Posted on 10/09/2020 10:38:41 AM PDT by grundle
Turns out wind and solar have a secret friend: Natural gas
We’re at a time of deeply ambitious plans for clean energy growth. Two of the U.S.’s largest states by population, California and New York, have both mandated that power companies get fully 50 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by the year 2030.
Only, there’s a problem: Because of the particular nature of clean energy sources like solar and wind, you can’t simply add them to the grid in large volumes and think that’s the end of the story. Rather, because these sources of electricity generation are “intermittent” — solar fluctuates with weather and the daily cycle, wind fluctuates with the wind — there has to be some means of continuing to provide electricity even when they go dark. And the more renewables you have, the bigger this problem can be.
Now, a new study suggests that at least so far, solving that problem has ironically involved more fossil fuels — and more particularly, installing a large number of fast-ramping natural gas plants, which can fill in quickly whenever renewable generation slips.
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I thought California closed all their Natural Gas electrical generating plants?
The biggest issue with this article is the term “new study”. Nothing new about it. In fact the electric companies have been building small gas plants all over the country for the past 15 years. They are decommissioning coal and nuclear plants everywhere.
But solar and wind are not the largest pollution savers. Natural gas by itself is a huge pollution saver. Natural gas is cleaner than coal. And obviously not as clean as nuclear fuel. But its far less costly than nuclear fuel. However, the real savings comes from the fact that gas can be turned up and down like your stove top. Both coal and nuclear must keep running all year, only coming off line for maintenance. So most of the country provides the amount of electricity needed on the worst hour of the worst day, a July heat wave in the late afternoon.
But now that gas plants are being built all over, the amount of coal and nuclear can go down to about half. That is enough electricity for the normal winter day. Then gas is turned on to handle the spikes. Just this change in strategy makes a massive difference in the amount of pollution made by our utilities. And it shows, our CO2 emissions for the country is now about equal to the late 1970’s Even though we have over a million more people and more than triple the productivity. And thats with very little solar or wind. Solar and wind are just not that helpful. But gas is.
Here’s the biggest advantage of natural gas: very little pollution from oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, particulates and heavy metals. That’s why both China and India want to dramatically increase its use in power generation, so they can shut down all those high-polluting coal-fired power plants.
Actually solar cells and wind has a great friend in coal, oil, atom etc.
Solar cells are made of coal used to reduce Sio2 to Si. Overall, the solar cells and wind has very small or even negative net energy production. It take a lot of energy to make ship and install solar cells. So much that it barely returns that energy by using them.
See this German study.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516301379
That’s why most of them are made in China, where they are now building tons of coal power plants. Basically, when using solar cell, you are using coal, burned in China! CO2 will came here anyway.
Exactly. The heavier you lean toward intermittent sources, the more you need natural gas. NG plants can start and restart quickly as required.
Wind and solar without natgas would be impossible to manage and balance.
Solar has value, it generates the most during the day when demand is high, it shaves the top off the demand curve. But it is not reliable. Wind is even less reliable or predictable. You will always need a reliable source to back them up.
So expect your overall generating costs to be higher.
Libertarian/Conservative from a red state of Alabama here: In our southern states solar energy is very plentiful and particularly good since our largest home energy consumption is the A/C (more if it during the day, especially the long hot summer days). So even though there's still a need to supply power during intermittent times (as you correctly point out), the need is less so here in the south (which means we might be able to solve the problems on our own).
And for that I'm looking heavily personally (not into government mandating anything) putting solar onto my rooftop, buying a little bit of battery storage for nighttime, and supplement that with a home hydrogen electrolyzer/storage unit powered by electricity. On the days I get more solar than I use -- it charges the battery and runs the hydrogen electrolyzer. At times I using power without solar -- it'll pull some from battery and after that use the hydrogen gas to generate electricity. All can be done automatically.
The Green Nazis do not consider clean natural gas to be clean. It produces plant food, and plant food is a toxic pollutant to the Green Nazis. C02 is a dangerous pollutant to the Green Nazis. Can’t have that. Can’t have that clean burning natural gas producing that nasty plant food!
Economically and environmentally speaking, solar and wind power is a fools errand in the North East and Middle Atlantic states. These damn leftist need to follow the science. They are a bunch of deniers. They deny science. The deny capitalism. They deny energy independence. They deny American greatness.
Note: below the Marcellus Shale layer there is Utica Shale and there exists trillions of cubic feet of additional natural gas.
Libertarian/Conservative from NH here.
Before you cover your roof with solar panels and batteries in your garage have you increased your insulation in your attic?
Have you gotten rid of old windows?
Old doors?
Do you have window shades on the south and west side of your house?
Do you have deciduous trees(trees with leaves) on the south and west side of your house?
My point is that all of the above will LOWER your energy needs by keeping your house cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.
I would kindly suggest you look into the designs/characteristics of passive solar construction ideas. There are lots of little things you can do to save energy and tighten up your building envelope. Some things even as simple as caulking around doors and windows.
For example, just adding insulating drapes on the south side of the house and closing them during the summer months in the morning can greatly reduce your temperature gain during the day. Same idea in the winter. Except you close them at night to keep the heat in.
Heat rises. Therefore, you lose most of your heat through the ceiling in the winter and gain it through poor quality windows in the summer.
SAFE, Nuclear Power is the answer. Why are people so afraid to embrace the best renewable power source?
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One problem we have here is the power utility, the Southern Company, is very much in bed with our local governments. Competitors can't start up here.
You can also gain heat through your roof IF you do not have enough insulation.
None of the things I mention make a big difference except insulation. However, cumulatively they make a huge difference when you add them altogether.
They certainly did on my 1972 house. I added insulation, replaced doors, caulked, planted trees and insulated drapes.
I have Pella windows.
One of the simplest things is just insulating around electrical outlets in your exterior walls and ceiling with spray foam cans.
Another thought is adding lighter colored metal roofing. Metal roofing can reflect the sun instead of dark colors that absorb the sun.
I like Tommy Emmannuel’s version.
New Fast-start plants take about 10 minutes to start generating electricity.
I’m very interested in what you are talking about. I don’t know anything about home brewed hydrogen. I’m going to have to jump on google I guess.
There are a handful of homemade kits you can put together for a hydrolysis unit. And if you look up “green hydrogen” you’ll see a fair amount of discussion on doing it at a power plant. But as of now there are few ready made products for the home hydrogen generation, and all of it overseas, particularly Australia. There were a couple of companies who said the were developing a home product for sale in the U.S., but I think they dropped it. (Plug Power and Panasonic)
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