathtub curve ?
| natch wrote:
| In your formula, where do you envision the number of
| incidents being derived from?
|
| China excels at hiding important information from public
| view, so I would take their data, and data indirectly
| sourced from them, with a grain of salt. And oh, by the
| way, one could say the same about the nuclear industry
| and its captured regulatory bodies in general as well.
| GordonS wrote:
| That is true, which is why I specifically mentioned
| "severe" incidents - even if less severe stuff happens
| and is hushed up, it's impossible to keep radioactive
| particles blowing across the globe quiet, so we'd surely
| know of those.
| philipkglass wrote:
| China also builds wind, solar, and electrical transmission
| projects faster and cheaper than Europe. China has lower
| wages and planners can ignore local objections to
| infrastructure projects more easily than in Europe. This
| leads to better outcomes by the numbers but it's not an
| unmitigated good.
| cm2187 wrote:
| It's not just that. When you build reactors in series,
| you have economies of scales in term of accumulated
| expertise, amortising R&D costs, etc. France for instance
| finished building up its nuclear capacity at the end of
| the 80s, and every reactor built since has been unique,
| extremely costly and behind schedule. But the day they
| will replace their whole estate, the economics will
| likely be very different.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > Well, Europe's nuclear power plants are on average more
| than 35 years old
|
| Which is half of their lifetime by American standards.
|
| > In 2019 France had 5580 reactor days with zero production.
|
| That means 75% of availability. Good luck finding any
| renewable source with such a figure ;).
| debacle wrote:
| Hydro has close to 100% availability, especially if you
| aren't talking dams.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Hydro is great, but limited.
|
| IMO, most industrialized nations have already tapped
| hydro about as much as it can be tapped, given some
| constraints about wildlife habitat. But I'd be happy to
| be corrected -- what new hydro projects do you think we
| should be doing, and how much power do you think they'd
| provide?
| RF_Savage wrote:
| It is also very hard to get buy-in for large new hydro
| plants. The resevoirs behind the damms cover a lot of
| area and people don't like their homes being under water.
| There are also ecological considerations like trout and
| salmon migration. Due to this they are actually
| demolishing old, low power legacy hydro plants and re-
| naturalizing the river.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Yup. Somehow climate change is supposed to be this
| planetary existential threat, but not, you know, so
| existential as to allow a salmon to be endangered or to
| risk building a nuclear plant.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Dam the Gibraltar! ;-)
|
| Totally renewable - and not just hydro, but also solar
| (which takes care of the water you let in)!
|
| And yes, this has been proposed and is physically
| possible & it alreadyhappened for geological reasons in
| the past:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Hydro is amazing when it comes to electricity generation,
| but for that reason it has already been developed as much
| as possible during the whole 20th century and there's
| really little room for enhancement (and when the
| technology progresses, it's quickly deployed).
|
| In fact, I like to say that the only viable option to get
| 100% RE is to lower our energy consumption until hydro
| can cover the majority of our needs.
| cm2187 wrote:
| And there are so many valleys you can flood.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| There isn't enough hydro potential on the planet to
| produce the amount energy we need.
|
| It's also worth pointing out that while hydro is
| renewable, it isn't clean. Dams are ecological
| nightmares.
|
| Hydro will like be part of our energy profile
| indefinitely. But it will never be more than a small
| fraction. And in the long run that fraction will get
| smaller as global energy demand continues to grow.
| paganel wrote:
| Unfortunately lots of windy locations in Europe are not good
| locations for hydro-works, too. I'm thinking Netherlands and
| Northern Germany (even though knowing the Dutch they might
| come up with something), and closer to me (I'm from Eastern
| Europe) the locations close to the Black Sea, which are
| excellent for wind farms yet are a poor choice for hydro
| solutions.
|
| Of course, you could let's say transport the energy produced
| by wind farms from Northern Germany to hydro projects built
| in South Germany, but that opens a new can of worms: loss of
| energy because of the transport itself, extra costs, actually
| building the energy transport infrastructure (a huge task in
| a NIMBY world).
| Fordec wrote:
| If the was more interconnection between the Dutch and
| Norway to take advantage of Norways hydro storage that
| would mitigate some of that issue.
| [deleted]
| ben_w wrote:
| The transport losses are by far the smallest part of that.
| HVDC is available at 3.5% loss at 1000km as a standard
| product, but if building it at the required scale was
| trivial we'd be doing it rather than talking about it.
| lazide wrote:
| Biggest issue lately seems to be right of way/approvals -
| most of the paths between hydro and wind sources are
| overland.
|
| Most of the existing HVDC interconnects are undersea.
|
| You don't need to deal with 10k different landowners each
| wanting their own special deal if you're connecting
| Tunisia and Spain, vs North and South Germany.
| learc83 wrote:
| Not to say that what you're saying isn't a problem, but
| that's what eminent domain is for.
| [deleted]
| lazide wrote:
| Of course, and probably 50% or more of those landowners
| are going to fight you tooth and nail in court in that
| proceeding. Some so you'll pay them more to settle/go
| away, some because they just hate you on an ideological
| level or refuse to budge [https://www.google.com/amp/s/mo
| bile.reuters.com/article/amp/...]
|
| If you're covering significant distances that people live
| in, you can expect to spend a decade or sometimes more in
| court before being able to build - if ever.
|
| Because of course there are the environmental reviews,
| the impact assessments, etc. and each of those will be
| hundreds to thousands of pages long, and you'll likely
| have to fight over each page, also in court, with folks
| who don't like that you're going to dig up that random
| patch of flowers to install your power line or whatever.
|
| And that is assuming you're lucky enough to not have any
| endangered species in the way, in which case you might
| literally not be able to build at all if it is in an area
| you have no choice to go through.
|
| So far no one is staking out patches of ocean floor, and
| generally even if they did, the topography is usually
| more forgiving there. So all you need is landing
| approval, which means one government and one compliant
| landowner on each side somewhere along each coast that is
| close enough to an existing grid that you can
| interconnect to it. Much more solvable. Still not easy or
| straightforward.
|
| In California it took me _4 years_ and $18k worth of
| professional help to get approval to do completely
| standard fuel reduction work on a completely
| uninteresting plot of land that was super overgrown with
| brush and dead trees - with no one objecting to it - in
| the middle of a historic wildfire crisis in California
| that actually _expedited_ the process.
|
| I had to notify 10 something local native tribes (in case
| they maybe were somehow attached to the land, which they
| weren't), had to do a detailed archeological survey, had
| to have a licensed biologist do a detailed walkthrough to
| look for endangered species (there were none).
|
| Meanwhile the 3 largest fires in the states recorded
| history burned nearby, and they wouldn't let me clear
| brush and remove dead trees from a clear fire hazard area
| and it's a miracle the place didn't burn to the ground.
| learc83 wrote:
| There's only so much a landowner can. Roads and utility
| corridors are built and expanded every day. It's a fairly
| common occurrence.
|
| Oil pipelines are bit different because there are tons of
| people and organizations outside of those directly
| impacted who are willing to join the fight.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is an important story ! you might need to bolster
| the facts with some non-anonymous details (not here) but
| if this is as you say - your County officials are
| certainly not going to be pleased at the portrayal.. so
| you need to skip them somehow and get to the public.
| lazide wrote:
| This is CalFire - it's a state responsibility area. These
| rules also apply state wide, however. It's a well known
| problem in the state. My 4 yr timeline was, as I
| mentioned, expedited due to the fires. 6 yrs is more
| typical.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| your experience is directly at odds with the policy story
| that some govt elements are trying to present, along with
| numerous, repeated stakeholder processess that claim to
| be trying to do exactly what you were trying to do .. You
| are saying that the current, expedited and "combined "
| permit process as recently amended by the Governor's
| Office, reduced your "years of applying for permission"
| from SIX to FOUR at a time of catastrophic fire hazard.
|
| The details will have to speak for themselves and this is
| not the forum, however I strongly encourage you to seek
| some kind of outsider, and avoid those for whom the
| reputational damage occurs..
| bluGill wrote:
| Most places you can do that without any permits at all.
| Or maybe a burn permit from the fire warden, but that is
| $10 and issued in 10 minutes unless there is fire danger
| that day.
| lazide wrote:
| Not true if you're talking about California.
|
| You can remove small amounts of nuisance stuff in small
| areas, and burn in small piles during days you are
| approved to burn (which are limited). Maximum pile height
| of 3 ft, and 3x3 ft diameter if I remember from the last
| burn permit I pulled?
|
| You can clear up to 1/3 of an acre, or emergency thin I
| think up to 3 acres if you comply with those rules, but
| the 3 acres they reserve the right to come in and fine
| you if you do something they don't like, and you have to
| file a permit to do that too. Any trees about a certain
| diameter or of certain species, regardless of level of
| disease or danger they might require you to keep. A dead
| tree that might have an owl or protected animal in it? Ho
| boy.
|
| It would take several lifetimes to even attempt that on
| 60+ acres of overgrown timber. I spent a week and barely
| did 1/4 of an acre working full time, and it still wasn't
| adequately thinned.
|
| In the end, it took a crew of 4 with purpose built heavy
| equipment (a masticator), working full time over 4 months
| to do it to state standard -once the paperwork finally
| cleared this summer.
| adrianN wrote:
| Using that is a good way not to get reelected, so
| politicians are a bit reluctant.
| learc83 wrote:
| It happens very regularly. Roads and utility corridors
| are built and expanded every day. Eminent domain doesn't
| generally directly impact enough people to make a serious
| election issue, unless we are talking about either very
| local elections, or when the thing being built is
| something people feel strongly about like an oil
| pipeline.
| lazide wrote:
| By very regularly, you mean 'regularly tarpitted for a
| long time anytime there are a decent number of people
| near the work'? Bridge widening work on 101 has been
| delayed for decades by this in the Bay Area, CalTrain
| electrification was delayed by over a decade, etc. etc.
|
| Most utility corridors are in the middle of nowhere and
| already established (and people stay away because of
| this), so reusing an existing corridor is relatively easy
| - unless it widens into someone's yard. Then it's a
| matter of how much money that person has.
|
| For connecting previously not connected areas with a new
| line, especially if it goes through somewhere folks are
| living? Be prepared for the actual work making whatever
| you are doing to be a tiny tiny percentage of the time
| and costs involved.
| tuatoru wrote:
| > a huge task in a NIMBY world
|
| Yes, governments really need to pass laws to muzzle NIMBYs.
|
| This would increase democracy - no longer would small
| minorities be able to veto government actions for the
| benefit of all.
| rdiddly wrote:
| There is such a project already in the planning stage,
| called SuedLink, and consisting of high-voltage underground
| DC transmission lines from the north of Germany (where it
| will connect not only to German wind power but also
| hydropower in Norway via the existing NordLink project) to
| the south, where solar is the order of the day.
| m4rtink wrote:
| You can't easily turn just any dam to do pumped storage - you
| essentially need at least 2 dams, pumping from the lower one
| to the upper one. Normal dam will simply not have enough
| water "under" its single dam to pump up when needed.
|
| Not to mention the power transfer to pump water up & down
| being possibly a big multiple of what a regular hydro plant
| on that one spot would even need to transfer.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I read somewhere that Norway could become Europe's "battery" -
| the terrain is ideal for building pumped-storage hydro plants,
| which can store and release electricity to even out the gaps in
| renewables.
| yobbo wrote:
| The problem is that power from wind is random. To match
| supply=demand, a regulating/controllable power-source like
| coal/gas/hydro is needed. Because Europe is closing their
| coal/nuclear plants and hoping to replace them with wind, they
| end up using Scandinavian hydro-power to match supply/demand.
|
| This is currently a catastrophe for Scandinavian prices.
| bumby wrote:
| Why wouldn't using hydro to full capacity as part of the base
| load be a preferred option? Is there less stability in
| hydroelectric?
| robocat wrote:
| Hydro isn't that reliable because in a dry year, you run out
| of power.
|
| New Zealand has a power shortfall about once every ten years
| when lake levels drop towards critical levels. In 1992 it was
| severe enough that nationwide cuts of 15 per cent were needed
| and the GDP dropped by 0.6%.
| https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/how-we-learned-the-lessons-
| fro...
| shagie wrote:
| Hydro has other issues associated with it.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonbruner/2011/10/20/the-
| high-s...
|
| Things like "there's more potential available in the spring
| than in the fall (or winter).
|
| > Those margins are doubly difficult to master given the
| temperamental pulse of a river whose volume increases by a
| factor of five every spring as snow melts in the Rockies.
| Within the river's seasonal changes come manmade
| fluctuations: every morning its dams awaken the Columbia with
| surges of water to satisfy the Northwest's demand for
| electricity, and every evening the dams tighten their gates
| to put the river back to sleep. And every other second, an
| automated system assesses the supply of electricity against
| demand and makes tiny adjustments to the volume of water
| moving through each dam's turbines.
|
| Things like drought will also change that capacity of
| generation. https://www.hcn.org/articles/the-21st-centurys-
| hoover-dam
|
| Regarding base load -
| https://www.e-education.psu.edu/eme807/node/667 - table 9.1
| has the capacity factor.
|
| > In the table above, the lower the capacity factor, the more
| susceptible the system to potential interruptions or drops in
| performance. We can see that solar and wind technologies,
| which are notoriously weather-dependent have the lowest CF
| numbers. At the same time, nuclear power and coal systems are
| most advantageous when operated continuously and at full
| load.
|
| Nuclear has a capacity factor of 90.3. Hydro is 39.8.
| Concentrating solar is 33, wind is 20-40 range depending on
| geography and photovoltaic solar is 15-19.
|
| More on that concept -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor
|
| Hydro is the best of the renewable non-fossil fuel base load
| sources, but it still is poor compared to nuclear and fossil
| fuel energy generation _for base load_.
| lb1lf wrote:
| The good thing about hydro is that, unlike thermal plants,
| you can regulate power output fast to match demand.
|
| Hence, it makes sense to use hydro for handling peaks, not
| baseline supply.
| ximeng wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJunxkln578 more on the UK to
| Morocco solar / wind farm plan. 3,800km times four HVDC cables
| for redundancy. Global capacity around 4,000km of cable per year.
| So to make this project happen, need to open a new cable
| manufacturing facility.
|
| This video also suggests that this sort of renewable project will
| have an average cost of 48 GBP/MWh versus 92.50 GBP/MWh for new
| nuclear.
| gamegoblin wrote:
| The most interesting thing here to me is the paragraph that
| alludes to a potential future where Norway becomes the battery of
| Northern Europe.
|
| Norway has a ton of natural places for pumped hydro
| installations. In most of the world, installing dams involves
| displacing thousands or even millions of people and doing vast
| environmental damage. But due to Norway's unique geography, this
| is typically not the case there. Norway has an absurd number of
| natural, deep, steep-walled valleys and fjords.
| timeon wrote:
| I do not think that this is popular idea in Norway.
| malchow wrote:
| High-level grid interconnection isn't so useful if one (or more)
| of the lower-level grids being interconnected is so badly
| maintained that it frequently has to be deenergized.
|
| The future probably looks like microgrids, with MID/neutral-
| forming transformers [1] which generate their own 60 Hz pilot
| signal and allow multiple producers, batteries, and consumers to
| coexist on a common protocol even in the absence of the utility
| grid.
|
| [1]
| https://enphase.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/Enpower-R1-Q...
| andbberger wrote:
| sounds like a dismal future. I want to live in a future where
| we invest in infrastructure, not some dystopian world where
| tech-bro fantasy provided the rational for systemic
| disinvestment
| zbrozek wrote:
| The electrical engineer in me wants to see bigger and better
| grids that allow us to better utilize more renewable (and
| intermittent) sources. Show me that transcontinental or
| intercontinental or transoceanic HVDC backbone that lets
| electricity slosh around all over the planet. Just in the US I
| fantasize about an HVDC line that runs the length of I-40
| alongside an aqueduct covered in solar panels to knit together
| the eastern, western, and Texan grids while also bringing the
| southeast's excess fresh water to the southwest.
|
| The pragmatist in me (and the witness to the difficulty of
| getting anything built, and the greater difficulty of getting
| anything maintained) thinks grid investment is both unlikely to
| happen and even more unlikely to work well. In particular,
| transmission is low-value, high-risk, and expensive. It's low-
| value because distributed generation and storage are getting
| cheap. It's high-risk because high-power-density things are
| dangerous (check out all the Western fires started by electric
| utilities' transmission lines and switchcraft). It's expensive
| partially for good material and access reasons, but also for
| bad political reasons (NIMBYism and the fragmentation of
| responsibility for large land areas) and simply real estate
| rights cost. It's like trying to build California's high-speed
| rail but with less value-add, so it's going to be a horrible
| uphill slog of questionable merit.
|
| So yes, I agree with you. More microgrids with more distributed
| generation and storage are inevitable. And I think that they're
| probably going to destabilize and likely kill the large-scale
| electric utility as we know it in ~50 years. I often wonder why
| more power companies haven't already become telcos to utilize
| their poles to distribute internet access.
| 7952 wrote:
| In Europe it is distinctly less risky as you get arbitrage
| between different parts of the grid. You make money as long
| as their is a price difference. The technology is well
| understood. California is hardly a good case study.
|
| I think the way grids develop does still depend on local
| factors. In the UK rural substations have quickly become
| constrained and have limited export capacity. Urban areas
| have more capacity and are seeing peaker and battery
| installation. But large arrays of solar and wind just need a
| big connection to get power from the middle of nowhere into
| big cities. Places where land for batteries or peakers will
| be super expensive and where solar and wind are impossible.
|
| Also, if you are going to setup this kind of generation why
| bother selling to the public anyway. Find a ceramics factory
| or an steel works and run a private wire. You get a
| guaranteed customer who will agree prices years in advance.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > I often wonder why more power companies haven't already
| become telcos to utilize their poles to distribute internet
| access.
|
| I think there is a business side to this wherein big cable co
| made some compelling economic argument and exclusivity
| arrangement with the power company.
|
| Clearly, utilizing the pre-existing infrastructure and doing
| it all in-house would yield high-quality engineering
| outcomes.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's not an either or thing.
|
| The nice thing of interconnected grids is that you can route
| around the bad bits. There's no such thing as a global shortage
| of power generation. Blackouts happen when there are local
| shortages. Which in turn usually means problematic local
| suppliers and a lack of connectivity to external suppliers. The
| key challenge on e.g. the European grid is moving renewable
| over production to where the demand is. E.g. Southern Germany
| firing up more coal/gas when the north has ample wind
| production is because they lack the transport capacity (i.e.
| cables). Grid interconnectivity increases the profitability of
| renewable.
|
| Microgrids and batteries are indeed popular in much of the
| developing world where grids are very unreliable and power
| generation lags way behind demand. India, the middle east, much
| of Africa, and probably South America, etc. Grids are much less
| reliable there and investing in private capacity is essential
| and something that people do as much as they can so they can
| keep the fridge on, their phones charged, the AC on, etc.
|
| In developed markets, people do the same but more for cost than
| resilience reasons. Though I can imagine Texans might be
| considering both after this year.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| > The nice thing of interconnected grids is that you can
| route around the bad bits
|
| But in the meantime you can get massive blackouts if the
| problem propagates, like in 2003. Has this been improved on
| since then?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I'm not sure what massive blackouts you are referring to.
| There were none where I live that I can remember; or in the
| years since; or before. Just not a thing in Northern
| Europe.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_200
| 3
| aaron695 wrote:
| All logic is you don't need knitting you need east west
| backbones. Maximised longitude, smooth the curve of human
| activity, not wind and solar (which also approximately matches
| non-coincidentally)
| ruuda wrote:
| Semi-related, at https://app.electricitymap.org/map you can get a
| realtime view of electricity production, consumption, and
| import/export.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Here's a paper on a study of a 100% renewable grid for North
| America. The interesting conclusion is that increased
| transmission is not needed or even particularly valuable.
|
| https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/3/658
| rossdavidh wrote:
| It should be noted that most of North America is already
| connected to one very large grid or another.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Does anyone know the relative efficiency of, say, pumped hydro or
| lithium battery storage vs, say, a 1000km transmission line? I'm
| curious how local storage stacks up against something like
| sending solar power half way around the globe.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| HVDC is crazy expensive. Solar and batteries are cheap. Local
| production and storage generally wins.
|
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-of-...
| g105b wrote:
| I don't think it's about the efficiency, it's about managing
| waste. Currently, a lot of hydro generation is wasted at
| nighttime because there is less demand, so it's burnt off. Even
| if inefficient, it would be better to shift this energy to
| somewhere where it isn't night time
| gilbetron wrote:
| Looks like the high-voltage transmission lines are very
| efficient, losing only a few percent over hundreds of miles:
|
| http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-...
|
| There's a good watch on pumped hydro, and how it is kinda
| sucky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66YRCjkxIcg
|
| Battery storage is the most likely thing, although there is
| also kinetic storage (flywheels) and some other ideas as well
| (ultracapacitors, for instance).
| patall wrote:
| The one from Norway to the Netherlands has supposedly 95.8%
| efficiency.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorNed
| maxerickson wrote:
| The loss from 1000 Km of transmission is probably comparable to
| the loss from good case lithium ion (making transmission better
| much of the time). Pumped hydro is worse than both.
|
| Pumped hydro is usually built when it will directly reduce
| overall grid costs. For example, the Ludington Pumped Storage
| plant in Michigan was built by utilities to make their
| generation more cost efficient overall, the energy efficiency
| of the storage system only needs to be good enough to
| accomplish that goal.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Modern pumped hydro gets about 80% round-trip efficiency,
| perhaps 75% for older plants get 75%. Interestingly, grid scale
| batteries seem to get something close to that, 80-85 percent -
| I would have expected more.
|
| Transmission losses for 1000km are something like 2%-3%. So
| halfway around the globe isn't efficient, but 1000km might as
| well be considered "local" and transferring across the whole EU
| would be more efficient than local storage.
| legulere wrote:
| Halfway around the globe is 20 000 km. Which would be
| (0.97^20)-(0.98^2)) = 54-66% efficiency. Not good, but still
| better than what I expected.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| And let's not forget political hurdles. In my Canadian province
| of Quebec we are trying to sell our hydroelectricity for some
| time now and one of the major hurdles were disinformation
| campaigns by energy companies and their lobbying of politicians
| (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-hydro-
| quebe...). Fortunately things are starting to turn around:
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/hydro-quebec-new-yor...
| sk2020 wrote:
| If there are disputes about consumption and production across
| national boundaries, who resolves that? Different parts of the
| world don't even have similar objectives within the energy
| market. I also think an unaccountable international power utility
| that can control if I survive the winter or not is a terrible
| idea.
| simonh wrote:
| To the former question, contracts like the ones outlined in the
| article. On the latter, that's not being suggested.
| mcbishop wrote:
| An increasingly-viable alternative to global transmission
| interconnectivity is distributed energy resources (behind the
| meter, on utility-customer sites).
|
| The latter offers better resiliency and lower transmission /
| distribution losses.
|
| A well-insulated building and its hot-water tank are both
| (thermal) energy storage systems, that are more durable (and more
| affordable) than electrochemical batteries. A building can be
| pre-cooled or pre-heated when on-site solar is plentiful, to the
| end of the occupant's comfort range. This means a smaller on-site
| battery bank is needed to achieve year-around grid independence
| (for a conditioned / comfortable building).
|
| It seems that we're just getting started with on-site flexible-
| load control, and building energy automation generally. The
| higher electric rates in some markets make it financially viable
| for end users today.
| lrobinovitch wrote:
| I work in the field of distributed energy resources and it's
| incredibly cool.
|
| We're remote first and hiring. https://www.voltus.co
| syoc wrote:
| This article frames power grid integration across the European
| continent as a solution to unpredictable power production from
| wind power for each country. This makes less sense when you
| factor in that the wind is highly correlated in nearby countries.
| The ones that are the easiest to import power from. Long distance
| power export is also lossy. Regulating power is hard to find now
| and will be even harder in the future as more production goes
| towards wind and solar.
| VyperCard wrote:
| It's entirely predictable. See energymeteo.com
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20211017140938/https://www.econom...
|
| https://archive.is/SAn6I
| dctoedt wrote:
| I wonder how these grid interconnections would be at least partly
| secured against attack, by a nation-state and/or by terrorists --
| it seems like increased vulnerability should be a concern.
| [deleted]
| maxerickson wrote:
| What's particularly different about these compared to the
| thousands of miles of existing power and pipeline
| infrastructure?
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _What 's particularly different about these compared to the
| thousands of miles of existing power and pipeline
| infrastructure?_
|
| Don't know; it just seems as though the greater the
| interdependency between geographically-separated modules in a
| system, the greater the chances that damage to one module can
| take down remote modules and perhaps even the entire system.
|
| _Example:_ Oceangoing vessels are generally designed with
| watertight compartments, so that damage and flooding in one
| compartment won 't necessarily doom the whole ship -- as
| happened to the Titanic, which sank in part because its
| transverse internal bulkheads didn't extend high enough to
| prevent seawater spillover from the iceberg-damaged sections
| to undamaged sections as the ship started to sink by the
| bow.[0]
|
| _Example:_ The Great Texas Blackout in February 2021
| resulted in part from electrical power being knocked offline
| for some natural-gas compression facilities, which resulted
| in still-other electrical-generation facilities, powered by
| natural gas, failing for lack of fuel. [1]
|
| [0] http://writing.engr.psu.edu/uer/bassett.html#:~:text=The%
| 20r....
|
| [1]
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2021_Texas_power_crisis#/Causes
| maxerickson wrote:
| Texas also had the problem that the grid was isolated.
| Energy consumption spiked in neighboring states as well,
| with some problems, but nothing as severe as Texas.
|
| https://www.oklahoman.com/story/business/columns/steve-
| lackm...
|
| I suppose there can be a difference between interconnection
| and interdependence. Unnecessary interdependence creates
| the possibility of failure cascades, but interconnections
| can provide resilience without necessarily increasing the
| likelihood of problems.
| mactavish88 wrote:
| How does one protect against catastrophic cascading power
| failures in the event of solar flares, given this greater
| interconnectivity?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| start with the basics ?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid
| 5faulker wrote:
| Some of these technologies are still in their nascent form
| IMHO.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How does one protect against catastrophic cascading power
| failures in the event of solar flares, given this greater
| interconnectivity?_
|
| Does the risk of damage go up, practically speaking, when
| comparing a country-wide guide to a continent-wide one? As in,
| is there any equipment that would survive the former but not
| the latter? Or mitigation techniques that work in the case of
| the former but not the latter?
| retrac wrote:
| It depends in part, on the length of conductors. In the 1989
| magnetic storm, long-distance lines in Quebec were blown,
| while shorter length runs weren't as badly affected. Multiple
| short spans not all lined up the same way but carrying the
| same amount of power, is far less vulnerable than one 1000 km
| long wire.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Backup natural gas plants? Just throwing it out there, don't
| know if that would actually be sensible.
| heurisko wrote:
| I believe gas plants are already used to stabilise grids, as
| they have the benefit of being able to come online quickly.
|
| They do depend on subsidies, however, as the idea is they
| would be mostly offline.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Same as we always do: planned disconnection and blackouts to
| manage demand.
| pfdietz wrote:
| HVDC lines are immune to solar storms. The problem for the grid
| is DC currents induced in AC lines, causing failure of
| transformers. But on DC lines, it just perturbs the voltage
| slightly.
| mhandley wrote:
| I wonder how much of an issue this is for long distance
| undersea power cables? If you temporarily disconnect both ends
| during a solar storm, does the fact that they're under a great
| depth of electrically conductive salt water serve to protect
| the cables themselves?
| hikerclimber1 wrote:
| Everything is subjective. Especially laws.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-17 23:00 UTC)