I really love the story of technology. Unintended consequences (eg the telephone). Also, how applications from one field affect another (eg precision boring for cannon and artillery was fairly important to the development of pistons that made the steam engine possible).
Of course, many of these consequences aren't foreseen. Go look at sci-fi from the 60s and you'll see flat screens hanging on the wall. This of course happened but flat screens were one of the critical developments for laptops and, more importantly, modern smartphones.
Battery tech is another interesting one. Battery improvements were initially spurred by laptops and then cellphones. A somewhat unforeseen consequence beyond smartphones is that battery tech (along with smartphones) are largely responsible for the development of consumer-level drones.
Electric vehicles are another obvious offshoot.
So one of the big problems with most forms of renewable energy are that they aren't constant. Wind isn't constant. Sunshine obviously isn't (even beyond the day/night cycle). Hydro has ben the one big success story here and is responsible for some of the cheapest electricity in the world where it's suitable.
I feel like the world is one big battery technological advance from a fairly monumental and far-reaching change. Batteries I think are the real missing link in renewable energy (IMHO).
The nice thing about solar in particular is that in a lot of places in the world it's a good option because it doesn't require a lot of expensive infrastructure (ie power lines). Communities can put solar panels near them. I foresee this as being a hugely positive change and I'm happy to see it.
> I feel like the world is one big battery technological advance from a fairly monumental and far-reaching change. Batteries I think are the real missing link in renewable energy (IMHO).
I agree. We are nearing a maturity level in renewable energy, by say 2050, where we will be able to produce vast amounts of extremely cheap electricity with minimal environmental impact – but only in certain locations at certain times. The problem is storing and transmitting that energy.
If I could go back a couple decades and redo my college days, I would be very tempted to focus on battery technology. It does seem to be missing piece to get us the last step in our journey over the last ~200 years of transitioning (worldwide) from an energy-scarce civilization to an energy-abundant civilization.
Having effectively free, effectively infinite energy seems to be on the horizon – not necessarily by 2050 but very possibly by 2100. (I mean for the average person, not industrial/commercial/scientific use.) That will undoubtedly result in monumental, far-reaching changes. But I don't see how we get there without a breakthrough in energy storage.
But who knows, maybe somebody will invent an inexpensive magic cold-fusion energy box that fits in the back of a pickup truck and requires zero maintenance. I'm not holding my breath. :)
Piggybacking, does anyone know where we are with capacitors? Everyone focuses on batteries, but I've always wondered about supercaps. They can't hold a charge for years, but 12-48hrs is possible. Size is not an issue, and I had thought even fancier caps are pretty simple and environmentally friendly. Unlike molten salt and many other storage tech, they have no moving parts.
Obviously the energy density is not incredible, but these are land-based installations we're talking about, not Teslas.
> Go look at sci-fi from the 60s and you'll see flat screens hanging on the wall. This of course happened but flat screens were one of the critical developments for laptops and, more importantly, modern smartphones.
Star Trek: The Original Series; 1966; Electronic Clipboard / Personal Access Display Device
Batteries are also the key missing piece behind self-flying personal transportation drones. The problem of making a self-flying drone is in many ways easier than making a self-driving car, because there's no legacy infrastructure (i.e. human drivers & pedestrians) that you need to deal with. You could create skylanes that are entirely computer-controlled and pack densities of vehicles that would be impossible with manual control. They also travel 50-100% faster than cars and use air-miles (i.e. straight-line distance, not drive-around-obstacles distance), which means that it'd become feasible to live in remote areas like the California coastline and commute to major cities.
Unfortunately, the aerospace people I've talked to have indicated that the energy density of current batteries really isn't practical for commuting, or for planes in general. You're looking at 15-20 min of flight time, which will barely get you across town.
Be careful about lauding hydro. It isn't as green as many think. Depending on the location, the type of land inundated behind the dam, they can 'emit' huge amounts of net carbon as the plant life now under water is no longer sucking it up, and as it decays it emits other nasty stuff. Micro-hydro is better but isn't the pure solution many consider it.
About unforseen consequences. I really enjoyed the original movie Bladerunner; watching it recently, it was interesting to see that while there were ubiquitous video phones, there were no cell phones at all in the movie--flying cars yes, cell phones no.
Using nameplate capacity versus actual delivered kWh is a little misleading. For instance, 1GW of nuclear can out-produce 3-4 GW of solar, and it does so at a constant rate, not correlated with all the other solar farms.
I'm hugely bullish on PV long-term, but it's important for us to keep this sort of thing in mind. And the discussion of the /peak/ output of solar or wind as a percentage of total electrical output is also not terribly helpful.
By the time solar accounts for 10-15% of total energy production on the grid, there will regularly be times when solar is providing almost all the grid's power. But overall, it's still just 10-15%.
In order for solar to displace most of the energy produced on the grid, it's necessary for solar to actually produce 2-3x the actual end-use electricity demand at times, with the output stored in batteries or sometimes just wasted.
And according to my calculations, in order for solar to provide for 100% of the power produced even during winter (without requiring weeks of storage), you're going to need a nameplate capacity approximately 20-30 times the average grid consumption (on an energy basis, oversizing the array by a factor of 3 to 5), and most of the energy will need to be thrown away. This is obviously going to be more expensive per kWh, but this is why a mix of power sources is essential for economic power production, and at high latitudes (like the UK and Germany), this is even more important.
(Note: it is possible to improve that oversizing factor if you have extensive HVDC power lines and hydrogen production, but those things are expensive and PV is cheap, so often it might still make sense to just over-size the array.)
> and most of the energy will need to be thrown away.
I won't speak to the veracity of your numbers. I have no idea your methodology or even if you're qualified to do an analysis here or the quality of your data, so...
But I will point out that the current plan to address this is to repurpose and recycle existing lithium ion battery packs at sclae, while continuing to develop very large electrical energy storage methods.
Very large power storage stations like this actually offer a lot of utility in a variety of scenarios. Not only do they make distributed grids much more reliable offer a facility to ground out excess energy on the grid (helping reduce the impact of solar phenomenon over large-scale transport networks), but they also have a lot of value in disaster recovery scenarios.
Ive never understood why they use nameplate, it should be possible to predict t fairly accurately the yearly output based on latitude or whatever.
Though note that something similar works against solar PV sometimes as well e.g. people will say something like "we use X amount of energy a year, to replace this we need such and such an area of PV.
Often these calculations don't take into account the percentage of coal, gas or oil energy which is thrown away as heat in order to get generate electricity, or move vehicles. (Even when generating heat, electric heat pumps can often do better than 100% by moving it around instead).
That can make PV 3 or 5 times better than it seems. EROEI calculations in particular are bad for this.
I agree, there are some mitigating factors though.
One nice thing about solar in warmer climates is that its peak output is in line with peak air conditioning demands. On top of that if the solar is installed on the building roof it can lower the thermal load on the building. A double win.
Also in a ideal world we would have a world wide grid where solar energy is being routed around to where its needed with much less need for storing for night. Its always sunny somewhere right? There are of course line losses, not sure how that would stack up to battery round trip losses.
Doesn't this assume maintaining existing usage patterns? There could be enough flexibility in workloads that with an economic incentive they will be run at peak production times with only the necessities being turned on at other times.
China is becoming an absolute economic monster. I mean that with no negative connotations. And we're not talking trailing-edge tech here, but leading-edge.
FTA:
“The institution established after the first major oil crisis in 1973 said 165 gigawatts of renewables were completed last year, which was two-thirds of the net expansion in electricity supply. Solar grew by 50 percent, with almost half new plants built in China.”
“In 2016, China was by far the largest electric car market, accounting for more than 40% of the electric cars sold in the world and more than double the amount sold in the United States”
“Mainland China has 37 nuclear power reactors in operation, about 20 under construction, and more about to start construction.
The reactors under construction include some of the world's most advanced, to give a 70% increase of nuclear capacity to 58 GWe by 2020-21. Plans are for up to 150 GWe by 2030, and much more by 2050.”
GDP PPP is a near worthless reference for countries like China and India. India has a billion people living in extreme poverty, with the word extreme not doing the context justice. China still has about half a billion people living in that type of poverty as well. Both of those are semi-masked by the fantasy PPP figures.
PPP is a way of pretending that just because you can afford a Starbucks cup of coffee in Beijing, you're economically equivalent to someone earning $60,000 per year in Frankfurt. Back in reality, there are vast objective economic differences of reality that go with comparing China vs highly developed nations on PPP. Can you afford to travel to Paris or Toronto? Can you afford a BMW or Mercedes (cheap Chinese cars are death boxes on wheels)? Can your savings or income get you out of cities with extreme pollution so you can live better? Do you have access to the kind of healthcare available in Finland or Denmark? What kind of social safety net does your nation provide?
Once you get much beyond comparing hamburger prices, the value of the PPP premise collapses when comparing highly developed nations vs eg China.
To your point RE: the electric car market: It is noteworthy that the GM announcement this past week - that they will be focusing on an "All electric" future - seems to have been a strategic decision made largely because China is pushing the entire auto-market in that direction.
I remember reading an article several years ago about China's economic leadership. At that time it said that it's not quite clear whether or not China leads the U.S., but even if it led it, it probably wouldn't make a big deal out of it, because it doesn't want to have that responsibility of being the most powerful nation on Earth (at least economically).
I think China is starting to become ready to take that leadership role, especially when the U.S. government seems to run around like a headless chicken, arguing about the role of science, or whether or not coal has a future, or that climate change is real, having schizophrenic and increasingly more bully-like foreign policies, and so on.
I'm not particularly looking forward to China becoming the world's leader, because just like the US had a positive influence on other democracies in the past decades, I expect China to have a mainly negative influence on other democracies in terms of human rights and other stuff like that. I'm just saying that this is going to happen, while the U.S. decays.
It also helps that China has 4x the population of U.S., so it's almost as if it's only a matter of time before China has a stronger economy. Well, unless AI does steal everyone's jobs, and then I suppose China would have a bigger problem on its hands than anyone else...
China has 100 cities with a population greater than 1 million. And they are planning to build another 100 cities with 1 million+ people in the next 10 year.
There has been a correlation between cities and civilization. The rise of cities and economic growth/production. And the rise of cities and power.
It happened with ancient civilizations. It happened with europe. It happened with the US. The question is whether this will hold for china and what it will mean for the world.
This is similar to what we did in the US in the 1800s as our economy grew by leaps and bounds. Most of our top universities from stanford to MIT were founded in the 1800s.
Will the european and american model of the past 500 years hold for china? How will they maneuver through the current international order to get the resources they need for their cities and to gain access to markets?
If the model holds, then we are looking at an explosion of science, culture, innovation and growth. But the worrisome part is that europe and american also expanded, stole land, resources and conquered territories.
The story of solar’s growth seems like a big deal now, but it’s nothing compared to a few years from now when costs fall so low that it becomes cheaper to replace a coal or nuclear plant than to continue operating them.
I think that's been an economic reality in the USA for a few years now, though also including natural gas in the tech doing the replacing. The recent EPA document that was intended to support coal and nuclear covered this:
“The draft report finds that since 2002, ‘most baseload power plant retirements have been the victims of overcapacity and relatively high operating cost but often reflect the advanced age of the retiring plants.’
“Overcapacity is a major cause of the turmoil in electricity markets. The report explains that because the growth in electricity demand has flattened since 2008, it is harder for ‘less competitive plants’ to survive. …
“And it doesn’t make sense to keep an uneconomic plant running when you know it’s going to keep losing money.
“In the case of nuclear power, the study notes that vast majority of the plant closure announcements blame plant retirement on ‘unfavorable market conditions.’ And the ‘most unfavorable condition is that the marginal cost of generation for many nuclear plants is higher than the cost of most other generators in the market.’
“Similarly, coal is also hurt by its high marginal cost: ‘[Coal] plants that have retired are old and inefficient units that were not recovering their operations and fuel costs, much less capital cost recovery.'”
That may be starting with the oldest, dirtiest and least efficient powerplants but it's only going to get worse for them as time goes on.
The levelized cost of solar is already less that the fuel and maintenance cost of coal, for many locations. However that’s the levelized cost, which means that it has to be used when the sun is out in order for solar to be competitive.
It’s why the DOE is ignoring the findings of their own baseload reliability study to try to impose coal and nuclear subsidies:
The weird and arbitrary “90 days of fuel onsite” requirement says nothing about reliability, but it is a way to define what coal+nuclear can do (though I wonder if coal plants keep 90 days onsite these days...)
This is looking like the final blow for Western economical dominance unless serious catch up begins. Investing in coal, what a joke!
It won't be easy to compete with a manufacturing powerhouse that practically runs on free energy to provide the world with goods and services. Good luck competing with that!
I'm always glad to hear news about the advancement of solar power, but I don't hear as much about advancement in batteries or storage. The manufacturing of batteries is not a clean and renewable resource, or have I missed some new methods or ways of extracting rare minerals.
The use of the word "rare" seems to be a reliable indicator that people have been exposed to anti-renewable propaganda.
Rare-earth elements are not rare.
"Despite their name, rare-earth elements are – with the exception of the radioactive promethium – relatively plentiful in Earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element at 68 parts per million, or as abundant as copper."
And, further, many batteries and renewable power sources don't even use any Rare-earths.
As to your question, there's lots going on in storage, it wouldn't suprise me if 1/5th of the stories on a renewable tech blog were about progress and breakthroughts in various types of storage.
The article says China was by far the biggest purchaser of new PV.
Any global change skeptics out there who want to defend Trump's claim that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese to undermine the US economy?
Isn't this a bit disingenuous. A bum with a penny finding a dollar would see a faster growth in wealth than bill gates earning $1 billion in capital gains.
Solar is coming off such a low base that any growth will outpace any other fuel.
Well yes, but there is a backstory here of IEA refusing to believe in solar, severely underestimating its growth for every projection over the course of the past decade (assuming linear rather than exponential).
This has had real implications for investments in oil/gas/coal.
"Authorities finally realize infant will grow to adult."
It's not just a small number increasing quickly, it already represents the majority of all new plants coming online: "165 gigawatts of renewables were completed last year, which was two-thirds of the net expansion in electricity supply". Especially in China the solar growth is massive, at the expense of coal.
well why not extend the analogy further? it's worth noting that in this arrangement, the natural is order is the parent eventually dies after a long and possibly painful period of decline, while the child rapidly develops into an adult within 18 years, with the expectation of outperforming the parent by the time it reaches middle-age (35 or so). at which point the cycle repeats and continues.
this is HN, you have to think through your snark or it will snark you back.
That's no surprise. Your infant is likely being fed and cared for. Probably doesn't have to compete with NIMBYs. And it's probably not competing with over-subsidized megacorps for scraps.
[+] [-] cletus|8 years ago|reply
Of course, many of these consequences aren't foreseen. Go look at sci-fi from the 60s and you'll see flat screens hanging on the wall. This of course happened but flat screens were one of the critical developments for laptops and, more importantly, modern smartphones.
Battery tech is another interesting one. Battery improvements were initially spurred by laptops and then cellphones. A somewhat unforeseen consequence beyond smartphones is that battery tech (along with smartphones) are largely responsible for the development of consumer-level drones.
Electric vehicles are another obvious offshoot.
So one of the big problems with most forms of renewable energy are that they aren't constant. Wind isn't constant. Sunshine obviously isn't (even beyond the day/night cycle). Hydro has ben the one big success story here and is responsible for some of the cheapest electricity in the world where it's suitable.
I feel like the world is one big battery technological advance from a fairly monumental and far-reaching change. Batteries I think are the real missing link in renewable energy (IMHO).
The nice thing about solar in particular is that in a lot of places in the world it's a good option because it doesn't require a lot of expensive infrastructure (ie power lines). Communities can put solar panels near them. I foresee this as being a hugely positive change and I'm happy to see it.
[+] [-] Tenhundfeld|8 years ago|reply
I agree. We are nearing a maturity level in renewable energy, by say 2050, where we will be able to produce vast amounts of extremely cheap electricity with minimal environmental impact – but only in certain locations at certain times. The problem is storing and transmitting that energy.
If I could go back a couple decades and redo my college days, I would be very tempted to focus on battery technology. It does seem to be missing piece to get us the last step in our journey over the last ~200 years of transitioning (worldwide) from an energy-scarce civilization to an energy-abundant civilization.
Having effectively free, effectively infinite energy seems to be on the horizon – not necessarily by 2050 but very possibly by 2100. (I mean for the average person, not industrial/commercial/scientific use.) That will undoubtedly result in monumental, far-reaching changes. But I don't see how we get there without a breakthrough in energy storage.
But who knows, maybe somebody will invent an inexpensive magic cold-fusion energy box that fits in the back of a pickup truck and requires zero maintenance. I'm not holding my breath. :)
[+] [-] sliverstorm|8 years ago|reply
Obviously the energy density is not incredible, but these are land-based installations we're talking about, not Teslas.
[+] [-] throwaway1X2|8 years ago|reply
Star Trek: The Original Series; 1966; Electronic Clipboard / Personal Access Display Device
[+] [-] nostrademons|8 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, the aerospace people I've talked to have indicated that the energy density of current batteries really isn't practical for commuting, or for planes in general. You're looking at 15-20 min of flight time, which will barely get you across town.
[+] [-] sandworm101|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] todd8|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Robotbeat|8 years ago|reply
I'm hugely bullish on PV long-term, but it's important for us to keep this sort of thing in mind. And the discussion of the /peak/ output of solar or wind as a percentage of total electrical output is also not terribly helpful.
By the time solar accounts for 10-15% of total energy production on the grid, there will regularly be times when solar is providing almost all the grid's power. But overall, it's still just 10-15%.
In order for solar to displace most of the energy produced on the grid, it's necessary for solar to actually produce 2-3x the actual end-use electricity demand at times, with the output stored in batteries or sometimes just wasted.
And according to my calculations, in order for solar to provide for 100% of the power produced even during winter (without requiring weeks of storage), you're going to need a nameplate capacity approximately 20-30 times the average grid consumption (on an energy basis, oversizing the array by a factor of 3 to 5), and most of the energy will need to be thrown away. This is obviously going to be more expensive per kWh, but this is why a mix of power sources is essential for economic power production, and at high latitudes (like the UK and Germany), this is even more important.
(Note: it is possible to improve that oversizing factor if you have extensive HVDC power lines and hydrogen production, but those things are expensive and PV is cheap, so often it might still make sense to just over-size the array.)
[+] [-] KirinDave|8 years ago|reply
I won't speak to the veracity of your numbers. I have no idea your methodology or even if you're qualified to do an analysis here or the quality of your data, so...
But I will point out that the current plan to address this is to repurpose and recycle existing lithium ion battery packs at sclae, while continuing to develop very large electrical energy storage methods.
A real-life example of this is Tesla's Australian contract (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-power-tesla/tes...) which uh... literally started on twitter as a dare between rich people (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/840032197637685249?lang=...).
Very large power storage stations like this actually offer a lot of utility in a variety of scenarios. Not only do they make distributed grids much more reliable offer a facility to ground out excess energy on the grid (helping reduce the impact of solar phenomenon over large-scale transport networks), but they also have a lot of value in disaster recovery scenarios.
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|8 years ago|reply
Though note that something similar works against solar PV sometimes as well e.g. people will say something like "we use X amount of energy a year, to replace this we need such and such an area of PV.
Often these calculations don't take into account the percentage of coal, gas or oil energy which is thrown away as heat in order to get generate electricity, or move vehicles. (Even when generating heat, electric heat pumps can often do better than 100% by moving it around instead).
That can make PV 3 or 5 times better than it seems. EROEI calculations in particular are bad for this.
[+] [-] SigmundA|8 years ago|reply
One nice thing about solar in warmer climates is that its peak output is in line with peak air conditioning demands. On top of that if the solar is installed on the building roof it can lower the thermal load on the building. A double win.
Also in a ideal world we would have a world wide grid where solar energy is being routed around to where its needed with much less need for storing for night. Its always sunny somewhere right? There are of course line losses, not sure how that would stack up to battery round trip losses.
[+] [-] greedy_buffer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] igravious|8 years ago|reply
FTA:
“The institution established after the first major oil crisis in 1973 said 165 gigawatts of renewables were completed last year, which was two-thirds of the net expansion in electricity supply. Solar grew by 50 percent, with almost half new plants built in China.”
See also:
https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publicatio...
“In 2016, China was by far the largest electric car market, accounting for more than 40% of the electric cars sold in the world and more than double the amount sold in the United States”
And:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...
“Mainland China has 37 nuclear power reactors in operation, about 20 under construction, and more about to start construction. The reactors under construction include some of the world's most advanced, to give a 70% increase of nuclear capacity to 58 GWe by 2020-21. Plans are for up to 150 GWe by 2030, and much more by 2050.”
Economies by GDP PPP:
http://statisticstimes.com/economy/countries-by-projected-gd...
(in billions of $ of course)I'm sure there are lots more examples.
[+] [-] adventured|8 years ago|reply
PPP is a way of pretending that just because you can afford a Starbucks cup of coffee in Beijing, you're economically equivalent to someone earning $60,000 per year in Frankfurt. Back in reality, there are vast objective economic differences of reality that go with comparing China vs highly developed nations on PPP. Can you afford to travel to Paris or Toronto? Can you afford a BMW or Mercedes (cheap Chinese cars are death boxes on wheels)? Can your savings or income get you out of cities with extreme pollution so you can live better? Do you have access to the kind of healthcare available in Finland or Denmark? What kind of social safety net does your nation provide?
Once you get much beyond comparing hamburger prices, the value of the PPP premise collapses when comparing highly developed nations vs eg China.
[+] [-] dfsegoat|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|8 years ago|reply
I think China is starting to become ready to take that leadership role, especially when the U.S. government seems to run around like a headless chicken, arguing about the role of science, or whether or not coal has a future, or that climate change is real, having schizophrenic and increasingly more bully-like foreign policies, and so on.
I'm not particularly looking forward to China becoming the world's leader, because just like the US had a positive influence on other democracies in the past decades, I expect China to have a mainly negative influence on other democracies in terms of human rights and other stuff like that. I'm just saying that this is going to happen, while the U.S. decays.
It also helps that China has 4x the population of U.S., so it's almost as if it's only a matter of time before China has a stronger economy. Well, unless AI does steal everyone's jobs, and then I suppose China would have a bigger problem on its hands than anyone else...
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|8 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/2nFZaSbkf0U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwOBRH56Ic0
[+] [-] eighthnate|8 years ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/mar/20/china-100-cit...
To put that into perspective, europe has 33.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_cities_by_pop...
We have 10.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
There has been a correlation between cities and civilization. The rise of cities and economic growth/production. And the rise of cities and power.
It happened with ancient civilizations. It happened with europe. It happened with the US. The question is whether this will hold for china and what it will mean for the world.
They are building a university every week.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35776555
This is similar to what we did in the US in the 1800s as our economy grew by leaps and bounds. Most of our top universities from stanford to MIT were founded in the 1800s.
Will the european and american model of the past 500 years hold for china? How will they maneuver through the current international order to get the resources they need for their cities and to gain access to markets?
If the model holds, then we are looking at an explosion of science, culture, innovation and growth. But the worrisome part is that europe and american also expanded, stole land, resources and conquered territories.
[+] [-] jonnycomputer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DougWebb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baron816|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|8 years ago|reply
“The draft report finds that since 2002, ‘most baseload power plant retirements have been the victims of overcapacity and relatively high operating cost but often reflect the advanced age of the retiring plants.’
“Overcapacity is a major cause of the turmoil in electricity markets. The report explains that because the growth in electricity demand has flattened since 2008, it is harder for ‘less competitive plants’ to survive. …
“And it doesn’t make sense to keep an uneconomic plant running when you know it’s going to keep losing money.
“In the case of nuclear power, the study notes that vast majority of the plant closure announcements blame plant retirement on ‘unfavorable market conditions.’ And the ‘most unfavorable condition is that the marginal cost of generation for many nuclear plants is higher than the cost of most other generators in the market.’
“Similarly, coal is also hurt by its high marginal cost: ‘[Coal] plants that have retired are old and inefficient units that were not recovering their operations and fuel costs, much less capital cost recovery.'”
That may be starting with the oldest, dirtiest and least efficient powerplants but it's only going to get worse for them as time goes on.
[+] [-] epistasis|8 years ago|reply
It’s why the DOE is ignoring the findings of their own baseload reliability study to try to impose coal and nuclear subsidies:
http://www.utilitydive.com/news/how-does-baseload-power-rule...
The weird and arbitrary “90 days of fuel onsite” requirement says nothing about reliability, but it is a way to define what coal+nuclear can do (though I wonder if coal plants keep 90 days onsite these days...)
[+] [-] bamboozled|8 years ago|reply
It won't be easy to compete with a manufacturing powerhouse that practically runs on free energy to provide the world with goods and services. Good luck competing with that!
[+] [-] Pigo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|8 years ago|reply
Rare-earth elements are not rare.
"Despite their name, rare-earth elements are – with the exception of the radioactive promethium – relatively plentiful in Earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element at 68 parts per million, or as abundant as copper."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_element
And, further, many batteries and renewable power sources don't even use any Rare-earths.
As to your question, there's lots going on in storage, it wouldn't suprise me if 1/5th of the stories on a renewable tech blog were about progress and breakthroughts in various types of storage.
[+] [-] tim333|8 years ago|reply
Maybe you don't hear as much but progress is ongoing. I thought the recent stuff on rechargeable polymer alkaline batteries sounded promising https://www.wired.com/story/bill-joy-finds-the-jesus-battery... Potentially <1/2 the price of Li Ion and without a fire / explosion risk that could make them good for bulk gird storage. Already batteries are starting to compete with gas peaker plants https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/ge-digital-gas-...
[+] [-] jackmott|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hacker_9|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hokkos|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philipkglass|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woodandsteel|8 years ago|reply
Any global change skeptics out there who want to defend Trump's claim that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese to undermine the US economy?
[+] [-] eighthnate|8 years ago|reply
Solar is coming off such a low base that any growth will outpace any other fuel.
[+] [-] lostmsu|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edent|8 years ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/26/solar-po...
Now, the caveat is that was at "solar peak" one afternoon in May.
As I type this, on a grey afternoon, solar is providing 6% of the UK's electricity. See http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
[+] [-] gasgiant|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dagss|8 years ago|reply
This has had real implications for investments in oil/gas/coal.
"Authorities finally realize infant will grow to adult."
[+] [-] Androider|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flachsechs|8 years ago|reply
this is HN, you have to think through your snark or it will snark you back.
[+] [-] lallysingh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Brammarb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] batushka|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]