This is exciting stuff, but I’m still confused about how we solve for base load generation with solar and wind? What do you do when an entire region is sunless and windless for a week? My impression is that you can’t simply bring enough power from neighboring regions to meet demand. So do we have really big storage systems and/or massive overprovisioning? And if so, how does solar and wind compete with those costs factored in?
In the long run we can look forward to more exotic technologies like grid scale battery stations and small nuclear reactors. But in the short run the objective should be to use renewables when possible and fossil fuel only when necessary.
Power companies don't need to tear down oil and gas generators right away, they just need to scale back their use as they rely more on renewables. You mention two mitigations, expanding the geographic region and overprovisioning. Both of these raise the cost of transition, but not prohibitively.
> What do you do when an entire region is sunless and windless for a week
To me that sounds like a highly theoretical problem. I'm not a meteorologist or climate scientist, clearly, but I think a if you have a week-long thick cloud cover chances are probably comes with solid winds, no?
I’m not sure. Last winter Chicago went something like 40 days without sun IIRC, and I assume the same is true for much of the surrounding area. It doesn’t seem particularly unlikely that you could have many consecutive windless days as well, especially as climate change brings us these “once in a millennia” events every few years.
Moreover, as we transition homes from gas heating to heat pumps, this will increase demand on the grid and it will also increase the risks in case of failure (people freezing). Moreover, even without cloud cover, winters are snowy and the days are short and the light is indirect.
You just described why placing solar panels in Chicago is a bad idea.
Real world grid scale solar farms are placed in sunny areas that don't get regular cloud cover or even snow like that. Washington State and Chicago are terrible locations for solar, but moving electricity is surprisingly cheap. https://blog.solarenergymaps.com/2014/05/potential-solar-ene...
That said, cloudy days reduce but don't eliminate output, so as excess capacity is added the minimum output keeps increasing. A hypothetical green hydro/wind/solar grid would have significant excess solar capacity the same way the current grid adds redundant conventional powerplants.
Your link doesn’t support your claim that moving energy is surprisingly cheap. I’m of the impression that this isn’t the case (we can’t easily build transmission lines that can carry the necessary amount of power from the southwest to other parts of the country).
I didn't add a link on power transmission. Actually building stuff in the US has issues that have little to do with cost.
Individual UHVDC links are in the multiple GW range. Exact numbers depend on a host of factors but something like 1c/kWh per 1,000 miles for long range is a reasonable ballpark. (Upfront costs in the billions.) Though it’s much higher for underwater links, etc.
A link sending power 24/7/365 at maximum capacity is significantly cheaper, conversly geographic barriers can quickly increase prices. Also those costs aren't constant with distance the transmission lines cost far less than the equipment at either end.
Solar makes sense Chicago, and even in places in Alaska that genuinely experience weeks of darkness. An interesting current research area is how much vertical bifacial modules take advantage of reflections from snow on the ground, while shedding snowfall better and flattening the supply curve.
A grid entirely based on solar in those regions is less optimal, but no one is proposing such a thing.
There is a big difference between producing enough power on average and having power when you want it. Going 100% off grid is possible in Chicago but I doubt it's cost effective. Staying grid connected is offloading all the difficult parts to your electric company.
Yeah, that’s their job, the hard part. You don’t get a free return on equity. Orchestrate power across a distributed system of load, generators, and storage or let someone competent do it and earn that margin.
> “The new batteries will be spread across major centres in regional Queensland near communities that have significant rooftop solar generation because we know that’s where they will have the greatest overall benefit.
> “The network of the future will not only need to move electricity from where it is generated to where it’s going to be used, but also to when it’s consumed.”
And sure, utilities can buy power from consumers at a lower cost than they charge for power, but that only works until batteries decline to a cost point where consumers simply replace their utilities with batteries. Is that today? Not yet! But with the amount of battery manufacturing capacity spooling up for EVs and utility scale storage, that day will arrive.
Short answer is no, slightly longer answer is that even if you have "solid" winds they're often not enough to make up for the loss of solar. Additionally, cloudy and low-wind periods are common enough that without grid-stabilization tech we'd expect regular blackouts through many countries throughout the world.
All that said, I'm quite hopeful for grid stabilization tech coming online in the next decade.
Source: I've spent the last few years working on renewables R&D
Sure, so in my mind there are two kinds of grid stabilization, I'll call them short term and long term.
Roughly speaking, short term stabilization helps deal with fluctuations in demand over the course of a day. The Hornsdale Power Reserve[0] is a good example, it's basically a big bank of Lithium Ion batteries. This allows us to handle, say, everyone in Australia turning on their AC when they get home without needing blackouts to reduce load. At night, excess power generation can then refill the batteries.
Unfortunately this is not a workable solution if total demand per day exceeds total power production per day for more extended periods (think weeks). This is precisely the problem that can occur with solar or wind. Lithium Ion Batteries are not suitable for storing large amounts of charge over longer periods. We would instead like a battery that can perform longer term storage of power at an affordable price during winder and sunnier periods.
I'm currently excited by the approach taken by Form Energy[1] for what is called a Rust Battery. If they get it working this essentially allows us to trap and release energy through an extremely cheap and scalable chemical process. During a sunny summer you could potentially store enough excess power to get you through a very cloudy winter.
