Posted on 10/16/2021 2:22:25 AM PDT by M. Dodge Thomas
We are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most profound disruption of the energy sector in over a century. Like most disruptions, this one is being driven by the convergence of several key technologies whose costs and capabilities have been improving on consistent and predictable trajectories – namely, solar photovoltaic power, wind power, and lithium-ion battery energy storage. Our analysis shows that 100% clean electricity from the combination of solar, wind, and batteries (SWB) is both physically possible and economically affordable across the entire continental United States as well as the overwhelming majority of other populated regions of the world by 2030. Adoption of SWB is growing exponentially worldwide and disruption is now inevitable because by 2030 they will offer the cheapest electricity option for most regions... Coal, gas, and nuclear power assets will become stranded during the 2020s, and no new investment in these technologies is rational from this point forward. But the replacement of conventional energy technology with SWB is just the beginning. As has been the the case for many other disruptions, SWB will transform our energy system in fundamental ways. The new system that emerges will be much larger than the existing one we know today and will have a completely different architecture that operates in unfamiliar ways
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
My first thought was "More of THIS S**t".
However the author's track record at predictions in the energy sector is impressive and he is a strong proponent of market solutions (and he means REAL market solutions, not carbon credits" or other government subsidies) and I don't think he can be dismissed out of hand.
And if he is even half right, we are about to live through an economic disruption of a sort not seen since the height of the industrial revolution.
I just want to say, in the event that I don’t survive the winter because of the murderous madness of liberalism, that you’ve all been great.
The world has had the 100,000 year solution to ALL power shortage problems since the 1960’s. Nuclear power.
Now that lithium-ion battery technology is improving, we need many new nuke plants and a total revamp of the power grid (X10) to permit switch-over to all nuke derived electrical power.
We can produce the power, but we don’t have a good substitute for the copper we will need in order to transition to an all electric society.
There is enough nuclear radioactive atoms in ocean water for thousands of years, but how do you run enough lines to power all that environmentalists want powered through electricity?
I want to see the numbers. As in, the country needs X gigawatts of power.
Y gigawatts will be provided by solar, and Z gigawatts will be provided by wind. And then Y+Z = X.
I can’t see that ever happening, unless you greatly reduce X. Rolling blackouts, anyone?
Or they just depopulate the World...
There are things Seba downplays (ex: the role of petroleum as a chemical feedstock or in the airline industry) and instances where IMO he’s over-optimistic (ex: his timeline for level 4 autonomous vehicles).
But for me, the heart of his argument is that battery stored power from wind and solar sources is going to displace natural gas thermal power generation in the next decade as rapidly and inexorably as natural gas has displaced coal in the last 10-15 years.
In many locations, the cost of power generation from renewables is already lower than thermal, the problem is reliability.
So it’s really a pretty simple question: is Seba correct in his predictions of a rapidly declining cost of battery storage at the scale required, including questions of material availability and considering total life-cycle costs?
If he is, the oil and natural gas industry is sitting on a few trillion dollars in stranded assets, and not because of concerns about “global climate change”, but simply because of the ordinary course of economic affairs.
Since renewables are already a less expensive source of energy generation than everything else in many locations, it all comes down to reliability, which comes down to storage.
If Seba is correct and this problem is already “solved” by scaling existing technology, Nuclear gets undercut along with everything else on a strictly economic basis.
If he’s right, it’s “game over” for ALL other stationary power sources that can’t compete on on life cycle cost, and the cost of Nuclear would have to come way down for that to happen.
I really encourage people to watch at least the first few minutes of Seba’s presentation to find out if you are interested in the rest.
Seba is NOT an “environmentalist”, he’s a free-market advocate, and he is NOT talking about reducing freedom of choice or accepting a lower standard of living or ANYTHING OF THE SORT, he is an optimist with regard to our energy future.
He is just making the case (IMO a strong one) that we are blinded to the alternatives by our current economic dependence of fossil fuel for power generation, and that for purely economic reasons this is about to change rapidly and radically.
They made aluminum transmission lines during WWII. Is that technology not viable any more?
CC
You think advancements have been made to the electrical resistance of aluminum?
It’s only 61% as conductive as copper. It also breaks more easily and requires more maintenance as it expands and contracts as the electricity flows through it.
https://gormanlightning.com/aluminum-vs-copper-conductors/
-PJ
When it is night on half the world and any place where there is not significant wind, SWB would have us on Batteries alone. No Geothermal and no hydro (water) power (Stupid, Stupid STUPID). So from the get go, more power will have to be stored without those freebies. So the SWB folks are clearly not good engineers.
The second is CAPACITY. I would say such a battery system would have to have the capacity TO PRIVIDE POWER ALONE FOR A MONTH. Why? Because when the wind doesn't blow for a month, Solar during the day just won't charge the system enough to SUSTAIN ELECTRIC. Beyond that, the system must have the capacity when breakdowns occur (yeah, things break down), when HEAT WAVES OCCUR and for places that are BITTERLY COLD.
The third serious engineering problem that these folks have clearly overlooked is CONSUMPTION. Simply take the worlds consumption of electrical power for a month at it's worse (some serious Gigawatts!!) and tell me how you are going to store that?? You think that AA lithium ion batteries will cut it?? No way. The CONSUPTION ALONE MAKES SWB IMPOSSIBLE. OH, and when you calculate the CONSUMPTION, Please figure in the INCREASE IN CONSUMPTION WHEN YOU SAY TO WHEN THIS WILL OCCUR!1 OH and figure in the INCREASES for AT LEAST 30 YEARS from that as well as your baseline, SINCE THIS IS SUPPOSEDLY SUSTAINABLE!!
They should have included Lake batteries, for God's sake. You take water an pump it up to a large lake high up. When you need power you simply let it go through Generators. At least this would have some serious capacity. But I Don't think even this would supply the serious CONSUMPTION PROBLEM alone. Fools.
I doubt the SWB had a serious engineer in the lot for they would have SHOT DOWN THIS FAIRY TALE OF A PROPOSAL in a HEARTBEAT.
Excluding the freebies and Nuclear gives then away. I Doubt the have done the correct engineering math in the first place.
My Electrical Engineering Professor would sum them up in one word: "IJUTS".
Somewhere out there, there is a disconnect between pretty charts and reality. Power prices in Germany are 3x those in the US. Germany is heavily weighted towards renewables. Why the disparity between theoretical promise and actual results? These claims invariably incorporate normal tax deductions for costs incurred in energy exploration and extraction as “subsidies”, while ignoring similar deductions for renewables, as well as actual subsidies (cash rebates) to the consumer for purchasing equipment to generate renewable energy. If renewables truly were cheaper, Third World countries would be clambering on the bandwagon the way they have for cell over land line service. Instead, they’re mewling for the same subsidies that have kept German power costs merely triple that of the US.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#Electricity_prices
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States
While what he says is true, notice he doesn't say that they are as reliable. That's because they are not. In addition is takes a lot of energy to even make these options possible.
If you desire to learn the true impacts, the following is an excellent video that was made by a person who was firmly sold on the green new energy idea, and totally for stopping all fossil fuel usage. It's a long video, 1 hour & 40 minutes hour, but if you want to learn the real truth, watch it all. It's well worth the time invested:
Yeah, no. Anyone who is touted as “ a thought leader” and author, and whose only “scientific” background is in computer science, is at best an entrepreneurial opportunist. Kind of guy who gives TED talks and then cites them as evidence that he is an expert at something. Seba is an expert at one thing though, he seems to know how to extract money from credulous people who buy his numerous books.
If we relied on “REAL” market solutions SWB would be dead and buried.
When smart people seriously propose that something impossible is in fact inevitable, almost always the underlying disagreement is about the underlying assumptions.
In this case, the assumption on the skeptic’s side is that an optimal SBW (solar, wind, and battery system) would be a version of our current “just in time” generation and transmission system.
In fact, modeling suggests that the optimum SWB battery system is based on very high levels of generation over-capacity, and that the overall efficiency (cost) of such a system would be substantially lower than current power generation for similar levels of reliability.
That this idea makes any sense at all is deeply counter-intuitive seen through the lens of “common-sense” reasoning, but it, in fact, appears to be the case, for example, see:
BTW, there are all kinds of other ways to use the overcapacity, one very interesting proposal is to use it to generate liquid fuels for transportation sectors such as aviation.
I noted a couple of other issues. First, “renewable” energy is only cheaper when subsidized, and the calculations rarely include the energy cost to manufacture the components. Second, there is no accounting for loss in both storage and transmission.
The energy market’s next revolution will be fusion, unless the anti-fission crowd can be shouted down.
It is also not enough to say SWB can cover all the demand…….it has to cover the peaks, a company starts their melting furnaces, an extremely hot day…….you get the picture.
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