The Alternative Green Energy Thread

shinytop

I agree with the analysis above. I think Tesla has a problem in that people in Europe and the UK, in general, will not buy a premium American car if (and this is the important bit) there is something of similar performance and price available from VAG, Mercedes, BMW, etc.  Europeans and Brits don't like American cars (and they probably don't like Elon Musk much either).  If Teslas were really well made (say with a reputation like Lexus) they might have a chance but as things are they are going to be really up against it when the established brands get their acts together.  But fair play to Tesla for forcing them into it.  

Just to broaden the topic away from EVs, I went for a ride to the east coast yesterday and all I could see looking out to sea was wind turbines. Totally ruined the view.  OTOH, whenever I drive a bit further north, Torness looks quite compact and attractive in comparison.  

joefizz

JKenH said:

It was one of the most enjoyable experiences I have had in an EV but it was a good job I wasn't in a rush.

I think this really sums up a lot of the renewables argument (and post covid to some extent, if there ever is a post covid ;-)) We need to adapt. As Ive mentioned before in other threads EVs arent going to save the world, a lot less of everything is going to do that but will people adapt?
We need to get used to flying less (economics are sorting that out right now), using less FF (future price increases are sorting that out), adapting how and what we eat etc and travel is also changing.
This time last year I was about to put money on public transport being the big push post this years recession but now, who knows? I mentioned before most of the steps had been put in motion for less personal transport use (price rises, credit withdrawal, deflation followed by large inflation - note the Fed already announced this - of sorts). Of course the working from home thing has really negated the need for 2 cars in a lot of households I know and certainly my EV owning friends who have shiny new(ish) cars that they charged for free at work are now adapting to paying for their own electricity which in a lot of cases is more to do with keeping the car running than actually driving anywhere.
Im on my third tank of diesel for the year. If I hadnt gone over to the Lakes Id probably still just be eeking out the last of my second tank. Leaving the ebike thing out of it Im sure a lot of pcp car renters are having no problems this year keeping the mileage down to below rental limits.

Art Berman has a great piece out recently about US shale and futures and its not looking too bright. Great from an eco perspective but not great from a do everything else perspective. Any wonder theres a push for less plastic packaging, its a follow on, not a lead.

Some commentators had mentioned Labor day as the time for a stock market crash, the inevitable return of the issuance of coronabucks, will be interesting to see how it pans out as a crash now wouldnt look good for a Trump re-election and vice versa.

I mentioned it before on here about the 3 Gorges dam problems in China, constantly open for months so flooding a fair bit of food production land, theyve already announced a war on food waste, code for something else perhaps? Will be interesting to see food prices over winter and if they are driven by China needing to import.

Its a lot of these macro factors which influence the way things go and a key one moving forward will be if a cold war develops with China, it was said that the trade disputes between the US and China were just a warm up for the coming disputes between the US and the EU, but now Im not so sure. I asked on here either last year or earlier this year why people seemed to think things would get cheaper in the future, particularly around some of the discussions about home batteries/solar etc. Im just glad I have my stuff installed now, it may of course actually get cheaper but latest central bank decisions give the green light to run hot, which is probably just a coincidence and not front running the spike in inflation when the corona printing machines money starts feeding in to the figures...

May we live in interesting times indeed.

JKenH

Nothing here that hasn’t been said before about EV sales but thanks to XR’s activities today The Daily Telegraph’s paywall has been lifted this weekend so you can all feast on all the articles you have missed over the past couple of years. 

 Every cloud....

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/09/04/electric-car-sales-double-august-registrations-slip/

JKenH

Green Power and the 2020 California Blackouts

The issue is not RE itself but how the roll out is managed to keep the lights on. California seem to have misjudged this. Let’s hope we don’t make the same mistakes. We are at risk of relying on imports of electricity to plug the gaps in generation but it may not be there if the rest of Europe all switch to RE. Inter connectors serve a useful purpose in reciprocal load and cost smoothing but, as California has found, they cannot be guaranteed to provide the answer when the grid is under stress. As we increasingly move to electricity for space heating (with the outlawing off gas boilers) this may be an increasing problem in winter as very cold temperatures are associated with stationary high pressure systems which provide limited opportunity for wind generation.

“Rather, the events of this week have highlighted the misalignment between the speed with which intermittent renewable resources have joined the generation mix and the lag in storage capacity investment. While California has aggressive goals for incorporating storage, storage has not come online concurrently with the rapid growth of wind and solar resources. Additional investment in storage capacity could patch the gap in the event of another “perfect storm” – increased demand, drops in solar or wind output, and unexpected outages. Additional storage capacity could also provide a safety net when California is unable to import electricity due to strain on the entire region, as was the case over the weekend, and could potentially reduce reliance on those out-of-state resources.

The blackout events have also called into question the closure of gas-fired power plants over the years and the planned retirement of additional gas-fired plants in the near future. California will be forced to consider how it can hedge against the risk of the events of this week reoccurring as it works through the renewables transition, which may include maintaining natural gas-fired plants in the near-term.

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/green-power-and-2020-california-blackouts

Pile_o_stone

From the article:
"Despite allegations that renewables are unreliable, there is no indication that renewables, particularly solar, failed. CAISO’s data demonstrated that when the blackouts were ordered, solar had performed as expected, while natural gas and wind energy underperformed"
Looks like this was a combination of underinvestment in their energy network - relying on imports from neighbouring states and unexpected, unanticipated heavy energy use due to a heatwave.

JKenH

Pile_o_stone said:

From the article:
"Despite allegations that renewables are unreliable, there is no indication that renewables, particularly solar, failed. CAISO’s data demonstrated that when the blackouts were ordered, solar had performed as expected, while natural gas and wind energy underperformed"
Looks like this was a combination of underinvestment in their energy network - relying on imports from neighbouring states and unexpected, unanticipated heavy energy use due to a heatwave.

As I said the issue is not RE itself but how you integrate it into the grid. If (and that’s a very big IF) there is sufficient storage to back it up It is possible to go 100% RE. California however have gone ahead with the roll out of RE without the storage in place expecting to be able to rely on imports from other states who aren’t so dependent on RE. 

This is where I see the risk for the UK. Just recently we have been relying quite a lot on imports which have increased three fold since 2010. The investment here in storage is not matching the roll out of wind and solar because we know we can import in a crisis but as other European countries increasingly shift to wind and solar the surpluses on the continent may not be there when we need them and I would not be at all surprised to see other EU countries agreeing to support each other rather than a Brexit GB.  

The perfect storm for the UK is different to California which only has a crisis lasting hours. If in winter an anticyclone settles over Northern Europe it could be for several days and if we have shut down our coal and gas plants before we have those requisite days worth of storage in place we could be in trouble. This is why, although being an island nation we have tremendous potential for wind generation, I have argued going 100% RE is almost impossible.

We need an energy policy that works towards mixing the roll out of new wind and solar with very high targets for RE (perhaps 95%) and a calculated decision where we will need to be in 2050 (in terms of amount required and source of back up) to meet those odd few hours and days when RE just can’t meet the demand and also how we manage the mix between now and then. It’s all seems very airy fairy at the moment with no real central planning evident. 

JKenH

JKenH said:

I am now bearish on Tesla.

Tesla shares are down about 30% from their peak 10 days ago. All that has happened is that Tesla failed to be elevated to the S&P 500 index (this time) and have launched a share issue to raise another $5billion capital for investment. Nothing else fundamentally has changed. 

If the market perceived the value to be $500 per share 10 days ago then surely they must be worth a punt at $350 today.

Cardew

'Zion Lights, the former head of PR at Extinction Rebellion, has once again confirmed her support for carbon free energy from Nuclear Power.'

The above was posted in the thread about which JKenH noted:

'The green and ethical and battery news threads are for “good news” on these technologies not for discussing the limitations of the tech. The author of those threads doesn’t want the news items posted turning into a debate on the pros and cons of the tech'.

Although the 'cons' of Nuclear are allowed and encouraged!

The article might attract a more balanced discussion in this thread.

JKenH

I did notice that a few days ago for a while wind was only generating 1GW (from an installed capacity of 24GW) and after the sun went down VRE was providing just one thirtieth of our electricity needs.

I believe the intention is that we should have 50GW of wind capacity installed by 2030 which would cover about 7% of our needs on a similar evening in 2030 assuming demand doesn’t alter. (The likelihood is demand will significantly increase as we move away from fossil fuels for our heating and transport needs although we may have a smart grid by then.)

Let us just assume however that demand is static, then by 2030 we will have doubled our capacity of wind generation (and probably increased our solar PV as well) but we will still need back up generation/storage to meet 93% of our electricity needs on a not particularly unusual September evening.

I don’t know what the perfect solution is; I am just making the point that we need to be careful about how quickly we close down our existing back up plant. We can not afford to replace 1GW of conventional generation with 1 GW of VRE or even 10GW of VRE. The closer we get to 100% VRE the less effective investment in more VRE will be. At some point we need to start focussing on storage rather than just mindlessly rolling out more VRE. There will be a point (are we there already?) where it is worth spending 10 x as much (or even more) on providing 1GWH of storage rather than 1 GWH of new VRE. Or to look at it another way it may be more cost effective to invest 10 x as much or more on producing 1GW of conventional generation rather than 1GW of VRE.

DiggerUK

JKenH said:

"We need an energy policy that works towards mixing the roll out of new wind and solar with very high targets for RE (perhaps 95%) and a calculated decision where we will need to be in 2050 (in terms of amount required and source of back up) to meet those odd few hours and days when RE just can’t meet the demand and also how we manage the mix between now and then. It’s all seems very airy fairy at the moment with no real central planning evident." 

With little headway made in reliable cost effective storage it is impossible to argue on a money saving site that we should consider that road. We cannot even envisage  having a reliable mix that gives wind and solar a place otherwise.

The only mix that would be practical is for nuclear to replace fossil and produce alongside hydro. At least we know those three are reliable.
I would happily abandon my support for fossil fuels if nuclear could be accepted, I would even stay quiet with my opposition to solar and wind, I just want reliable supplies of electricity..._