New study: Cheapest forms of energy in the future

[Elthy]

A other method to buffer energy is producing hydrogen when you have to much wind/sun and save it for later. It can be used and distributed with the exiting gas networks without much adaption and could be utilized in several ways, e.g. in a commercial gas turbine, for cooking or in hydrogen driven cars. Also the storage capabilitys are enomous, the gas grid in Germany can power the country for several months. Sadly there are still problems, e.g. are curren hydrogenproducers not suited for pulsed runs like in this scenario, but thats solvable.

[sgt_flyer]

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 ?

Be very careful with this list - read it correctly before saying germany and uk have shutdown nearly all their reactors. Because it includes either prototype reactors (which are not meant to have a long life) and reactors dating from before the 1980's - all german reactors dating from after this are still operationnal. (And three of those closed reactors are inside still active nuclear power plants) - they plan to use them until at least 2022. (And beyond that, they'll still buy France nuclear electricity...) - on the other hand, they still use 50% of fossil fuels (ok, that's still less than the USA thpugh USA faces the problem of the sheer size of it's territory.

[magnemoe]

A other method to buffer energy is producing hydrogen when you have to much wind/sun and save it for later. It can be used and distributed with the exiting gas networks without much adaption and could be utilized in several ways, e.g. in a commercial gas turbine, for cooking or in hydrogen driven cars. Also the storage capabilitys are enomous, the gas grid in Germany can power the country for several months. Sadly there are still problems, e.g. are curren hydrogenproducers not suited for pulsed runs like in this scenario, but thats solvable.

Yes, cracking hydrogen take a lot of power, not sure how solvable it is, think pumping water up in hydro plants works just as well.

Remember you also have too cool the hydrogen who also takes power and its problematic, you would not want to use it in normal gas pipes.

[PakledHostage]

Yes, cracking hydrogen take a lot of power, not sure how solvable it is, think pumping water up in hydro plants works just as well.

But there are other promising methods of storing energy. For example, flow batteries are seeing a lot of development work because the tanks and hardware can be housed inside wind turbines

[Elthy]

think pumping water up in hydro plants works just as well

The problem is the capacity, e.g. the gas grid in Germany can store 200.000GWh while the hydroplants can store only 40GWh (Numbers from wikipedia). Building more hydroplants wont help since they have large impact on the enviroment and you would need the right terrain.

BTW: In this concept the hydrogen isnt stored and transported liquid, but as a gas just like gas is now. At least in Germany they used Hydrogen in the grid before, that shouldnt be a big problem.

[DaMichel]

I think the switch to renewable energy is inevitable. At least it will be a very large percentage of the total supply. Fosile fuels are going to run out eventually. Nuclear power causes lots of problems.

I don't want to derail the thread but here is an amazing example of how not to deal with nuclear waste.

Asse II was allegedly used as a research mine since 1965. Between 1967 and 1978 radioactive waste was placed in storage. The mine is operated by the German government, and was executed by the Helmholtz Zentrum München. Research was stopped in 1995; between 1995 and 2004 cavinates were filled with salt. After media reports in 2008[1][2] about brine contaminated with radioactive caesium-137, plutonium and strontium, politicians accused the operator of not having informed the inspecting authorities. On September 8, 2008, the responsible ministers of Lower Saxony and the German government concluded to change the operator. The new one, the Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz (federal office for radiation protection), will close the mine according to atomic law instead of mining law.[3]

Granted the storage is for research and there was only medium radioactive waste put in it. I believe this was meant to be stored there for thousands of years. But after 30 years already, it was noticed that the storage is leaky ...

Renewable energy probably needs development of better storage systems. People are working on it and there are promising results. Power to gas is great i think. One can split H2O to get H2 but one can also produce methane to use it in existing natural gas networks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_to_gas

[Tommygun]

The problem is the capacity, e.g. the gas grid in Germany can store 200.000GWh while the hydroplants can store only 40GWh (Numbers from wikipedia). Building more hydroplants wont help since they have large impact on the enviroment and you would need the right terrain.

BTW: In this concept the hydrogen isnt stored and transported liquid, but as a gas just like gas is now. At least in Germany they used Hydrogen in the grid before, that shouldnt be a big problem.

The hydrogen atom is a much smaller than natural gas, I'm surprised if they didn't have problems.

I've used larger helium for leak detection and it's hard to stop leaking completely and I was using high precision connections with special copper washers.

I can't imagine using decade old gas lines for it. I'm not saying it's not possible, it's just really surprises me.

[Elthy]

I read a bit more:

They used hydrogen as a part of coalgas (also called towngas) not only in germany, but also in other countrys. The coalgas had about 50% hydrogen and was used at first (around 1850) for lights, then for cooking/heating an was replaced with natural gas in the second half of the 20. century. Im not sure how they dealt with leaks, but hydrogen was explosive back then, too...

[cicatrix]

I'd hate to remind that using hydrogen is not quite environmentally safe as some ecologists state. The greenhouse effect from exhausting water vapor can be as heavy as it currently is from CO/CO2 provided all cars switched to hydrogen fuel.

[peadar1987]

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.

http://aeroscraft.com/communities/4/004/011/780/344//images/4596114930.png

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.

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/01/02/70/1027040_221f5b3a.jpg

Neither of those studies take into account the storage. They say "costs drop by 20% when capacity doubles", which is only true when the existing grid has enough dispatchable reserve capacity to take up all of the slack at a few moments notice. Once you go above about 20% grid penetration from renewables, especially from wind, you need dispatchable backup, such as Combined Cycle Gas Turbines, or Hydroelectic. This adds to the cost. Wind at low penetrations is the cheapest form of energy for many locations today, but at higher penetrations it still cannot compete with nuclear. We've been through this before.

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

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

The earth receives about 180PW of energy from the sun. 90PW is absorbed by the land and oceans, the rest goes into the atmosphere, or is radiated into space. Taking a few TW of kinetic energy out of the atmosphere isn't going to even make a dent in that. The only effects are very localised, like, in the few thousand metres downstream of the turbines.

[peadar1987]

I'd hate to remind that using hydrogen is not quite environmentally safe as some ecologists state. The greenhouse effect from exhausting water vapor can be as heavy as it currently is from CO/CO2 provided all cars switched to hydrogen fuel.

Although it is quite easily mitigated with a simple air-cooled condenser that won't add too much expense to the system.

[Northstar1989]

Renewable energy probably needs development of better storage systems. People are working on it and there are promising results. Power to gas is great i think. One can split H2O to get H2 but one can also produce methane to use it in existing natural gas networks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_to_gas

I agree with that! There are a number of storage solutions that are great: Power-to-Gas, Magnetic-Bearing Vacuum-Sealed flywheels (basically you just spin up a really large metal or carbon-fiber disk with electric motors, and spin it down with electric generators when the power is needed- like Beacon Power was attempting), etc. To say that there aren't good+cheap storage solutions we can develop is just plain stupidity these days...

Regards,

Northstar

[perk]

I'd hate to remind that using hydrogen is not quite environmentally safe as some ecologists state. The greenhouse effect from exhausting water vapor can be as heavy as it currently is from CO/CO2 provided all cars switched to hydrogen fuel.

The environmental impact of a fuel is not determined by the fuel type alone, but by its origin and fuel cycle. The proposed hydrogen cycle you are commenting on was: create solar/wind/tidal etc electricity, use that to get hydrogen from water, and then recombine that hydrogen in an other place to regain that energy. Its just a temporary storage medium of the electric energy, that is generated renewably. There is no impact like the one you are suggesting, since the produced water was already water in the atmosphere a couple of days-months before.

The big difference to fossil fuels is that their carbon was removed from the atmosphere for millions of years, and it took millions of years to remove them in the first place. So noone should be suprised that that can change the climate.

[Frozen_Heart]

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

Please say that's a joke? Right?

They affect to weather no more than buildings or tall trees.

[lajoswinkler]

A other method to buffer energy is producing hydrogen when you have to much wind/sun and save it for later. It can be used and distributed with the exiting gas networks without much adaption and could be utilized in several ways, e.g. in a commercial gas turbine, for cooking or in hydrogen driven cars. Also the storage capabilitys are enomous, the gas grid in Germany can power the country for several months. Sadly there are still problems, e.g. are curren hydrogenproducers not suited for pulsed runs like in this scenario, but thats solvable.

It would be very inefficient and thus a kilowatthour of such energy would be very expensive. Water electrolysis is a very energy consuming process and hydrogen is very difficult to distribute. We don't have even sufficiently good plans for making a storage and distribution networks. The thing seeps through materials. If you need a backup, it's better to pump water up the hill into an accumulation lake and store your energy as gravitational potential one.

I think the switch to renewable energy is inevitable. At least it will be a very large percentage of the total supply. Fosile fuels are going to run out eventually. Nuclear power causes lots of problems.

I don't want to derail the thread but here is an amazing example of how not to deal with nuclear waste.

Granted the storage is for research and there was only medium radioactive waste put in it. I believe this was meant to be stored there for thousands of years. But after 30 years already, it was noticed that the storage is leaky ...

Renewable energy probably needs development of better storage systems. People are working on it and there are promising results. Power to gas is great i think. One can split H2O to get H2 but one can also produce methane to use it in existing natural gas networks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_to_gas

a) We will never switch to them because they can't perform such function.

They will never become a globally dominant power source because they're weak and their energy density is relatively pathetic. Locally, yes, with consequences as high electricity bills.

c) Nuclear power does not cause lots of problems. It's the least damaging power source per generated kWh, both in casualties and environmental damage.

d) Comparing renewables with base load sources only shows you don't know enough about this. They are uncomparable and unreplaceable. Renewables serve as an addition. Nothing more, nothing less.

I'd hate to remind that using hydrogen is not quite environmentally safe as some ecologists state. The greenhouse effect from exhausting water vapor can be as heavy as it currently is from CO/CO2 provided all cars switched to hydrogen fuel.

Your intention is correct, but the info you gave is incorrect.

Water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, but can't be in the same category as carbon dioxide and methane. It's too abundant and when there's enough of it, it simply rains down.

What hydrogen is notorious about is that it's a very powerful ozone layer destroyer. If we were to switch to hydrogen economy, with current pathetic storage and distribution systems, Earth would experience catastrophic depletion of ozone. The amount of hydrogen released in this manner would absolutely dwarf any CFCs we've ever released. Granted, hydrogen is not accumulant like CFCs and we would recover from the damage very fast if we ceased to release it, but that doesn't change the fact that such continuing economy would wreck our crops and throw cancer rates through the ceiling.

Also, ecologists are not environmentalists. Ecology has nothing to do with environmental protection.

Please say that's a joke? Right?

They affect to weather no more than buildings or tall trees.

Large scale wind parks are capable of doing that and can have more than a measurable effect on local microclimate.

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.

Bunk? Over what? Did I say you can't have 30%? No. I've said you can't have base load with renewables alone. Reality is well, reality. Cold and hard.

Talk to some energy experts, they'll say exactly what I've said.

One funny comic about this...

[Bill Phil]

Please say that's a joke? Right?

They affect to weather no more than buildings or tall trees.

They take energy from the air. It affects weather. I never said how much...

I was referring to what the effect of an excessive amount of wind farming would be.

It it actually affects the weather in ways worse than buildings, it takes energy, which if unchecked could be a problem. Emphasis on the could.

[AngelLestat]

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?

http://www.aph.gov.au/~/media/05%20About%20Parliament/54%20Parliamentary%20Depts/544%20Parliamentary%20Library/Research%20Papers/2008-09/09rp09-1.jpg

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.

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.

Neither of those studies take into account the storage. They say "costs drop by 20% when capacity doubles", which is only true when the existing grid has enough dispatchable reserve capacity to take up all of the slack at a few moments notice. Once you go above about 20% grid penetration from renewables, especially from wind, you need dispatchable backup, such as Combined Cycle Gas Turbines, or Hydroelectic. This adds to the cost. Wind at low penetrations is the cheapest form of energy for many locations today, but at higher penetrations it still cannot compete with nuclear. We've been through this before.

First: simultaneity coefficient, capacity factor and peak hours.

Solar + Wind work very well together, solar produce energy at day time where most of the energy is required.

I always said that it will be always a mix of energies, but is not really needed in theory.

The study said that the wind-solar prices will drop to half. This mean that they can remplace fossil plants + storage at the same price.

Another way to see it, lets said that you have 100% solar + wind energy (not storage). You calculate how much is your botton generation line (respective to consumption), lets said that is 40% in the worst of the cases and the chance this to happen is 5%. So in this case instead activate fossil plants, you get the double of solar panels + wind. So you have a 5% of chance to produce 80% of the needed energy. In those times you increase the energy price and lot of factories would not produce, but it will be times where you have 160% on energy production with respect consume, so all the people and factories can choose that time to do high energy intensive activities or to produce double, which increase the profits of the country.

If your neighbors countries do the same, then you can exchange with them any exceed or loack of energy.

You can have hydrogen factories that will use those hours to produce hydrogen, you can have smart grid systems which control the consume and using batteries on cars as storage.

The possibilities are endless, so said that is impossible or the people who mention this is crazy, that is a punch that will sure go back.

Now in reality, there are countries which does not have so good solar energy or winds spot. Thats why it will be always a mix of energies.

Be very careful with this list - read it correctly before saying germany and uk have shutdown nearly all their reactors. Because it includes either prototype reactors (which are not meant to have a long life) and reactors dating from before the 1980's - all german reactors dating from after this are still operationnal. (And three of those closed reactors are inside still active nuclear power plants) - they plan to use them until at least 2022. (And beyond that, they'll still buy France nuclear electricity...) - on the other hand, they still use 50% of fossil fuels (ok, that's still less than the USA thpugh USA faces the problem of the sheer size of it's territory.

Ok, I did wrong avoiding to mention that it was not true for the whole list.

But is true for Japan, and Germany already said that they will shutdown all, the british wants to follow the path.

But you are wrong in said that now they buy energy to france.. All countries sell or buy energy in one moment or another to close countries, some more than others.

Renewable energy probably needs development of better storage systems. People are working on it and there are promising results. Power to gas is great i think. One can split H2O to get H2 but one can also produce methane to use it in existing natural gas networks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_to_gas

Yes but methane produce co2 when you burn it, so I will go for H2.

I'd hate to remind that using hydrogen is not quite environmentally safe as some ecologists state. The greenhouse effect from exhausting water vapor can be as heavy as it currently is from CO/CO2 provided all cars switched to hydrogen fuel.

Not at all, CO2 remains in the atmosphere by A LOT OF TIME, meanwhile h2o only remains few days until the next rain, is not accumulable

Edited February 11, 2015 by AngelLestat

[peadar1987]

AngelLestat, what happens in winter if you have a high-pressure system sitting over you for 2 weeks? Negligible winds, low solar irradiation, and even with clear skies, it gets dark before 1700hrs. How are people going to heat their homes in the evenings? Solar and wind do work well together, and do cancel out each others limitations to some extent, but it doesn't even come close to solving the problems with dispatchability either of them has.

Your thought experiment oversimplifies things considerably. First of all, think of the workers. Would you like to be constantly on call to come in to work at a few hours notice if the wind got up? Or what about not earning any money for a few weeks if conditions didn't allow enough power to be generated? And what are the companies going to say? What about their customers who don't get their orders because the wind wasn't blowing?

Weather systems can quite easily be the size of smaller continents, so although again, collaborating with your neighbours is going to help somewhat, it doesn't solve the problem. Not to mention the fact that the electricity grid isn't as simple as you make out. It's not just a matter of sticking electricity into a pipe, and waiting for it to come out elsewhere. The frequency, load matching, and demands for real and reactive power must all be balanced out, and this is an immensely complicated thing to do. Far cleverer people than me have spent their entire lives working on smart and integrated grids, and we are still many years away from a full implementation.

I am not saying that it is impossible, storage will improve (liquefied gas turbines are an exciting research area some of my colleagues are currently investigating), smart grid technology will become more developed, and the cost of wind and solar will drop, but this will not make them competitive with nuclear for base load generation over the next 10 to 15 years at a minimum, and we have to keep the lights on during that time.

Edit: Britain are expanding their nuclear fleet. Funding has been agreed for Hinkley Point C, and life extension granted to all currently operating AGRs.

Edit-Edit: Currently, all of the UK's reactors except one (which is down for scheduled maintenance) are running at full capacity, even Dungeness, which is an evil little bugger that defies all attempts to make it run reliably

Edited February 11, 2015 by peadar1987

[Branjoman]

There's one power source that throughout these pages I haven't seen mentioned yet - RTG's. They're small, efficient, easy to produce and last a very long time. The idea of having HUGE RTG banks powering a country probably isn't feasible, but separating the country-wide grid into many smaller grids, each with their own banks to power that community is slightly more feasible.

[Brotoro]

RTGs are terribly inefficient. They are great in very isolated locations, but not for powering a grid.

Also, you don't want lots of Plutonium 238 where people can get at it easily.

"I'm sure that in 2085, plutonium is available in every corner drugstore, but in 2015, we'd prefer that it's a little hard to come by."

Edited February 11, 2015 by Brotoro

[AngelLestat]

AngelLestat, what happens in winter if you have a high-pressure system sitting over you for 2 weeks? Negligible winds, low solar irradiation, and even with clear skies, it gets dark before 1700hrs. How are people going to heat their homes in the evenings? Solar and wind do work well together, and do cancel out each others limitations to some extent, but it doesn't even come close to solving the problems with dispatchability either of them has.

Low irradiation in a high pressure system? this means no clouds..

It gets dark before 1700hrs? what country are we talking?

Take a look to the winds, choose any country:

http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-85.70,22.62,427

In case you never use it, Press in "earth", then "Control" to see previous days.

You will see that always there is winds in one place or another in any country, at least you are talking about Monaco, in that case a wire to the closest neighbor will solve the problem.

I already said that there was 5% of chances to be at 40% on 1 day, so chances to be 2 weeks with low power are almost null (we are not talking on a single wind generator in a single place, we are talking in lots of wind generators and PV over many places, even in cloud days you generate something of electricity, also means strong wings),

Your thought experiment oversimplifies things considerably. First of all, think of the workers. Would you like to be constantly on call to come in to work at a few hours notice if the wind got up? Or what about not earning any money for a few weeks if conditions didn't allow enough power to be generated? And what are the companies going to say? What about their customers who don't get their orders because the wind wasn't blowing?

Why you mention? There is already countries that do this, factories choose to produce at certain hrs, in home families put their clothes to wash when the energy is cheap, etc.

But lets forget about these methods, take a look to the winds on sea, much stronger but harded to exploit because its very difficult to install a normal wind turbine there.

But what about a kite?

Now in earth.nullschool.net set Height at 500 hPa, these kites can harvester those winds which are a lot more constant and 5 times stronger.

A kite base does not need a strong base, it can move, and float being anchored to the deep.

http://kitegen.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ala_arco-1024x587.jpg

A group of these kites can be far from coast producing H2 by electrolisys (90% of efficiency)

A boat can collect that H2, there are ways now to avoid any leak painting the h2 container interior with graphene oxyde.

A fuel cell plant can produce electricity at 70% efficiency or more. In few years the platinum catalyst can be remplaced by composite graphene ones which it will reduce the cost of any fuel cell.

Weather systems can quite easily be the size of smaller continents, so although again, collaborating with your neighbours is going to help somewhat, it doesn't solve the problem. Not to mention the fact that the electricity grid isn't as simple as you make out. It's not just a matter of sticking electricity into a pipe, and waiting for it to come out elsewhere. The frequency, load matching, and demands for real and reactive power must all be balanced out, and this is an immensely complicated thing to do. Far cleverer people than me have spent their entire lives working on smart and integrated grids, and we are still many years away from a full implementation.

My brother is electrical enginner and works doing that, I have some background studies too.

We can talk about how complicated is each job if you saw it in deep detail, but it does not mean that can not being done it.

I am not saying that it is impossible, storage will improve (liquefied gas turbines are an exciting research area some of my colleagues are currently investigating), smart grid technology will become more developed, and the cost of wind and solar will drop, but this will not make them competitive with nuclear for base load generation over the next 10 to 15 years at a minimum, and we have to keep the lights on during that time.

mmm I can agree with you that it would not compete over the next 5 to 7 years, but 10 to 15... come on... Nuclear plants would not drop in cost, in fact they will increase, because each time that solar and wind prices fall, it means that is a lot more risky to invest in nuclear, what if another disaster happens and the world said lets stop all nuclear facilities?

Also each nuclear plant takes 2 years (in the best cases) to build (in my country 5 ), that is more than half of the money that stay in one place doing nothing.

Edit: Britain are expanding their nuclear fleet. Funding has been agreed for Hinkley Point C, and life extension granted to all currently operating AGRs.

Edit-Edit: Currently, all of the UK's reactors except one (which is down for scheduled maintenance) are running at full capacity, even Dungeness, which is an evil little bugger that defies all attempts to make it run reliably

Ok. I take your word.

In other countries solar thermal can deal with payload.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/12/02/3081889.htm

The new solar thermal plants would work with a new design that uses supercrit (not remember what gas) which will increase the efficiency and cost.

Edited February 11, 2015 by AngelLestat

[peadar1987]

Low irradiation in a high pressure system? this means no clouds..

It gets dark before 1700hrs? what country are we talking?

I'm talking about high-latitude places. In Scotland in December, you're lucky to get daylight past 1545. I seem to recall you are Argentinian? Most of the UK is at about the latitude of southern Patagonia. The sun has a very low incidence angle, and has to travel a long way through the atmosphere before it hits a solar panel. You don't get great efficiency.

Take a look to the winds, choose any country:

http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-85.70,22.62,427

That is incredibly cool!

In case you never use it, Press in "earth", then "Control" to see previous days.

You will see that always there is winds in one place or another in any country, at least you are talking about Monaco, in that case a wire to the closest neighbor will solve the problem.

I already said that there was 5% of chances to be at 40% on 1 day, so chances to be 2 weeks with low power are almost null (we are not talking on a single wind generator in a single place, we are talking in lots of wind generators and PV over many places, even in cloud days you generate something of electricity, also means strong wings),

You still have the problem of capacity factors with this. There is generally some wind in most countries, but it's far from unknown for high pressure systems to sit over Western Europe for 10 days or 2 weeks, and even if some of your turbines are operating no problem, if you're banking on there being some wind somewhere, you are going to have to have an installed capacity many times greater than demand, which pushes up the cost again.

Why you mention? There is already countries that do this, factories choose to produce at certain hrs, in home families put their clothes to wash when the energy is cheap, etc.

There's a big difference between certain businesses choosing to operate when electricity is cheaper, and genuinely not having enough dispatchable power to balance your load. If things worked as you were suggesting, without huge amounts of storage, you would have rolling blackouts if you had a windless evening.

But lets forget about these methods, take a look to the winds on sea, much stronger but harded to exploit because its very difficult to install a normal wind turbine there.

But what about a kite?

Now in earth.nullschool.net set Height at 500 hPa, these kites can harvester those winds which are a lot more constant and 5 times stronger.

A kite base does not need a strong base, it can move, and float being anchored to the deep.

http://www.kitegen.com/it/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/off-shore.jpg

http://kitegen.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ala_arco-1024x587.jpg

A group of these kites can be far from coast producing H2 by electrolisys (90% of efficiency)

A boat can collect that H2, there are ways now to avoid any leak painting the h2 container interior with graphene oxyde.

A fuel cell plant can produce electricity at 70% efficiency or more. In few years the platinum catalyst can be remplaced by composite graphene ones which it will reduce the cost of any fuel cell.

My brother is electrical enginner and works doing that, I have some background studies too.

We can talk about how complicated is each job if you saw it in deep detail, but it does not mean that can not being done it.

These are all very interesting ideas, but I think you are underestimating how long it takes to bring technologies from concept to implementation. Of course they can all be done, but they cannot always be done simply and cheaply. There's a reason we don't have them all already.

Ok. I take your word.

In other countries solar thermal can deal with payload.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/indepth/opinion/img/baseload.jpg

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/12/02/3081889.htm

The new solar thermal plants would work with a new design that uses supercrit (not remember what gas) which will increase the efficiency and cost.

It will be supercritical CO2 most likely. In reality, it isn't much more efficient than a subcritical cycle, but it allows for smaller heat exchanger areas. For direct-heating systems, you can reduce collector area, and that's good, but if you're using eutectic salts or something to smooth the generation curve, a supercritical working fluid isn't going to drop the cost that much.

[78stonewobble]

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.

Denmark has for many years now had an excess production of windenergy, considering that we still have to have our coal and / or gas power plants running to guarantee stability.

Quite often we have had to sell that surplus energy, when prices were low. On the other hand we have had to buy energy, when prices were high.

Also it is very likely that whenever Denmark needs extra electricity, so will Norway and Sweden. They are geographically very close together.

Denmark also have enough problems keeping industry and business, that I don't really think industrial brownouts will turn out to be popular.

...

In regards to nuclear waste being a "big" problem... It is, if you lick it, put it in your food or blow it up into the air. As long as you don't do that... It is a very small problem indeed.

If I remember correctly the amount of global nuclear waste would just about cover an american football field, with the long lasting waste being a small percentage of that... For comparison... there was 174,000,000 tonnes of asbestos produced during the 20th century, ie. killing more people in the UK than all types of traffic and transport accidents combined in 2011 (nigh chernobyl sized death rate).

...

I made a quick calculation of the cost of supplying the worlds electrical demand with solar energy, 11,100,000,000,000,000 $ was the result I arrived at.

I also made a quick calculation of comparing the worlds largest windfarm (chinese) with a relatively recent japanese nuclear power plant and presumably you can get about 6.5 times as much energy for the same amount of money.

...

Also consider that the worlds electrical consumption will have to be doubled or tripled in the future partially to reduce our dependence on oil, which will run out at some point, but also to allow for the rest of the world to live as ... well us rich people do. I'm partial to allow the third world atleast a 100 years with cheap ass polluting coal just for the sake of fairness.

...

All in all... Major quick reorganization of the worlds power infrastructure is a pipedream. More so if it's based on megaproject scale renewable energy. For irrational reasons and fear (a phobia?) we rejected nuclear energy, when we had the time to change things and killed 125 million people (or will kill, no matter what we do, even if we changed it all tomorrow). As things is... we might as well roll with the punches and wait til we have fusion power.

Edited February 11, 2015 by 78stonewobble

[Laie]

AngelLestat, what happens in winter if you have a high-pressure system sitting over you for 2 weeks? Negligible winds, low solar irradiation, and even with clear skies, it gets dark before 1700hrs.

A country where it gets dark berfore 17hrs is, like, 50° latitude? For starters, you shouldn't put too much stock in Solar there -- I think Germany is already pushing the envelope of what's currently reasonable (that is, without even day-to-day storage).

Other than that, such a high-pressure system should have a lot of wind going in circles around it. Which won't help you if you have a strictly national grid on the scale of (say) Britain and the high is sitting squat in the middle, but AFAIK there's a lot of interchange between countries. The neighbours should have all the wind you're lacking. On the scale of even a small continent like Europe, wind becomes quite reliable. There's still the problem of getting the power across large distances, but that's merely an economic question, not one of future technology.

With regards to storage, I think there's much that could be done. Wind power has improved significantly over the past decade, PV even dramatically. I think flywheels could have similar potential if there was a market for them. I'm only looking at short-term storage here, something that will buffer the day's production into the night -- if you're becalmed for days, a wide grid and cooperative neighbours will probably be better than any storage solution.

According to these slides, Germany had about 10-20% Wind and Solar electricity in 2011 (best and worst months). Pushing this to 30-50% should be doable within a decade, with existing technology, and without excessive cost. I sometimes wonder how the Energiewende compares to the Apollo Program as a national effort.

[AngelLestat]

I'm talking about high-latitude places. In Scotland in December

yeah those countries are doom with solar. However they use more solar than my country (we 34 latitude, they 57).

But I already said this is my previous post "Now in reality, there are countries which does not have so good solar energy or winds spot. Thats why it will be always a mix of energies"

There's a big difference between certain businesses choosing to operate when electricity is cheaper, and genuinely not having enough dispatchable power to balance your load. If things worked as you were suggesting, without huge amounts of storage, you would have rolling blackouts if you had a windless evening.

If you implement something like that from one day to the other, yes it wil be caos.

But in reality it will take several years, if all had indicators on energy cost and automatic devices with smart grid + other stuffs. It can be done.

But it was just an example that even without storage can be possible.

These are all very interesting ideas, but I think you are underestimating how long it takes to bring technologies from concept to implementation. Of course they can all be done, but they cannot always be done simply and cheaply. There's a reason we don't have them all already.

But from all the companies that are trying to harvester the high winds, they are the ones that are more advance.

And we are talking about 20 different companies (included google) that are trying.

They are one of the oldest and with more experience, they even give some tips to the glenn research center when they was researching the same thing.

From all the data they have, they design their own kite shape that will be ideal for their conditions. It will cross the sky from size to size at 80 to 100 m/s at 2000m average altitud.

And yes, it was supercritic Co2, thanks

In regards to nuclear waste being a "big" problem... It is, if you lick it, put it in your food or blow it up into the air. As long as you don't do that... It is a very small problem indeed.

Really? so the chances to the nuclear fuel leak and goes to the aquifers that we drink is low?

Because already happen.

And the remaning waste needs to hold by thousands of years more. You will be there to said the future people that they dont have nothing to worry about?

I guess not.

If I remember correctly the amount of global nuclear waste would just about cover an american football field, with the long lasting waste being a small percentage of that... For comparison... there was 174,000,000 tonnes of asbestos produced during the 20th century, ie. killing more people in the UK than all types of traffic and transport accidents combined in 2011 (nigh chernobyl sized death rate).

What happen if you drop a bomb in that american football field? That is a very good idea for any terrorist.

Also saying that are worst stuffs is not the way to defend that.

I made a quick calculation of the cost of supplying the worlds electrical demand with solar energy, 11,100,000,000,000,000 $ was the result I arrived at.

I also made a quick calculation of comparing the worlds largest windfarm (chinese) with a relatively recent japanese nuclear power plant and presumably you can get about 6.5 times as much energy for the same amount of money.

I will love to see your math and sources behind these "estimations"

The math is simple, solar + wind + storage in 5 years will be chepear than nuclear (now is closely a tie), so remplace the same amount of energy with nuclear will be worst, also it will be like walk in a minefield.

All in all... Major quick reorganization of the worlds power infrastructure is a pipedream. More so if it's based on megaproject scale renewable energy. For irrational reasons and fear (a phobia?) we rejected nuclear energy, when we had the time to change things and killed 125 million people (or will kill, no matter what we do, even if we changed it all tomorrow). As things is... we might as well roll with the punches and wait til we have fusion power.

You are talking as if solar and wind is not an alternative.. again read the prices and tends.

How many studies you need to understand that are in fact a very good alternative?

Dont worry, I will stay here to remind you each time something new come out

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Take a look here in my country, to see that not always a country decision means that was the best choice.

They will make 2 new nuclear plant, when we have the best wind conditions in the world. And not only that, there is already a power line to transfer the power, hydro reservoirs and a hydro plant to pump water as storage. We have enoght storage capacity to remove all our gas plants (50% of the country energy)

Even the rest of the world can not believe why we are not exploting that.

In addiction, the nuclear plants will take more than 5 years to be finish.

So we need to wait 5 years to get some energy of this huge investment?

The answer is easy, corruptions and arrangements.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/12/wind-power-in-argentina-ready-for-take-off

Edited February 12, 2015 by AngelLestat