New study: Cheapest forms of energy in the future

[AngelLestat]

Solar and wind energy will become the most cheap form of energy.

In some countries already happens, but the study confirm that in just 5 years this will be true for almost all.

http://www.lut.fi/web/en/news/-/asset_publisher/lGh4SAywhcPu/content/solar-and-wind-power-will-be-the-cheapest-forms-of-energy-in-the-future

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150205083032.htm

"shows that it will be worthwhile for North-East Asia, and China in particular, to switch to a completely renewable energy system within 5–10 years"

We had this discussion last year here:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/83102-Best-energy-alternatives-to-stop-global-warming/page27

I was trying to convince nuclear fans from this, but without much luck.

Then the second lazard study came showing a new drop in prices.

http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf

This study does not have into account the possible drop in transport and instalation that wind farms may have when the first of these vehicles enter in operation in 2016 or 2017.

Right now wind farms are limited in how big can be due instalation, trasportation and maintenance.

They need to build roads or install them in places where the wind is not so good.

This is 50% of the total wind turbine cost.

Edited June 22, 2015 by AngelLestat

[Bill Phil]

Wind turbines take energy from the air, affecting weather...

Heliostats working with Solar Arrays would be amazing, though...

[Tommygun]

Five years sounds much too soon to me, especially with all the newer natural gas that has becoming available.

I would like to see most of our energy come from solar/wind as oil in the long run will only get more expensive.

As well as keeping the air cleaner, we are wasting oil that we need to make millions of different types of goods.

A completely renewable energy system will probably take decades to get to an affordable price, be practical and then build it to large national size scales.

Wind turbines take energy from the air, affecting weather...

Heliostats working with Solar Arrays would be amazing, though...

Earth is very big, I don't think wind turbines will have anymore effect on local weather than farmers planting trees for wind breaks around their farms.

Edited February 11, 2015 by Tommygun

[basic.syntax]

The nuclear waste storage/disposal problem... is a big problem. Nobody wants it, within 100 miles of their backyard. So most of it sits in pools at the reactors that used it. Yucca Flats storage facility was shot down, after millions (billions?) were already spent toward it. I think the Hanford reservation in WA is going to be a blight on that area for another 100 years, though I'm sure some people over there are happy for the steady jobs. I'll be happy to embrace nook-ular, when Fusion tech comes out of the lab. So, I look forward to more wind and solar projects.

[Kryten]

Price per kilowatt doesn't count for much when you get an unusually calm day and the whole grid shuts down.

[Tommygun]

Price per kilowatt doesn't count for much when you get an unusually calm day and the whole grid shuts down.

Yes, they will still need conventional power plants on standby and interconnected power grids over larger areas.

They can also make Hybrid Heliostats that run on natural gas or solar. I think it will just take a lot longer than some people think.

Renewable night time power generation and storage is also expensive.

[sgt_flyer]

yup, that's the main problem of most 'renewable' energies - Solar panels only works at full power during a sunny day - and Wind turbines only works when there's wind. (and contrary to a stupidity i heard from an ecologist, who said 'when there's no sun, there's wind - you can very well have neither or both - and that's not really predictable (not a good thing for factories who need reliable power sources )

in order to be able to use these renewable energies in a sustained form, you'll have to add a way to store all this energy to be able to reuse it when needed - and that's where the main problem lies current capacitors technologies simply can't be built on such a scale...

one renewable energy which is Extremely predictible, is tidal power - now, that's predictible and can operate almost regardless of weather conditions (it's effects varies through the strength of the tides, but you know it in advance ) you simply need to check your tide tables, and you can determine how much energy you'll get on any given day

we need a breakthrough in energy storage if current renewables energies are to be used like that.

else, for heliosats to work, you'll need to clear the orbits of debris - or maintain a workforce able to patch up those heliosats (and a way to beam down the power which will not be disturbed / diffracted by the water within clouds)

now, regarding current nuclear technologies, the main problem is the use of solid fuel rods, which causes several problems : as soon as a small percentage of the fuel rod has been transmuted through the nuclear reactions, the remaining unspent fuel cannot sustain the reaction anymore (cause your neutrons have a good chance of colliding with used fuel) - so we end up with massive amounts of 'hot' fuel rods with mixed fuels inside, which are very hard to 'clean' and reuse. (and end up creating a lot of nuclear waste)

second problem of solid fuel rods, is that it limits a lot the maximum temperature we can let those reactors run. (else the fuel rods would melt / break - which is baad ) the results of this, is that nuclear reactors typically use low efficiency steam turbines - so a lot of the reactor's heat is lost (unless you can use cogeneration on that - which would require factories or cities built around it... naaah ) . (nuclear still remains a quite formidable source of heat though - requiring only minimal amounts of nuclear material to produce as much energy as a fossile fuel based power plant.)

Edited February 11, 2015 by sgt_flyer

[Rakaydos]

Which is why newer generation fission generators dont use fuel rods- pebbelbed reactors, molten salt reactors, and the like.

[magnemoe]

Which is why newer generation fission generators dont use fuel rods- pebbelbed reactors, molten salt reactors, and the like.

You still get waste however the US waste problem is an magnitude higher than for others as they don't recycle the waste.

Political decision long ago.

Storage is also an political decision, no big issue to store close to reactor either at lest is recycled as its so lite of it.

[cantab]

Earth is very big, I don't think wind turbines will have anymore effect on local weather than farmers planting trees for wind breaks around their farms.

Considering how often the refrain "Earth is big, we can't harm it" has been shown wrong, I wouldn't be so confident.

Price per kilowatt doesn't count for much when you get an unusually calm day and the whole grid shuts down.

Over a large enough area this becomes increasingly unlikely. Not impossible, but then fossil fuel power plants breaking down, or the whole grid going kaput, aren't impossible.

[sgt_flyer]

Which is why newer generation fission generators dont use fuel rods- pebbelbed reactors, molten salt reactors, and the like.

Yup, but generation IV reactors won't be ready for commercial use for quite some time - although prototypes of several of those technologies exists since quite some time

We'll still have to deal with the old generation nuclear power plants anyway (and in the end, develloped countries can't really let go of nuclear technologies - japan had to restart it's nuclear power plants, and a good chunk of europe produce or buy nuclear electricity (france produces something like 1/5th of EU's energy - 85% of France electricity being of nuclear origin.

[WestAir]

The future power source for our cities was always a battle between hydro, solar, wind and Nuclear - with coal and natural gas losing the war (and with tidal and geothermal being regional-dependent)

I think the larger question is what our transportation industry plans to do without patroleum.

[sgt_flyer]

That's where the need for much more effective and compact energy storage arises once we get that, we'll be able to use electric engines much more for transportation (and current full electric cars with 200km of autonomy aint enough)

(although even if we can go full electric, will come a day where we'll have to find a renewable way to replace the various materials we use (plastics and minerals)

Edited February 11, 2015 by sgt_flyer

[Bill Phil]

The future power source for our cities was always a battle between hydro, solar, wind and Nuclear - with coal and natural gas losing the war (and with tidal and geothermal being regional-dependent)

I think the larger question is what our transportation industry plans to do without patroleum.

Tesla was working on wireless electricity...

Like for powering cars, aircraft, and trains.

[AngelLestat]

But these studies already takes into account the capacity factor (the average power by year) and the storage.

It said that china may change to 100% renewable in 5 to 10 years and still be economically profitable.

This note has 1 year and already said this:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wind-and-solar-harvest-enough-energy-now-to-pay-back-manufacture-plus-add-storage/

Now the price of all the technologies which is falling faster is Energy Storage.

Also is not really necesary if you have already a good infrastructure in power transmission, because winds always blows in some place, you can transport energy or buy it from other countries.

Even if you need to build extra wind turbines or PV to counter the days of low production, it will be still chepeast than other technologies.

Many thermal plants are already the 90% of the time in hold. Why a wind turbine can not be in hold? If the energy source is free.

Take a close look to this list on nuclear reactors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors

Germany, Japan and United Kingdom had almost or all their reactors shutdown.

It does not matter if it was a good decision or not, but it happens. Now what is the price and time that all these countries wasted building these nuclear reactors?

What is the cost that is not included in any fossil or nuclear thermal plant due waste managment, disasters or pollution?

They can also make Hybrid Heliostats that run on natural gas or solar.

There is not need, those solar plants can work at nights or any time, they storage the energy in liquid salt at 700c.

[Duxwing]

Only nuclear power can safely and reliably provide the energy we need: fossil fuels will ruin the atmosphere, and renewable energy is fickle and feeble.

-Duxwing

[magnemoe]

Tesla was working on wireless electricity...

Like for powering cars, aircraft, and trains.

His idea did not work as in theory was totally wrong, recent work has made it possible at least for charging portable electronic in close distance, it might be possible to charge cars by an strip of similar antennas either inside the road or at the side, problem will be to scale it up to needed effect and variable load as cars enter and exit the zones all the time.

Cost will also be an major issue then making kilometer long strips.

Trains have an solution who works well, same for trams, had been no issue using this for buses who has a battery so they can move away from the line, no it would not work for normal traffic but its a limited number of buss companies and its regulated.

[Bill Phil]

He was underfunded...

Tesla I mean. He would have gotten it if he had been funded.

[Tommygun]

I think Tesla was just using a pulsating magnetic field, which is fine for short distances and I wouldn't want to live next to it.

[lajoswinkler]

Again you people who think real life is like a computer game.

You will never ever have full grid made out of wind turbines and solar panels. That's because there's more to an energy source than just its volume. Availability over time, energy density, ever heard of that?

One more thing. Every unit of power made by wind and Sun needs to have a backup in the form of fast gas burning thermal power plants.

All this ignorance makes me think of "solar freaking roadways". Think, people. Brain isn't there to cool your blood.

Tesla was working on wireless electricity...

Like for powering cars, aircraft, and trains.

And it would never work. Outside specialized small scale applications, it's a futile thing capable of causing huge problems. Also the losses are enormous.

Makes you think - if he got the money, we'd probably have more advanced global warming today. More coal would get burned to account for low efficiencies of transfer.

Edited February 11, 2015 by lajoswinkler

[cantab]

One more thing. Every unit of power made by wind and Sun needs to have a backup in the form of fast gas burning thermal power plants.

Bunk. Denmark doesn't need that at all; they're already generating around 30% of their power from wind and that's increasing. Hydro-electric power trounces gas in terms of responding to demand anyway; Norway and Sweden have a lot of hydroelectric power and that is used to balance Denmark's wind generation. And when it's needed, large industrial consumers can be temporarily disconnected to reduce demand.

Grid balance and possible changes in supply and demand obviously need to be considered, but it's complete nonsense to make out you need to build a megawatt of unused gas power capacity for every megawatt of wind or solar generation.

Edited February 11, 2015 by cantab

[Nuke]

tesla was pretty cool but not that much, he didnt even believe in electrons. there are a number of ways to transmit electricity. electromagnetic coupling, rf coupling, capacitive coupling, directed microwave/laser, etc. wireless power transfer is well understood (thanks for the most part to tesla's reserch). usually the efficiencies are very low over anything but short distances. tesla's successes mostly come from the fact that he was using insanely high voltages, insanely high currents, or both.

Edited February 11, 2015 by Nuke

[linkxsc]

Dude so what if you need some fuel burning backup, or something to take up the slack during high load times. Thats still that much less fuel burned normally. You act like a real system would be just solar and wind. No youd have solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, and all manner of others.

Hell you do realize that a lot of wind farms have gas turbines on site right? (Maybe not on site, but connected to the local grid) takes less than 2 minutes to fire a 30MW gas turbine up and have it producing power. Assuming the sun went out and the wind died down. But lets not forget that on several good days, oh right thats 30MW not burned in fuel.

Been a while since I did the paper in college. But based on the fuel usage of the Newington New Hampshire oil plant (like 480 MW) we had figured out that your average 1MW wind turbine working at like 70% capacity offsets like 82 gallons of fuel burned per hour at that plant.

Going on that gas turbine thing. For every day you're getting 30MW from wind, or solar, or hydro, thats almost 60,000 gallons not being burned elsewhere.

[Dodgey]

Took a while for this discussion to get started up on the forums again, let's hope it doesn't degrade like the last one.

[Duxwing]

@link You underestimates the fuel savings:

.7MWh = 82gal

1MWh = 82/.7gal

1MWh = ~117gal

24 * 1MWh = 24 * 117gal

1MWd = ~2,411gal

30 * 1MWd = 30* 2,411gal

30MWd = ~84,343gal

But they are still not enough. The country needs stable, multi-gigawatt power sources, and the only available ones are large dynamos spun by turbines; our only choice is whether combustion or fission will heat their water into steam, and I choose the latter.

-Duxwing