Viability Of Solar Power As Grid Baseline

[Crossroads Inc.]

You know, usually I stay out of debates, I am never good with facts and figures, or numbers or Math. Lord knows I have my own issues... But...

But you go right ahead and keep dreaming about your nuclear solution while public pressure and opinion grinds your dream into dust. Which reminds me: Swiss decomissioning nuclear power plants. Grab your tissues and prepare yourself for this news becoming significantly more common. Nuclear's demise is written on the wall, you just need to read it.

Really? REALLY? You are going to sit there and GLOAT over the downfall of Nuclear power? Just how the hell important is your crusade for Solar Power that you take PLEASURE at the downfall of what is currently the ONLY other large scale alternative to Oil and Coal? Does it not sink in that the downfall of Nuclear power is a net WIN to Oil and Coal? Nations will TALK about Alt fuels... But guess what! Japan is already woking on buying new Gas fueled Turbines, and, surprise surprise, deciding NOT to shut down several old Oil Burning stations. So again I ask... Is your crusade for Solar so important that you will GLOAT about the downfall of Nuclear power?

[PeZook]

Crossroads, righteous indignation has no place in this thread.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Which is why I don't participate very often..
If you wish to send that post to "The Barrel" you may.... Sorry I posted it then.

[aerius]

Some numbers since SI seems to be allergic to math. Let's say you want to produce 1GW of solar power using mirrors and molten salt thermal storage. I'll give a best case scenario where the sun shines at full intensity for half the day on average, so you'll need 12GWh of energy storage. Molten salt thermal has an energy density of 12Wh/kg, that gives a billion kg of molten potassium & sodium nitrates. According to the paper I linked the salt mixture is 60% sodium nitrate and 40% potassium nitrate. That gives you 600,000 tons of sodium nitrate. Which is about the entire annual global production. For 1GW. The city of Toronto by itself will suck around 4 times as much power.

Keep in mind that this is the ideal case. Real world numbers will be about 5-10 times worse. No matter how you generate the power the energy must be stored. There ain't enough mines and raw materials in the world, period, to construct the energy storage that's required. You wanna use batteries? Guess what, you just used up the entire world's lithium production and it still won't run the city of Toronto. Even if you used everything in combination you'll still run out of resources trying to power a single Province such as Ontario or Quebec. That's why you can't use solar as baseload power.

[D.Turtle]

So just use pumped-storage hydroelectricity.

[aerius]

Yeah, kinda hard to do around here considering that it's completely flat. There's only so many places where pumped hydro storage works, they have a plant down in Niagara Falls to supplement the main hydroelectric plants and there's a few other places where we can build them. To run our Province we'd have to flood a ton of land building the elevated storage reservoirs.

[Sky Captain]

One application where solar power could be economical given cheap solar panels is to directly power air conditioning. In hot climates AC is significant power guzzler and it also is most needed when there is plenty of sunshine available so solar power would be useful because there is no need store energy, when most power is available there is also most demand.

[D.Turtle]

Yeah, kinda hard to do around here considering that it's completely flat. There's only so many places where pumped hydro storage works, they have a plant down in Niagara Falls to supplement the main hydroelectric plants and there's a few other places where we can build them. To run our Province we'd have to flood a ton of land building the elevated storage reservoirs.

Um, you're in Canada, aren't you?

Canada, where more than half of electricity comes from hydro-power?

[aerius]

That's conventional hydroelectric power such as the James Bay Project in Quebec where we diverted a bunch of rivers and flooded nearly 12,000 km2 of land. Like I said, we'd have to flood a ton of land.

[D.Turtle]

So its possible, just ... inconvenient?

[aerius]

It's possible in some areas, but in others such as the Prairies it would be pretty much impossible since it's dead flat. We'd have to build 150M high walls of earth that are hundreds of kilometres long and fill them with water; we'd be building giant above ground artificial lakes. The best locations are on the coasts, but many of those are already taken by existing hydroelectric projects. It's a bit past inconvenient, more like insane.

[D.Turtle]

Um, you can build them where they are viable, and then put electricity lines to where its needed. Since transmission losses can be brought down to somewhere between 3-5% per 1000 km that should be enough to cover the vast majority of the country.

[Hawkwings]

I'm sure the people who live near those lakes would have a problem with that. Also, according to Wikipedia, Canada doesn't actually have any pumped-storage dams over 1000MW in capacity.

Pumped-storage is a great way to store large amounts of energy. That's why all the good spots are already taken.

[Hamstray]

How about I build a couple dozen CANDU-6 reactors and run them on a thorium-uranium fuel cycle with full reprocessing? It'll be a hell of a lot cheaper and still give you as much power as you want for tens of thousands of years. Plus unlike solar, we have the technology to do it right fucking now.

we might have the technology, but are we doing it right now?
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf17.html , the only reprocessing cycle at best those are going to lead to is a MOX cycle.
someone needs to put pressure on the industry.

[D.Turtle]

I'm sure the people who live near those lakes would have a problem with that. Also, according to Wikipedia, Canada doesn't actually have any pumped-storage dams over 1000MW in capacity.

Pumped-storage is a great way to store large amounts of energy. That's why all the good spots are already taken.

Sorry, considering that pumped storage was expected to grow by 60% from 2010 to 2014, that argument seems false. There was no need for extremely large storage of energy when it could be produced by burning stuff. Instead, pumped storage was mostly needed to meet spikes in demand, as its lead up time is extremely small (on the order of seconds compared to half an hour or so for conventional power plants and never for nuclear). Now, switching to a power supply that requires large storage of energy it becomes a lot more important. Storage was never a problem, now it can become one, which means that storage solutions are more important.

[madd0ct0r]

How about I build a couple dozen CANDU-6 reactors and run them on a thorium-uranium fuel cycle with full reprocessing? It'll be a hell of a lot cheaper and still give you as much power as you want for tens of thousands of years. Plus unlike solar, we have the technology to do it right fucking now.

we might have the technology, but are we doing it right now?
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf17.html , the only reprocessing cycle at best those are going to lead to is a MOX cycle.
someone needs to put pressure on the industry.

um, pretty sure 'feeder' plants are currently illegal due to their products being easy(ier) to weaponise.

on topic: this may be of interest to people: Alternative energy without the hot air (solar chapter only, but I highly recommend reading the entire book)

I think we need to clarify a few scenarios here, especially if the napkin equations are coming out:

1) Where in the world are we looking at?

2) What scale are we looking at?

The two go together. Are we looking at powering just Canada? just the UK? all of Europe? the entire world?
How far are we allowed to transmit power from production site? What amount of energy consumption are we aiming to support?
Are treating this as a physics limits only, or cold hard cash required?

Because, call me stupid, I've always understood Canada is quite a cold, dark place. If I was given the task of powering it only by solar my first thought would be to invade Mexico. My second thought is to compare transmission inefficiencies from Mexico to the production inefficiencies in Canuck-land.

But there's a huge number of scenarios possible here, and choosing the various factors will impact how viable Solar looks.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah, kinda hard to do around here considering that it's completely flat. There's only so many places where pumped hydro storage works, they have a plant down in Niagara Falls to supplement the main hydroelectric plants and there's a few other places where we can build them. To run our Province we'd have to flood a ton of land building the elevated storage reservoirs.

Underground pumped storage would be the solution that; but it would be very expensive to install except perhaps facilities built into multiple levels of salt cavern. Salt caverns can be made pretty big at low cost.

Sorry, considering that pumped storage was expected to grow by 60% from 2010 to 2014, that argument seems false. There was no need for extremely large storage of energy when it could be produced by burning stuff. Instead, pumped storage was mostly needed to meet spikes in demand, as its lead up time is extremely small (on the order of seconds compared to half an hour or so for conventional power plants and never for nuclear). Now, switching to a power supply that requires large storage of energy it becomes a lot more important. Storage was never a problem, now it can become one, which means that storage solutions are more important.

Notice how Austria has lots of mountains. That makes life a lot easier. But once the best spots are taken its the same story as hydropower, diminishing returns from smaller higher cost projects.

[Hamstray]

um, pretty sure 'feeder' plants are currently illegal due to their products being easy(ier) to weaponise.

I must confess I am not familiar with the term "feeder plant" in this context, neither do I find any literature on it.
My concern is that the vast majority of the nuclear plants currently in production will have to depend on MOX fuel once uranium becomes short. Yes, I know breeding plutonium to supply them is a proliferation risk, much more so than a plutonium economy based purely on fast reactors (with integral reprocessing), but to avoid a collapse in the nuclear economy at some point, in the current direction and at the rate the industry is going it seems like this will become inevitable. The modifications most of these plants would require for a switch to a thorium based economy are extensive or purely hypothetical (with uncalculated costs) while burning MOX in thermal reactors has been around for some time already.

[D.Turtle]

Notice how Austria has lots of mountains. That makes life a lot easier. But once the best spots are taken its the same story as hydropower, diminishing returns from smaller higher cost projects.

Sure, there are diminishing returns. But how far along are we on that ride? How much potential storage areas are there still out there? What would they cost?

I'm not saying that pumped-storage is an extremely easy, simple solution - but it could very well be a large part of the solution to the storage problem. And, again, considering that there a multitude of projects underway, it seems that we have not yet reached a point where it is no longer viable as a storage solution - even though according to some people screeching around here (not you), pumped-storage is simply impossible to expand.

Which makes me look at their other pronouncements of "physically impossible" (*doom bells ringing*) quite skeptically.

Fact is, many governments and renowned international organizations think it is very possible to provide the vast majority of energy through renewables. Somehow, I think the vast amount of experience at their fingertips does count for something.

[Darth Tanner]

Fact is, many governments and renowned international organizations think it is very possible to provide the vast majority of energy through renewables.

Their lying? They are politicians afterall, the people call out for a one shot wonder solution and politicians give it to them, whether it will be possible or not.

but it could very well be a large part of the solution to the storage problem

Currently there’s around 104gw of pumped storage capacity available compared to a generation capacity in excess of 15,000gw. Expecting to expand pumped storage to have a noticeable impact on providing actual demand from it rather than just balancing load spikes is crazy.

[D.Turtle]

Their lying? They are politicians afterall, the people call out for a one shot wonder solution and politicians give it to them, whether it will be possible or not.

So there is a vast world-wide conspiracy trying to hide the fact that renewables are impossible, and the only ones willing to speak out against it are the brave forces of big oil. Right.

Currently there’s around 104gw of pumped storage capacity available compared to a generation capacity in excess of 15,000gw. Expecting to expand pumped storage to have a noticeable impact on providing actual demand from it rather than just balancing load spikes is crazy.

Pumped storage is a way to store surplus energy from solar and wind. Demand at night does not have to be met solely by that stored energy, but can also be met by wind, biomass, and traditional hydropower. In 2008, there was already a pilot project, showing - in the small scale - that 100% renewable power generation is possible. It is expected here in Germany that almost 50% of power generation will be met by renewable sources by 2020. The IEA just released a book which examined how much power generation from intermittent sources can be safely handled by current infrastructure (with zero additional investments):

The book features eight case studies in which the FAST Method is applied to eight geographic areas with very different characteristics. The resulting analysis shows that each region has the technical resources to balance large shares of variable renewable energy.

Potentials range from 19% in the least flexible area assessed (Japan) to 63% in the most flexible area (Denmark). The IEA also assessed the resources of the British Isles (Great Britain and Ireland together), 31%; the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal together), 27%; Mexico, 29%; the Nordic Power Market (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden), 48%; the Western Interconnection of the United States, 45%; and the area operated by the New Brunswick System Operator in Eastern Canada, 37%.

This range of results is due to the different flexible resources found in these areas. Norway, for example, has extensive hydropower, which is a very flexible resource; while Japan’s power plants, many of which run on nuclear and coal, are not as flexible (e.g. it takes longer for these sources to respond to fluctuations in demand).

But I'm sure that everybody advocating switching to renewables is completely oblivious of reality and willing to destroy civilization in order to achieve some dream of protecting Gaia. It is completely impossible that people and organizations advocate renewables because they are a better way of producing power than we are currently doing ...

[Darth Tanner]

So there is a vast world-wide conspiracy trying to hide the fact that renewables are impossible

I didn't say it was impossible as you presumably know. Most countries already have several percent of their generation capacity in the form of renewables and this is guaranteed to grow rapidly. It is unrealistic to expect it to form the majority of the grid supply with any existing technology without massive investment, and even then there are only so many turbines you can put down every year whilst we need to meet the demand now.

the brave forces of big oil. Right.

Right, because people here are all advocating oil/coal/gas as the solution. Conveniently enough at the same time politicians and greens hype renewables as the wonder solution we are forced to build coal/gas to supply the grid because of the short comings of the renewable in actually delivering results.

there was already a pilot project, showing - in the small scale - that 100% renewable power generation is possible.

Small scale being the key word, although that pilot is actually very impressive there is nothing to prove it could be scaled up. There is also very little objective information of how the pilot went, like information on brown outs or if they still used power from the national grid to make up on shortfalls/balancing. Neither is it mentioned the cost effectiveness of this. 100% renewable may well be possible but are the people/businesses willing to take a tripling of their energy bills to achieve it?

It is expected here in Germany that almost 50% of power generation will be met by renewable sources by 2020

Unlikely the speed Germany is heading towards coal. Then again importing an increasing amount of French nuclear will help.

with zero additional investments):

Surely by their very nature distributing the energy distribution methods over a larger area is going to increase the cost of transmission as more cables are laid. In the UK a lot of new cabling is being laid for all the wind farms that are usually coastal or in the middle of nowhere.

It is completely impossible that people and organizations advocate renewables because they are a better way of producing power than we are currently doing

Germany is building more coal power stations because environmentalists wanted renewables instead of nuclear. Renewables are great but are simply not cost effective or likely to be able to generate the majority of demand any time soon.

[K. A. Pital]

So there is a vast world-wide conspiracy trying to hide the fact that renewables are impossible, and the only ones willing to speak out against it are the brave forces of big oil. Right.

I have not seen any serious (math-backed) claims from government organizations that renewables can cover existing and future energy demand. Even cover existing demand. So we're discussing a fact that is just not there. Of course, if there were serious statements by governments that renewables can cover the above, I'm all ears.

In 2008, there was already a pilot project, showing - in the small scale - that 100% renewable power generation is possible. It is expected here in Germany that almost 50% of power generation will be met by renewable sources by 2020.

Why is your nation planning to build new coal plants then? Stop planning that and plan for renewables instead. That will show more than any words spoken by any politicians.

The IEA just released a book which examined how much power generation from intermittent sources can be safely handled by current infrastructure (with zero additional investments):

The book features eight case studies in which the FAST Method is applied to eight geographic areas with very different characteristics.

I would love to see this book and the methodology they use. I don't mind being wrong, unless, of course, the methodology has some serious flaws in the theoretical assumptions. Intermittent sources require infrastructure construction as well. The idea that you can just use current grids and switch to intermittent sources is not a good one; it would presume that the location of the powerplants in the current network is optimal for renewables as well and you only need to construct renewable powerplants, no cables, no storage, nothing. That's clearcly not possible, so either the study is misunderstood by the reporter or the study is flawed. Seriously, that's just... physics.

[aerius]

we might have the technology, but are we doing it right now?
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf17.html , the only reprocessing cycle at best those are going to lead to is a MOX cycle.
someone needs to put pressure on the industry.

Nope, thanks to political considerations and the fact that Canada has the largest deposits of high grade uranium in the world. We have carried out research into the thorium cycle and burned up thorium fuel bundles in our NRU research reactor which was set to simulate the operating conditions of commercial CANDU reactors. It's been proven to work, we just need to make the fuel bundles and stuff them into our commercial reactors. What's likely going to happen is we'll end up doing it in China first, we have a joint research program with the Chinese in using the thorium cycle for CANDU reactors, they don't have the political stuff to worry about so that's where we'll likely see the first commercial use of thorium fuel for CANDU plants. Once it's proven to work over there we'll probably bring it back to Canada at some point.

[D.Turtle]

I didn't say it was impossible as you presumably know. Most countries already have several percent of their generation capacity in the form of renewables and this is guaranteed to grow rapidly. It is unrealistic to expect it to form the majority of the grid supply with any existing technology without massive investment, and even then there are only so many turbines you can put down every year whilst we need to meet the demand now.

Why is it unrealistic to form the majority of grid supply? Why do we need to meet the demand now, instead of trying to meet new energy demands with renewables while starting to replace old energy supplies with renewables?

Obviously, renewables can not replace current electricity production within a few years. It will take some time, during which other policies can be undertaken to try and lower the impact of those old facilities. Nuclear is a good solution for that, as it does not emit CO2, which makes it better than coal, oil, or gas. However, in the medium and long term, nuclear energy is an extremely bad fit with renewable sources, as it is mostly incapable of reacting dynamically to demand and production of energy. In effect, nuclear would hinder the use of renewables, once they reach a certain percentage of energy production. Hell, that is already partly the problem, to the point that wind turbines have to be shut down when there is too much wind, as the rest of the energy production capacity is incapable of powering down fast enough to make it viable. So we keep on burning coal, while those wind turbines stand still.

Right, because people here are all advocating oil/coal/gas as the solution. Conveniently enough at the same time politicians and greens hype renewables as the wonder solution we are forced to build coal/gas to supply the grid because of the short comings of the renewable in actually delivering results.

Thats complete and total bullshit. Renewables have already started replacing new power projects. Without renewables, there would have been even more new coal, oil, gas plants. Solar and wind have been growing extremely rapidly the last decade, however up until recently the production of those was not enough to meet new energy demand (and still isn't in many parts of the world). This does not mean that they were useless, only that their production hasn't been high enough so far. If they continue at the rate they have been growing, they will start to be able to meet new energy demands, and then start replacing old energy production facilities.

Small scale being the key word, although that pilot is actually very impressive there is nothing to prove it could be scaled up. There is also very little objective information of how the pilot went, like information on brown outs or if they still used power from the national grid to make up on shortfalls/balancing. Neither is it mentioned the cost effectiveness of this. 100% renewable may well be possible but are the people/businesses willing to take a tripling of their energy bills to achieve it?

Obviously a pilot project is only going to be small scale. However, it shows that it is possible to meet 100% of energy demand over an extended period of time using 100% renewables. Something you say is impossible.
It was a simulated facility using a series of real world sources and their output, in order to meet a real world demand curve from a certain region. Oh, and you will of course show where the tripling of the energy bill comes from?

Unlikely the speed Germany is heading towards coal. Then again importing an increasing amount of French nuclear will help.

Germany is not heading towards coal. The building of new coal plants does not imply that one is "moving towards coal". What it is, is the replacement of old, inefficient coal plants with newer efficient coal (and gas) plants that output less CO2. You know, part of this whole "securing the power supply" thing that you seem so fond of. It seems that politicians are realistic enough to recognize that it is better to replace some old infrastructure with newer infrastructure, while the production capacity of even newer and cleaner infrastructure is still underway.

Surely by their very nature distributing the energy distribution methods over a larger area is going to increase the cost of transmission as more cables are laid. In the UK a lot of new cabling is being laid for all the wind farms that are usually coastal or in the middle of nowhere.

If I understand the press release correctly (I don't have the hundred dollars to buy a book to win an internet argument), what the book looks at is the capability of current power generation to react to the variability of some renewable sources while still meeting power demands. Obviously, to install those renewable sources, they have to be connected to the grid. What it shows that is currently possible to expand renewable sources a lot before the variability of their production becomes a problem.

Germany is building more coal power stations because environmentalists wanted renewables instead of nuclear. Renewables are great but are simply not cost effective or likely to be able to generate the majority of demand any time soon.

Completely missing the point. As shown above. Those coal plants were already in planning (or built) even before the decision to abandon nuclear power was made. They are simply a way to meet the aggressive CO2 reduction goals that the German government has set itself.

I have not seen any serious (math-backed) claims from government organizations that renewables can cover existing and future energy demand. Even cover existing demand. So we're discussing a fact that is just not there. Of course, if there were serious statements by governments that renewables can cover the above, I'm all ears.

The now outdated energy plan for 2050 by the German government planned to reduce CO2 output by 40% 2020 and 80% by 2050 in comparison to 1990. This was to be done, among other things by generating at least 80% of electricity with renewables - mostly wind and solar. This was to be done by replacing a lot of the older wind turbines with newer, larger and more efficient turbines in addition to more and more offshore power production. This (pdf - German) was the Energy Concept 2050. It is not completely current anymore because the phase-out of nuclear power is going to occur a lot faster than when it was first made. Oh yes, you did know that Germany had always planned to abandon nuclear power, its just that Fukushima moved the timeframe forward? So the long-term scenario is still current.

Why is your nation planning to build new coal plants then? Stop planning that and plan for renewables instead. That will show more than any words spoken by any politicians.

As I mentioned above, the new coal (and gas) plants are planned to replace older, less efficient and dirtier ones, while solar and wind continues to ramp up. Germany still has massive subsidies for renewables - that will continue - and is forging ahead in renewables. Its one reason why Germany is at the forefront of renewable energy. So yes, we are planning for renewables, its just that it takes a bit of time to replace the energy infrastructure that was build over a number of decades.

I would love to see this book and the methodology they use. I don't mind being wrong, unless, of course, the methodology has some serious flaws in the theoretical assumptions. Intermittent sources require infrastructure construction as well. The idea that you can just use current grids and switch to intermittent sources is not a good one; it would presume that the location of the powerplants in the current network is optimal for renewables as well and you only need to construct renewable powerplants, no cables, no storage, nothing. That's clearcly not possible, so either the study is misunderstood by the reporter or the study is flawed. Seriously, that's just... physics.

See above again: What this study addresses (if I understand correctly) is the problem of addressing the fluctuations in output by intermittent sources with current infrastructure. It means that there is currently a lot of growth potential for renewable sources without endangering electricity supply. Obviously, building those renewable sources will take some investment.