Renewables Just Keep Getting Better

While implementing any increased demand with renewable, talking about replacing 22 GW of coal power plants doesn't make sense.

Since both solar and wind have a capacity factor of 20-35 %, in order to produce the same energy as the coal plants, the renewable nominal capacity needs to be 3-5 times or 60-100 GW. If 60 GW would be implemented with 3 MW wind turbines, 20000 turbines would be required, thus the distance between turbines would be 2 km if evenly spread out across the state. I guess this would cause a strong NIMBY effect :-)

Even with even distribution between solar and wind, there are several days each year when production is much lower than expected. For instance thick clouds for a week and low winds. Thus energy storage for a week would be required.

The realistic really large scale storage system is hydroelectricity, but there is no way that it could handle the deficiency. The current installed hydro capacity is less than 0.1 GW and since Indiana is so flat, it would be hard to build more.

On Saturday, October 12, 2019 at 7:01:59 PM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@downunder.com w rote:

for fossil fuel generation based on cost and risk.

clined as too large and financially risky for the small utility, requiring a new bid ? which recently came in showing wind, solar and storage dominating the list of offers."

bles...

18, the utility published research suggesting that closing coal plants earl y, and replacing them with renewables and energy storage, would save custom ers $4.3 billion. Around the same time as the above bids, the utility annou nced it would be closing a majority of its coal facilities by 2023 (thus th e need for the following procurement), and all coal facilities by 2028. Coa l lobbyists, expectedly, have flooded the state?s legislature."

oupled with energy storage". The costs they are expecting to see...

ge, from a summer of 2018 NIPSCO RFP, where we saw bids for solar power at

arge of $5.90/kW-Mo."

o have my power supplied this way. It would cut my electric bill in half. Good thing my power is local, but not so local it comes from the expensive nuclear power plant next door.

energy source. Certainly nuclear is a bad idea going forward.

Yeah, a wind turbine every mile is a lot like cell phone towers, eh? Peopl e hate those things. Maybe it would be better to put them all in a few loc ations kinda like growing crops on farms rather than a plant here and a pla nt there. We can call them "wind farms"... my idea.

Since they have companies bidding on the job and already have an idea that the storage cost will be around a cent per kWh, I think your rational is no t complete in some way.

--

  Rick C. 

  +- Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  +- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

Indiana again, the Indiana legislators once tried to define pi as exactly 3.2 by a law :-)

Unfortunately you can't put wind turbines too close together, since they will "shadow" each other.

Wind turbines can be installed pretty close into a line that is perpendicular against the prevailing winds, but you need to leave quite a lot of space, before you can install the next line.

If there are no prevailing winds, you need to keep the turbines well apart.

So the battery capacity for the 100 kWh Tesla would cost a full dollar???

On Sunday, October 13, 2019 at 3:18:09 AM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@downunder.com wro te:

bid for fossil fuel generation based on cost and risk.

Actually, the didn't. It was not their idea, it was a goofy guy who though t he was good at math and could square the circle and had a formula that se t pi to be 3.2 even though nearly everything in his idea was wrong. The ho ok he used to get the Indiana house to pass the bill was to offer them free use of his idea in their text books. Yes, the lack of basic knowledge is amazing in this event. But by the time it reached the Indiana Senate had b een advised to let it die quietly.

Not everyone is a mathematician, but it seems pretty clear that these energ y projects are sound and actually have nothing to do with the Indiana legis lature since they are being funded by the utilities. You do know the diffe rence, right?

declined as too large and financially risky for the small utility, requiri ng a new bid ? which recently came in showing wind, solar and stora ge dominating the list of offers."

ewables...

2018, the utility published research suggesting that closing coal plants e arly, and replacing them with renewables and energy storage, would save cus tomers $4.3 billion. Around the same time as the above bids, the utility an nounced it would be closing a majority of its coal facilities by 2023 (thus the need for the following procurement), and all coal facilities by 2028. Coal lobbyists, expectedly, have flooded the state?s legislature."

s coupled with energy storage". The costs they are expecting to see...

image, from a summer of 2018 NIPSCO RFP, where we saw bids for solar power

charge of $5.90/kW-Mo."

e to have my power supplied this way. It would cut my electric bill in hal f. Good thing my power is local, but not so local it comes from the expens ive nuclear power plant next door.

er energy source. Certainly nuclear is a bad idea going forward.

ople hate those things. Maybe it would be better to put them all in a few locations kinda like growing crops on farms rather than a plant here and a plant there. We can call them "wind farms"... my idea.

Oh, my mistake. I guess someone photoshopped all the images of wind farms you see everywhere. Sorry.

at the storage cost will be around a cent per kWh, I think your rational is not complete in some way.

That's the storage cost added to the kWh of generation, not the capital inv estment to be able to provide the kWh of storage over and over and over. D id I really need to explain that to you? I did provide the original quote.

--

  Rick C. 

  -- Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  -- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

The magic number is 5 times the rotor diameter.

A consequence is that larger windmills don't extract more power per unit of land area, because the distance between them increases.

In the UK you can expect to get about 2W per square metre, but that depends sensitively on the typical windspeed; over much of the UK it would be only

0.6W per square metre.

Taller windmills help, to an extent which is very dependent on location and surface texture.

and succeeding pages.

Larger windmills are also taller, otherwise the blades would hit the ground.

Is this some new elliptical-geometry blade you're talking about? Sounds fancy.

CH

Sorry I missed that point.

Still your numbers sound way too optimistic.

What is the cost of 1 kWh storage ? $300 ?

How many cycles does the battery last ? 1000 full cycles or 3000 partial cycles ? Thus the battery could store 1000-3000 kWh before being replaced. Thus the added cost for each kWh stored would be 10 to

30 cents.

Some energy is lost in charging (rectifying) electronics, some in discharging (inverting) electronics and in the battery itself. Multiple this loss with electricity cost. Unless you assume that the electricity is completely free, this will add to the storage cost. Thus, your 1 cent/kWh is off by a least one order of magnitude.

Read the reference I gave (and you snipped)

Some back of the envelope calculations: To replace the Indiana 22 GW coal production with wind, at least 60 GW (nominal) wind power needs to be installed due to low capacity factor.

the wind speeds are similar to the UK, you could barely fit those wind turbines when equally spaced across the state of Indiana.

One interesting note is that the power density obtainable from solar panels is much higher for a specific land area. Even at high latitudes, in which you have to use ample space between panels in north/south direction to avoid shadowing other panels during the winter. Tens of wats / square meter land area can be obtained, but is not of much use, if there are clouds for many months :-(

That book (and website) has /many/ *solid* interesting points. It is highly recommended by *everybody* from hardcore greens to Big Energy.

One point about windmills vs solar is that the land underneath windmills can be used for other purposes, especially growing food. Solar cannot.

IEEE Spectrum recently published an article on an MIT study - I posted a link to it here - which said that the current capital cost was around $150 per kWhr.

A complete switch to intermittent renewables would need something cheaper - around $20 per kWhr - but even 5% dispatchable backup reduces the amount of storage required enough that $150 per kWhr would do the job.

last a lot longer - at least some 15,000 to 20,000 cycles.

It's not his estimate. And your battery lifetime estimate is roughly an order of magnitude too low for vanadium redox batteries.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

On Sunday, October 13, 2019 at 9:20:06 PM UTC+11, snipped-for-privacy@downunder.com wr ote:

Light cloud doesn't matter for non-centrated solar cells. Clouds scatter li ght rather than absorbing it, though enough cloud eventually scatters most of the incident sun-light back into space.

Inland areas don't see that much cloud cover - by the time an air mass has gotten over any coastal ranges, most of the water it has picked up over the oceans has fallen out as rain.

The UK isn't a good example - the most "inland" area in the UK is only 70 m iles from the nearest sea-water.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Their desire to get rid of coal seems to be related to some issues specific to them regarding coal supply. They wouldn't apply world-wide.

The referenced 2018 document is

From that document I have extracted the following diagram

DSM stands for demand side management - essentially, some customers agree to stop using power if necessary.

I find it difficult to see how the diagram on the right for 2028 can possibly represent a secure supply. Or even a supply during the evening and night. The battery storage component is very small - it's really just about levelling out the short term variations in solar. It certainly doesn't represent storing solar generated energy for use at night, or during prolonged periods of rain [*].

Sylvia

[*] My own solar panels do reasonably well under cloud, but their output drops to pretty much zero in rain, presumably because the drops of rain on the panels mess them up optically.

d for fossil fuel generation based on cost and risk.

eclined as too large and financially risky for the small utility, requiring a new bid ? which recently came in showing wind, solar and storage dominating the list of offers."

ables...

018, the utility published research suggesting that closing coal plants ear ly, and replacing them with renewables and energy storage, would save custo mers $4.3 billion. Around the same time as the above bids, the utility anno unced it would be closing a majority of its coal facilities by 2023 (thus t he need for the following procurement), and all coal facilities by 2028. Co al lobbyists, expectedly, have flooded the state?s legislature."

coupled with energy storage". The costs they are expecting to see...

age, from a summer of 2018 NIPSCO RFP, where we saw bids for solar power at

harge of $5.90/kW-Mo."

to have my power supplied this way. It would cut my electric bill in half. Good thing my power is local, but not so local it comes from the expensiv e nuclear power plant next door.

energy source. Certainly nuclear is a bad idea going forward.

Anthropogenic global warming is a world-wide issue, even if some of Austral ia's politicians think they can afford to keep mining interests happy by ig noring it.

The record-breaking typhoon which has just hit Japan may be the kind of thi ng that may get their attention, though drought and a spectacualry early st art to the bush-fire season in Australia doesn't seem to have registered ye t.

Maybe they think they can buy extra power from neighboring states?

Seems unlikely. Rain clouds are usually thicker and darker than regular clo uds - there has to be a thick enough layer of suspended small water droplet s in a cloud to give them a chance to collide and fuse into droplets big en ough to fall fast enough to survive until they hit the ground.

A layer of water on top of a solar panel would be an extra optical interfac e, but only reflects about 4% of the incident light. The rest would go stra ight through.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

While at low latitudes you can pack the panels so densely that not much light will reach the ground, but at medium to high latitudes you have to leave some space between panels in north/south direction to avoid shadowing each other during the winter, so at least grass will still grow quit well beneath the panels.

In practice rows of east/west panel rows can be built and animals can graze between these rows. It might be a good idea to leave some space between panels in the east/west rows too, so that the animals don't feel too claustrophobic. Alternatively, mount the panels higher up so that animals can freely graze below them.

To overstate the counterpoint, if enough light is reaching the plants to grow, then the solar plant is inefficient.

Basically you can use the energy in the light for photosynthesis or electricity; make your choice :)

Indiana is close to lake Michigan and based of the snow figures, they get quite a lot of rain and hence they also have a lot of clouds, i.e. conditions similar to the Baltic sea basin area.

If we assume that light clouds scatters light in all directions, half of the incoming radiation will be scattered back to space and newer reach the ground.

An empirical test, why do you have to turn indoor lights on much earlier on a cloudy evening compared to a clear evening ?.

If you are using fixed panels in order to keep costs down and want it to producing something also in mid-winter and try to avoiding casting shadow on the next row of panels, then you have to leave some space in north/south direction.

During mid-summer, the sun is 47 ( = 2 x 23.5) degrees higher, then evitable some light will hit directly the ground.

Of course, you could mount the panels on wheels and move them closer together during the summer, freeing some areas for full power photosynthesis :-), but that is hardly cost effective.