https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/8/30/16224582/wind-solar-exceed-expectations-again


Quote:

Solar and wind energy have been underestimated by analysts and politicians again and again and again. They have gotten cheaper and scaled up faster than even the most optimistic forecasts of a decade ago, or even a few years ago. And there’s good evidence we’re still underestimating them. In fact, two new reports — one on solar, one on wind — make the point vividly. They argue that the radical trends of the last decade are going to continue, which is all that needs to happen for the energy system to tip over from disruption into revolution.

More important, for some, to keep things as they were in grandad’s day—or as they think grandad’s days were. E.g. climate denialism and wanting more coal fired power.

Paper cited:

Quote:

Abstract The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's fifth assessment report emphasizes the importance of bioenergy and carbon capture and storage for achieving climate goals, but it does not identify solar energy as a strategically important technology option. That is surprising given the strong growth, large resource, and low environmental footprint of photovoltaics (PV). Here we explore how models have consistently underestimated PV deployment and identify the reasons for underlying bias in models. Our analysis reveals that rapid technological learning and technology-specific policy support were crucial to PV deployment in the past, but that future success will depend on adequate financing instruments and the management of system integration. We propose that with coordinated advances in multiple components of the energy system, PV could supply 30–50% of electricity in competitive markets.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy2017140

I am a sceptic about large scale, baseload solar power—the sheer size of the things needed, like 20Km by 20Km of mirrors or PV panels. We do have tropical deserts where they might make sense—at the expense of the fragile desert ecology. If costs REALLY come down they might make sense. Have to transmit the energy—an ultrahigh voltage DC line might do it. It has a role as a power source for isolated communities.

Actual v predicted solar capacity:
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jW0A5ArxB-qkwNmmC-VcNu1X7Y4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9142153/nature_energy_pv_history.jpg

Quote:

That red line is installed PV capacity. The black lines are forecasts from the International Energy Agency (IEA), blue from the German Advisory Council on Global Change, and green from Greenpeace. Only Greenpeace’s projections have come close, and only recently.

Certainly makes the point actual installed capacity is higher than was predicted.


Quote:

The graph is from a new commentary in the journal Nature Energy [abstract cited above], by researchers from Germany’s Mercator Research Institute. In it, they review the reasons why models have traditionally underestimated PV and then try running a popular model updated with better information. The results are instructive, to say the least — if they are right, PV could potentially provide fully half of global electricity by 2050. In most models that show the world reducing emissions enough to hit the 2°C climate target, “solar energy emerges only as a minor mitigation option” — around 5 to 17 percent of global electricity supply in one representative study used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Models tend to be much more bullish on energy from biomass, despite its much lower total potential.

So maybe solar is doing better than i thought? Is that utility scale solar or does it include small scale rooftop solar?

Includes rooftop solar. This sector is probably about to undergo a resurgence with the advent of large capacity batteries and the interest in going off–grid (which will likely mean a small wind generator and low energy houses such as strawbale, solar houses, earth sheltered houses etc.


Quote:

. . .but almost every country has some kind of support for PV. That support has dramatically accelerated its growth and innovation. . . .The costs for solar PV modules “have decreased by 22.5% with each doubling of installed capacity,” which is a considerably more rapid learning rate than your average tech. . . .nuclear power and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), despite the fact that, unlike PV, those technologies fall short of model projections again and again. The more decarbonization work that models assign to them, the less is left over for PV. Put more bluntly: Models stubbornly keep favoring nuclear and CCS over PV; the real world stubbornly keeps favoring PV over nuclear and CCS.

I certainly support nuclear despite its main shortcoming, inflexibility. We do need a non–intermittent source. In Houston right now the nuclear power plant there is operating normally unlike other generators! Nuclear power doesn’t rely on constant trainloads of coal like coal fired power does. We also need a transmission network that is robust—the main lesson of the SA statewide blackout last year, towers folding like wet spaghetti in not that much of a wind. I also support non–centralised renewable energy tho it cannot yet fully power a house.

cont’d

Quote:

There is every reason to think all three of these phenomena will continue to be true in coming years. (The report contains a short but fascinating discussion of all the many technological developments on PV’s horizon — still tons of room to improve.) The researchers see two key challenges ahead, if PV is to continue its rapid expansion. The first is the cost of financing, especially in the developing world. The second is integrating high levels of wind and solar into the grid. (Because wind and solar are variable, they require sophisticated balancing from other sources and grid technologies; I wrote about that challenge in some detail here.) Say PV can address those challenges and maintain its current rate of learning, improvement, and expansion. What would a more realistic model projection look like? To find out, the researchers plugged better cost information and more aggressive cost-curve assumptions into REMIND, a “global inter-temporally optimizing energy–economy model that has been extensively used for analyses of climate policies.” Long story short, here are the results:

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Tg3WL4xjAusXSzgjdOVJThRdD60=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9142341/nature_energy_pv_remind.jpg


Quote:

The gray shaded areas show the potential growth of PV, bounded by the lowest and highest historical growth rates. As you can see, this updated model run shows PV wildly outperforming most other model runs (the areas in other colors), eventually providing 30 to 50 percent of global electricity. Now, there’s no guarantee that PV will continue growing at historical rates. In fact, there are reasons to think wind and solar will run into serious problems as they expand (see this post from Jesse Jenkins and Alex Trembath). But even the bottom end of this new forecast (30 percent of global electricity) is a hell of a lot higher than the high end (e.g., 17 percent) on the forecasts the IPCC and the IEA are using. If PV can maintain anything even close to its recent explosive growth, it is going to outperform what analysts expect. Again.

Wind energy

Quote:

The second bit of happy news comes from researchers at Atmosphere to Electrons, an R&D program for wind power at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Their new paper is primarily about the scientific and technical challenges their team is researching — high-tech ways to further improve wind turbines and farms. But as part of the exercise, they project just how much wind costs could fall if all those high-tech solutions are implemented. It’s pretty mind-blowing. The researchers are pursuing what they call “System Management of Atmospheric Resource through Technology” (SMART) strategies — a cluster of technologies and practices that will allow next-generation wind farms to produce more energy, more reliably, for more hours of the day. Here are the four areas of innovation they are going after, translated into English: Better predicting performance through high-fidelity physics modeling (HFM) of local conditions. Better design and control at the plant level by using sensors and real-time monitoring of wind flows as they move through the turbines. Better design and control at the turbine level through “innovative rotor and drivetrain technology” and scale (i.e., taller towers and bigger blades). Smarter grid integration by giving each turbine the ability to communicate directly with the grid, play a role in its “stability and operational planning,” and offer it various extra services like voltage regulation (don’t ask). Just how much of a difference would these changes make? To find out, the researchers ran a simulation of a 2030 wind-power plant using all the SMART innovations, operating at a site with roughly average wind resources. The result: unsubsidized energy costs ranging from $19 to $32 per megawatt-hour, with an average of around $23/MWh. That is roughly 50 percent lower than today’s wind power costs. So after dropping 65 percent between 2009 and today, wind-power costs could drop another 50 percent by 2030. That’s pretty amazing. Energy costs of $23/MWh would make wind competitive with natural gas almost everywhere in America, without subsidies.

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xDeINg82Y272-v6MKH_GUGTLnr8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9142463/nrel_wind_2030.jpg


Quote:

. . .as John Hensley of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) writes, plenty of other analysts are similarly bullish. A survey of wind energy experts last year by Lawrence Berkeley Lab found that they too expected substantial cost drops (though 40 percent by 2030 was their high end). Like solar, wind still has tons of room to improve.

More research is needed. If the idiot Trumpy stops this research—gives us a chance to become a leader again. Not under the libs, of course >:(

[quote]Both of these reports offer forecasts that are wildly optimistic . . . but it’s not because they predict wind and solar are going to have some unprecedented explosion.

They simply predict that wind and solar are going to keep doing what they’re doing — keep scaling up, keep improving, keep getting cheaper — at roughly the same rate [as now]

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/8/30/16224582/wind-solar-exceed-expectations-again

Food for thought.

.

we're moving to renewables, the sooner everyone accepts that, the easier it will be.

Sure, there are problems to be overcome, but they'll be overcome soon enough. And if the luddites get out of the way it'll happen even sooner

John Smith wrote on Sep 1^st, 2017 at 9:08am:

we're moving to renewables, the sooner everyone accepts that, the easier it will be. Sure, there are problems to be overcome, but they'll be overcome soon enough. And if the luddites get out of the way it'll happen even sooner

Funny how not one country has any capacity to operate of purely solar / wind and doesn't like doing so any time soon.


When labor has no policy for base load power and hasn't done for decades, which is why they spent wasted hundreds of millions of the worst type of power available, roof top solar.



No country even looks like having a solution for reliable wind solar base load for decades so calm your tits for the time being.


Thanks to you and your ilk we will, however, have the most expensive power on the planet because we refuse to even contemplate base load power needs for this country.

BigOl64 wrote on Sep 1^st, 2017 at 9:21am:

Funny how not one country has any capacity to operate of purely solar / wind and doesn't like doing so any time soon.

I don't recall anyone ever suggesting we suddenly switch off all our old technology energy sources and immediately switch over to 100% renewables. It's a process that'll probably take decades to complete. Sure there will be some pain, there always is when making these sorts of changes and switching to new, and in many cases untested technologies. But standing in the way only prolongs that pain.

RE is surging as the cost of RE plunge.

I have not ever argued for a pure RE network, always include nuclear as the uninterruptible electricity source. Did you even note, BigOle, that I mentioned the Houston nuclear generator was still operating despite 50" of rainfall?

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 1^st, 2017 at 10:01am:

RE is surging as the cost of RE plunge. I have not ever argued for a pure RE network, always include nuclear as the uninterruptible electricity source. Did you even note, BigOle, that I mentioned the Houston nuclear generator was still operating despite 50" of rainfall?

Yep and not one single party will listen to what you have to say, so your suggestion for nuclear will never happen.

John Smith wrote on Sep 1^st, 2017 at 9:30am:

BigOl64 wrote on Sep 1st, 2017 at 9:21am: Funny how not one country has any capacity to operate of purely solar / wind and doesn't like doing so any time soon. I don't recall anyone ever suggesting we suddenly switch off all our old technology energy sources and immediately switch over to 100% renewables. It's a process that'll probably take decades to complete. Sure there will be some pain, there always is when making these sorts of changes and switching to new, and in many cases untested technologies. But standing in the way only prolongs that pain.

So what will be do for base load power in this decades while we are waiting for renewables to get their sh1t together?

This is the problem, isn't it? You LOT refuse to entertain any conversation on base load POWER but agree that renewables is NOT the answer.


Why do you think South Aus is a fkking basket case, because they are also in serious denial about our energy security needs.


So what do we do NOW?

BigOl64 wrote on Sep 1^st, 2017 at 10:23am:

So what will be do for base load power in this decades while we are waiting for renewables to get their sh1t together?

gee, I don't know ... how about stand in the way or renewables and cry  ... do you think that will work?

BigOl64 wrote on Sep 1^st, 2017 at 10:23am:

John Smith wrote on Sep 1st, 2017 at 9:30am: BigOl64 wrote on Sep 1st, 2017 at 9:21am: Funny how not one country has any capacity to operate of purely solar / wind and doesn't like doing so any time soon. I don't recall anyone ever suggesting we suddenly switch off all our old technology energy sources and immediately switch over to 100% renewables. It's a process that'll probably take decades to complete. Sure there will be some pain, there always is when making these sorts of changes and switching to new, and in many cases untested technologies. But standing in the way only prolongs that pain. So what will be do for base load power in this decades while we are waiting for renewables to get their sh1t together? This is the problem, isn't it? You LOT refuse to entertain any conversation on base load POWER but agree that renewables is NOT the answer. Why do you think South Aus is a fkking basket case, because they are also in serious denial about our energy security needs. So what do we do NOW?

It would be nice if we had a federal govt that gave leadership on this. Unfortunately our PM has neither guts, balls or spine. The Labor states are stepping up to the plate, leading on renewables but that is isolated, statewide not nationwide.

Action is needed:
1. Nationalise privatised bits of the electricity network, private owners cut corners for $$$

2. Plan for nuclear—must start NOW!

3. Give guidance via the RET and maybe an emissions intensity scheme. SOMETHING!

4. Encourage rooftop solar + battery. I would add a small wind generator to back up the solar.

5. If need be, build a clean coal power station to help the phasing out of coal and phasing in of renewables + nuclear. Can close 2-3 aging coal fired plants (these will close soon anyway) so emissions won’t increase. Don’t really believe in clean coal but the Libs have let things drift way too far now, a new generator will be cleaner than aging coal fired generators.

What do we have? Snowy II!!! a bit of pumped hydro, assuming it is ever built

John Smith wrote on Sep 1^st, 2017 at 10:25am:

BigOl64 wrote on Sep 1st, 2017 at 10:23am: So what will be do for base load power in this decades while we are waiting for renewables to get their sh1t together? gee, I don't know ... how about stand in the way or renewables and cry  ... do you think that will work?

That is the only answer you can possibly give; "I don't know".


At long last some honesty from the renewables cheer squad, about fkken time.



Comparing renewables and base load is like comparing apples with watermelons, a complete waste of time and effort.

BigOl64 wrote on Sep 1^st, 2017 at 10:19am:

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 1st, 2017 at 10:01am: RE is surging as the cost of RE plunge. I have not ever argued for a pure RE network, always include nuclear as the uninterruptible electricity source. Did you even note, BigOle, that I mentioned the Houston nuclear generator was still operating despite 50" of rainfall? Yep and not one single party will listen to what you have to say, so your suggestion for nuclear will never happen.

It will not be easy, I agree. Everybody turns into an old woman if you even mention nuclear. A diverse system is a reliable system and no nuclear plant has caused problems just by itself, the two big failures were due to old tech, bad siting and whatever caused the Chernobyl operators to stuff up their plant. Maybe thorium will make nuclear more acceptable—it isn’t significantly different to uranium reactors, bit less waste maybe. Still fission tho.

Maybe the Libs could come up with a scheme to get solar panels on rented houses? That would boost solar power, saving more baseload for industry.

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 1^st, 2017 at 10:51am:

BigOl64 wrote on Sep 1st, 2017 at 10:19am: Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 1st, 2017 at 10:01am: RE is surging as the cost of RE plunge. I have not ever argued for a pure RE network, always include nuclear as the uninterruptible electricity source. Did you even note, BigOle, that I mentioned the Houston nuclear generator was still operating despite 50" of rainfall? Yep and not one single party will listen to what you have to say, so your suggestion for nuclear will never happen. It will not be easy, I agree. Everybody turns into an old woman if you even mention nuclear. A diverse system is a reliable system and no nuclear plant has caused problems just by itself, the two big failures were due to old tech, bad siting and whatever caused the Chernobyl operators to stuff up their plant. Maybe thorium will make nuclear more acceptable—it isn’t significantly different to uranium reactors, bit less waste maybe. Still fission tho. Maybe the Libs could come up with a scheme to get solar panels on rented houses? That would boost solar power, saving more baseload for industry.

Yes, roof top solar the worst of all possible energies, massive subsidies for sh1t power if you can get it at all.




More Australians are buying cheap rooftop solar panels that fail long before their promised lifespan, prompting claims a federal rebate scheme needs to be overhauled to prevent dodgy systems receiving public subsidies.

Solar industry experts say lax rules covering the scheme – which provides incentives of up to $4350 for a $5500 rooftop system –  mean it is not always delivering the environmental benefits promised.   

They blame an explosion of cheap, mainly Chinese-produced solar panels that have flooded the market over the past five years that are failing to provide the 15 years of clean power expected. Installers in four states told Fairfax Media that the worst systems stopped working within 12 months, with others "falling apart" within two or three years.

Problems reported include silicon that cannot stand up to the Australian sun, water egress in panels, fires and defective inverters. The term "landfill solar" is used in the industry to describe dodgy solar systems of uncertain origin.


[url]http://www.smh.com.au/environment/solar-experts-claim-multibillion-d ollar-subsidies-wasted-on-cheap-and-dodgy-panels-20150220-13kqub.html[/url]

Cheap Chinese junk is flooding in everywhere, including way substandard steel which is a cause for worry but is not inherent in solar power. Cancel the stupid ChAFTA and negotiate something decent.

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 1^st, 2017 at 10:01am:

RE is surging as the cost of RE plunge. I have not ever argued for a pure RE network, always include nuclear as the uninterruptible electricity source. Did you even note, BigOle, that I mentioned the Houston nuclear generator was still operating despite 50" of rainfall?

There were calls for the Houston Nuclear Generator plant to be shut down because a breach of the embankment that protects it from floods would have serious consequences.


Quote:

"Both the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the STP operator have previously recognized a credible threat of a severe accident initiated by a breach of the embankment wall that surrounds the 7,000-acre reactor cooling water reservoir," said Paul Gunter, director of the Beyond Nuclear's Reactor Oversight Project, in a statement by the coalition on Tuesday. The groups warn that as Harvey—which on Tuesday was declared the most intense rain event  in U.S. history—continues to dump water on the area, a breach of the embankment wall surrounding the twin reactors would create "an external flood potentially impacting the electrical supply from the switchyard to the reactor safety systems." In turn, the water has the potential to "cause high-energy electrical fires and other cascading events initiating a severe accident leading to core damage." Even worse, they added, "any significant loss of cooling water inventory in the Main Cooling Reservoir would reduce cooling capacity to the still operating reactors that could result in a meltdown." With the nearby Colorado River already cresting at extremely high levels and flowing at 70 times the normal rate, Karen Hadden, director of SEED Coalition, warned that the continue rainfall might create flooding that could reach the reactors. "There is plenty of reserve capacity on our electric grid," she said, "so we don't have to run the reactors in order to keep the lights on. With anticipated flooding of the Colorado River, the nuclear reactors should be shut down now to ensure safety."

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 1^st, 2017 at 11:18am:

Cheap Chinese junk is flooding in everywhere, including way substandard steel which is a cause for worry but is not inherent in solar power. Cancel the stupid ChAFTA and negotiate something decent.

The massive subsidies that were handed out like lollies had no minimum standard and millions were wasted, by labor


The government of south east Queensland pays half a billion a years in subsidies for lost power to North QLD rather than build them a base load power station.


How fkking mental is that for a policy?

Jovial Monk wrote on Sep 1^st, 2017 at 8:55am:

Certainly makes the point actual installed capacity is higher than was predicted.

Now show the dispatchable power from solar and wind. Nameplate capacity won't boil a kettle.

Be nice to build a large hospital totally powered by solar and wind.  Then all the people who hate coal and love solar and wind could go there for their health needs.

If you are on the operating table and the wind stops blowing and it is cloudy, as you lie their dying you can with your last breaths say how much you love renewable energy.

Yet if costs were really decreasing the price of electricity would be going down not up surely.