The transition

[Mr. Coffee]

The UK is seriously looking to use a Morrocan solar..wind plant to provide 4gw for 20 hours a day.
It will require 200km2 of steerable solar.
1500km2 of turbines..and
A 20gwh battery...yes 20gwh.

And 4000km of HVDC undersea cable.

It will provide 8% of our electricity.

So for us to go completely net zero electricity only.
just us
Would probably require most of morroco.
Can anyone do the math.
It's called xlinks Morocco.

Is that 8% of electrical power or 8% of electrical energy?

If 1700 km^2 provides 8% of electricity, then you could provide 100% of electricity in 21250 km^2. Since Morocco has 710850 km^2 it doesn't seem like much (less than 3% of the land area). And you can use the land that has wind turbines for other purposes so again it doesn't seem like that big a problem.

 

[Chargeride]

That's just electricity of course, which is only 18% of our energy usage.

 

[The Mudshark]

Well...

EVs are without a doubt big in our future transportation models (and I'm a supporter btw). BUT... folks have their heads in the nether regions thinking the technology is off-the-shelf ready to save the planet right now. Environmental impacts of Lithium production for batteries are massive, but easy to ignore since it happens in other people's backyards that lack stringent environmental protections (China for example). Listen to the screams of environmentalist protest as proposals for lithium mining on public lands in the Western US are moving forward. Ditto for the copper and heavy metals required for these next-gen vehicles. Lithium battery recycling? Yeah it's critical but we're still working on that.

Not to go too far afield, but this transition has some of the same illogical hallmarks as "gender affirmation" surgery.

No free lunches...

 

[Mr. Coffee]

... BUT... folks have their heads in the nether regions thinking the technology is off-the-shelf ready to save the planet right now.

So are you somehow assuming that the current technology is where it all stops?

We know that there are multiple battery technologies on deck that have a lower environmental impact to manufacture, lower costs, faster charge times, and a higher energy density. There is also every reason to believe that we can go a good distance beyond what's on deck to even better materials.

We know that CPUs, memory, and solar panels are all Wright's Law devices. It looks to me like EVs are also likely to be as well.

 

[Chargeride]

Im merely pointing out the fact that wind and solar are very low intensity, and require vastly more land to produce.
Of course anything can be made to work.
But a 20gwh battery just to supply 8% of the UK electricity only?

The cables alone are 8bn and have a 15% loss.
I don't even think such a battery could be built.

 

[PDoz]

I really like what the Australians are doing with combining electric vehicles with rooftop solar panels so the battery pack can be shared between the house and car for outages. But that may burn up the batteries faster, IDK.

The theory is good, in practice it's not viable ( yet).

Mostly political , and that's a really sad discussion.

Unfortunately , vehicle to load, and especially vehicle to grid inverters have so many hoops to jump through to be legal here that they are crazy expensive and almost impossible to source. We looked into it recently at work - LOTS of roof space with great solar access, significant financial incentives to keep our electrics running when the power is out. Over 10 years for payback investment on just vehicle to load, a LOT longer on vehicle to grip. That's without even considering the cost of the vehicles / battery degradation etc.

For perspective, just fitting enough solar to cover electricity usage had a 3 year payback on investment ( using equipment that could later be adapted to run vehicle lo load IF the cost+/- legislation re inverters improves. Our solar adviser wasn't optimistic - and he's an enthusiast.

 

[PDoz]

Then we started the ethical discussion about vehicle to grid....

There are significant tax advantages buying an ev through our business, but they only make sense if you cycle the ev every 2/3 years. I'm OK with that, especially if it means my kids get an ev for uni transport - 3 kids, each 2 years apart, and we live 150 km from the uni so will be leaving home to study, Public transport out here sucks, so if we ever want to see them again, they're going to need vehicles.

BUT - who wants an out of warranty EV that has been used for vehicle to grid. Sure, the odometer might say low km, but the battery has been fully cycled every day!

Now lets consider the environmental impact of using EV resources for land based battery storage. Why waste the lighter but more environmentally challenging EV resources , when you could install a dedicated land battery . Sodium batteries aren't far away, but they're probably not as wise for ev use due to their weight

 

[Art Deco]

The theory is good, in practice it's not viable ( yet).

Mostly political , and that's a really sad discussion.

Unfortunately , vehicle to load, and especially vehicle to grid inverters have so many hoops to jump through to be legal here that they are crazy expensive and almost impossible to source. We looked into it recently at work - LOTS of roof space with great solar access, significant financial incentives to keep our electrics running when the power is out. Over 10 years for payback investment on just vehicle to load, a LOT longer on vehicle to grip. That's without even considering the cost of the vehicles / battery degradation etc.

For perspective, just fitting enough solar to cover electricity usage had a 3 year payback on investment ( using equipment that could later be adapted to run vehicle lo load IF the cost+/- legislation re inverters improves. Our solar adviser wasn't optimistic - and he's an enthusiast.

Yeah, I can't say I'm really surprised. The political/financial roadblocks to solar here in the states are popping up faster than new installations ever did . Fifteen years ago it was a different story, but as solar prices dropped , the utilities got worried and started lobbying hard, while pretending to be "green", "safety conscious" , and "realistic" at city council meetings...

To be somewhat fair, every scammy finance firm that could hire an electrician suddenly became a solar installer... using only their equipment, financing, and insurance with no money down leases for a few cents per kwatt less than the utility ... with only 25 or 30 year paybacks ... such a deal.

The utilities didn't care when it was only a few rich, old hippies putting silly things on their roofs. But at a price payback that most of their customers could buy into, they really care.

 

[PCeBiker]

I remember seeing something on TV about solar power in Hawaii.

All kinds of poor people had solar panels installed on their houses with a government program, but they were never hooked up.

Somebody needed to own the solar systems and charge money for it.

Poor people shouldn't get free energy.
It's not good for the economy.


In some places in California it is illegal to have rain barrels to collect rain water.
Water that falls from the sky is owned by the state.

 

[Art Deco]

My problem with solar is service on demand.
I reported my battery packs are not charging and it took 2 months for a technician to come verify the problem.
This looks like a normal battery 2nd picture is close up picture bottom piece is delaminating. It holds charge.
I dis connected it.
I'm getting new battery packs.!!!!!

I said those firms hire "an electrician" to certify new installations , not hundreds of service technicians to service their systems . Hopefully you don't have one of those.

But IIRC, you have quite a lot of regulation that will probably help you if you need to raise a stink. I don't know if that battery is dangerous or not (probably not since it's lithium iron) but it certainly isn't supposed to look like that.

 

[PDoz]

Yeah, I can't say I'm really surprised. The political/financial roadblocks to solar here in the states are popping up faster than new installations ever did . Fifteen years ago it was a different story, but as solar prices dropped , the utilities got worried and started lobbying hard, while pretending to be "green", "safety conscious" , and "realistic" at city council meetings...

To be somewhat fair, every scammy finance firm that could hire an electrician suddenly became a solar installer... using only their equipment, financing, and insurance with no money down leases for a few cents per kwatt less than the utility ... with only 25 or 30 year paybacks ... such a deal.

The utilities didn't care when it was only a few rich, old hippies putting silly things on their roofs. But at a price payback that most of their customers could buy into, they really care.

We got lucky - installing solar around 15 years ago just before the power companies / political shift occurred. So we had around a 10 year contract where power into the system was paid for at close to the cost of power out - ie THEY paid US $1500 a year , the panels well and truly paid for themselves. Now they just take the edge off - covering our daytime use etc. IF / when I buy an EV, it'll be time to invest in extra solar - we have heaps of roof space. But for now, our energy bills are minimal and the solar ticks away without issue

We also got in before govt grants / reduced prices encouraged dodgy installations. So we got quality panels that after 15 years are still producing well. They'fe not as space efficient as modern panels, but we have huge sheds / lots of space to put more panels up , and to be honest I'll probably build an extra solar carport when we get an EV - dedicated parking / charging without all the hassle of grid connection.

 

[Art Deco]

Another kind of transition ... projected start of population decline about 60 years from now, just about as far in the future as the first debates about global warming were in the past. From the Times .

Opinion | All of the Predictions Agree on One Thing: Humanity Peaks Soon

Most people now live in countries where two or fewer children are born for every two adults.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Mr. Coffee]

Im merely pointing out the fact that wind and solar are very low intensity, and require vastly more land to produce.
Of course anything can be made to work.
But a 20gwh battery just to supply 8% of the UK electricity only?

The cables alone are 8bn and have a 15% loss.
I don't even think such a battery could be built.

Yeah, but we have a lot of land to work with.

If you just make all farms wind farms you have lots of electricity, and you can still grow food there. If you just put solar on all roofs and cover parking lots you have lots of electricity. Probably not enough to have a Star Trek style future but far more than we currently use, to be sure. And there is lots of land that isn't farms and that nobody would be particularly disturbed about putting hectares of solar panels or a few million wind turbines on. Like I don't know, the Sahara desert.

We produced something short of 1.2Twh of batteries worldwide in 2022. That is on track to be almost 7Twh in 2030. So I don't know why you think we can't build 40Gwh of battery today. Because we are manufacturing that much battery capacity approximately every two weeks.

It is a complicated question to answer how much battery storage we actually need. Although most of the estimates are, in my opinion, extravagantly high. There are lots of dials on the machine: you can build lots of batteries, you can have a more interconnected grid, you can overbuild renewable capacity, you can used pumped hydro where you have hydro, and you can use existing nuclear and hydro where you have it. You needn't limit yourself to just one solution The reality is the practical answer will be a combination of the above. And probably stuff I haven't mentioned as well.

Replacing most electricity generation and most surface transport fueling requirements with a combination of renewables and batteries appears to be doable. Yes, the technology needs to progress a bit from where it is. And yes, there will be some hiccups and adaptations along the way, but it is doable. The important part is that transition will buy us more time for the really hard parts.

 

[Art Deco]

Indeed, we don't need to make enough batteries to run our whole civilization 24/7 to maintain a good lifestyle. Beyond pumped hydro or other none battery storage, we can synchronize many of our needs to when the sun shines.

Sunflower society: a new vision for a climate compatible future

Renewables, Energy, Transition, Energiewende, nuclear, resilience, EROI, EROEI, LCA

thesunflowerparadigm.blogspot.com

 

[Chargeride]

It's not just the land, the amount of materials needed to run the world at net zero is simply unimaginable.

I very much doubt we could build such a renewable grid in 500 years, let alone a 200.

8% of UKs electricity, times it by 12 to reach full electricity supply, then by 6 for total energy usage.

Just for the UK is going to require horizon filling landscapes of solar and wind and 100s of thousands of Kms of undersea cable to equator based sites, TW batteries, and that's just one small country.

To just supply the next world 50 year increase would require a windfarm the size of Russia.
How could we build that?


There is always a way, but the figures are just ridiculous, we would have burn all the oil flat out just to build it.

Even the UK needs to increase its grid by a factor of four for transport charging.
They've admitted this will take a workforce larger than the NHS to complete by 2030.

An Oxford study concluded that to power the UK on electricity only would take the entire worlds turbines.

 

[Art Deco]

It's not just the land, the amount of materials needed to run the world at net zero is simply unimaginable.

I very much doubt we could build such a renewable grid in 500 years, let alone a 200.

8% of UKs electricity, times it by 12 to reach full electricity supply, then by 6 for total energy usage.

Just for the UK is going to require horizon filling landscapes of solar and wind and 100s of thousands of Kms of undersea cable to equator based sites, TW batteries, and that's just one small country.

To just supply the next world 50 year increase would require a windfarm the size of Russia.
How could we build that?


There is always a way, but the figures are just ridiculous, we would have burn all the oil flat out just to build it.

Even the UK needs to increase its grid by a factor of four for transport charging.
They've admitted this will take a workforce larger than the NHS to complete by 2030.

An Oxford study concluded that to power the UK on electricity only would take the entire worlds turbines.

I agree the figures aren't realistic, but neither is the underlying assumption that we "need" to replace all the wasted consumption that we indulge in today ... the orgy of consumption formerly known as "Christmas " , the yachts and private jets for the rich and famous, modern warfare of all kinds, the 30 or 40 percent of our food we pitch into the bin uneaten, and many more examples you can think of. None of that existed a century ago, and probably won't continue.

 

[Chargeride]

Ye, the reality is renewables can't supply a world at 100% first world energy use, but how can we ask the third world to stay thirld world.

If we want this, then we all have to drastically cut back.

I was in a supermarket only hours ago, an electric heater the size of a fridge was blowing hot air on me from above.

The losses from probably fossil to that heat must be immense.

 

[Art Deco]

"we all have to drastically cut back." Indeed. That's what nobody is allowed to say publicly. But we will cut back consumption, and if done well that can actually improve our lives, but if done poorly or too late, then our descendants will all live in the third world .

 

[PDoz]

I agree the figures aren't realistic, but neither is the underlying assumption that we "need" to replace all the wasted consumption that we indulge in today ... the orgy of consumption formerly known as "Christmas " , the yachts and private jets for the rich and famous, modern warfare of all kinds, the 30 or 40 percent of our food we pitch into the bin uneaten, and many more examples you can think of. None of that existed a century ago, and probably won't continue.

So you're saying I should reconsider sailing over christmas, or just accept our future involves a society with a non pagan calendar ?

I almost went gift free this year ( 1 gift slipped through) , research into an electric motor for my 40 year old sailboat continues...and I'm thinking VERY seriously of leaving her in the water instead of on a trailer like I do at the moment ( which needs a vehicle capable of towing her up the launching ramp) .

Trouble is, I suspect that future warfare might involve a scenario where climate refugee is a terrifying reality. I figure an invasion from our north might allow enough time for us to decide if we can tolerate the economic invasion or need to use the boat to escape a more physical one.

 

[Chargeride]

Of course I'm not adressing the radioactive decay option.