Comment box Scope: summary Tone: neutral Opinion: none Sarcasm/humor: none This article discusses solar power's rapid growth as a sub-sector in energy as well as some of the technical challenges...
Comment box
Scope: summary
Tone: neutral
Opinion: none
Sarcasm/humor: none
This article discusses solar power's rapid growth as a sub-sector in energy as well as some of the technical challenges it faces in the future.
I'm personally optimistic about renewable energy, especially solar.
According to a new report from Ember, an energy think tank, the world is on track to install 29 percent more solar energy capacity this year — a total of 593 gigawatts — compared to last year, which was already a record year. This is more than one-quarter of the electricity produced by every operating coal plant in the worldcombined. In 2020, the whole world had installed just 760 GW of solar in total.
Several factors have aligned to push solar power installations so high in recent years, like better hardware, economies of scale, and new, ripe, energy-hungry markets. Right now, solar still just provides around 5.5 percent of the world’s electricity, so there’s enormous room to expand.
Well, I live in a pretty mild part of New Jersey, with a pretty beefy, but 15 year old solar system on my roof, but no batteries. I'm a fully electrified, fairly efficient rancher. Electricity...
I don't know exactly how much battery capacity we need in gigawatts
Well, I live in a pretty mild part of New Jersey, with a pretty beefy, but 15 year old solar system on my roof, but no batteries. I'm a fully electrified, fairly efficient rancher. Electricity costs about $0.24/kwh. My bills in the spring through fall range between -$100 and $50, usually evening out come November. Then the dark times of December through February hit and I get a reality check. I'm heated by 2/3 using heat pumps and the remaining 1/3 with electric baseboard. Other than that, almost all of my systems are very efficient. Using my home as a rough benchmark, I'm willing to propagate that to guesstimate the amount of minimum storage needed. This does not account for added demand from electrified vehicles.
Total net use for December through February in 2023 and 2024 was 9,776kwh. This translates to an average of 407kwh per week. Given that it's entirely possible to go for a week with negligible solar generation, I feel like this is a good 'minimum' to have if we're shooting for 100% renewable. There are about 2500 homes in my town, most of which are larger than mine. That's pretty close to 1 GWh of storage capacity needed to mostly power my town for a week in the winter. There are about 3.5 million households in New Jersey. That's 1.4 TWh of storage needed. This does not account for all of the commercial and industrial needs. Nor has any math been done to determine the total solar and wind capacity needed in order to keep that battery topped off most days in the winter when it drains overnight.
Porting that math to PA and NY, with 5.1 million and 7.5 million households, that brings us a total capacity needed for the three states: 6.44 TWh. Current nation-wide capacity is estimated to total at 40 GWh for 2025. If we assume we can get sustained 40% growth (which is currently outpacing current growth rate by a large margin, the link for "double grid capacity" is showing a growth from 31 to 40 from 2024 to 2025.....which is not double), we'll have the nationwide storage capacity at that level in about 16 years....for 3 states, covering about 10% of the population in the USA.
The reality is that when it comes to energy storage, it's going to be much like hydroelectric power...a relatively quick ramp-up and then a rapid plateau as all of the low-hanging fruit is used.
We're going to need a lot of solar power to keep the northeast online in the winter. The amount of build to do that will result in obscene over-generation in the summertime, which means we also need to figure out long-term storage options, which green hydrogen would be a good target.
Comment box Scope: information Tone: neutral Opinion: only in conclusion Sarcasm/humor: none Thanks for this insightful comment. I shared a different article yesterday evening about thermal energy...
Comment box
Scope: information
Tone: neutral
Opinion: only in conclusion
Sarcasm/humor: none
Thanks for this insightful comment.
I shared a different article yesterday evening about thermal energy storage, which I think could make up a large amount of the difference at a much lower cost. Thermal energy would be good for one the "inelastic" uses of energy you mention: heating.
I've seen some interesting contraptions similar to pumped hydro storage that don't involve large bodies of water. What comes to mind is a facility that lifts into the air very large cubes of concrete using excess peak energy, therefore storing its energy as potential energy rather than thermal or electrical energy, and then lowers the cubes to spin a turnbine when that energy is needed by the grid. This is called a gravity battery. The facility I'm thinking of is being developed by a company called EnergyVault.
I don't think that lithium-ion batteries can be the storage solution for everyone, but a combination of different solutions can probably get us to sufficient storage faster than the timeline you mention.
Nobody does. We don't know how much the demand will re-shape itself to match supply of cheap energy, because we don't know how cheap energy will get nor what future innovations will be invented...
I don't know exactly how much battery capacity we need in gigawatts to reach demand in a 100% renewable landscape
Nobody does. We don't know how much the demand will re-shape itself to match supply of cheap energy, because we don't know how cheap energy will get nor what future innovations will be invented that rely on cheap energy and low capex to make the intermittency still profitable.
Actually, we do have some pretty good ideas of what is available to us and what demand is needed. Because the vast majority of household demand is relatively inelastic: Heating and Cooling. Most...
Actually, we do have some pretty good ideas of what is available to us and what demand is needed. Because the vast majority of household demand is relatively inelastic: Heating and Cooling. Most other electrical uses are rounding errors compared to those. Cooling is easier, as the periods it needs to work harder is also peak generation time. Heating is harder, as its both less efficient and is needed during the time when there is the least amount of solar generation.
Odds are we'll get something like I already have, because cheap/free energy isn't a new thing: Baseboard heaters that supercharge several hundred pounds of ceramic block for a thermal battery during the cheap hours which emit that heat slowly throughout the expensive hours. I can tell you with certainty that unless electricity goes to 0 or negative, the hassles involved with using these things is tremendous. Perhaps if it was in my basement/crawlspace and hooked into the main heat pump system it would be less-bad, but essentially you've got to cope with wildly fluctuating temperatures throughout the day. Especially since thermal batteries don't care much if the temps jumped to 70 on a fluke January day, and now it's 95 degrees in your home.
These things have been around forever, they just usually only got installed in places where there were huge difference between daytime and nighttime electric rates.
Comment box
This article discusses solar power's rapid growth as a sub-sector in energy as well as some of the technical challenges it faces in the future.
I'm personally optimistic about renewable energy, especially solar.
I don't know exactly how much battery capacity we need in gigawatts to reach demand in a 100% renewable landscape, but the trajectory is good.
Well, I live in a pretty mild part of New Jersey, with a pretty beefy, but 15 year old solar system on my roof, but no batteries. I'm a fully electrified, fairly efficient rancher. Electricity costs about $0.24/kwh. My bills in the spring through fall range between -$100 and $50, usually evening out come November. Then the dark times of December through February hit and I get a reality check. I'm heated by 2/3 using heat pumps and the remaining 1/3 with electric baseboard. Other than that, almost all of my systems are very efficient. Using my home as a rough benchmark, I'm willing to propagate that to guesstimate the amount of minimum storage needed. This does not account for added demand from electrified vehicles.
Total net use for December through February in 2023 and 2024 was 9,776kwh. This translates to an average of 407kwh per week. Given that it's entirely possible to go for a week with negligible solar generation, I feel like this is a good 'minimum' to have if we're shooting for 100% renewable. There are about 2500 homes in my town, most of which are larger than mine. That's pretty close to 1 GWh of storage capacity needed to mostly power my town for a week in the winter. There are about 3.5 million households in New Jersey. That's 1.4 TWh of storage needed. This does not account for all of the commercial and industrial needs. Nor has any math been done to determine the total solar and wind capacity needed in order to keep that battery topped off most days in the winter when it drains overnight.
Porting that math to PA and NY, with 5.1 million and 7.5 million households, that brings us a total capacity needed for the three states: 6.44 TWh. Current nation-wide capacity is estimated to total at 40 GWh for 2025. If we assume we can get sustained 40% growth (which is currently outpacing current growth rate by a large margin, the link for "double grid capacity" is showing a growth from 31 to 40 from 2024 to 2025.....which is not double), we'll have the nationwide storage capacity at that level in about 16 years....for 3 states, covering about 10% of the population in the USA.
The reality is that when it comes to energy storage, it's going to be much like hydroelectric power...a relatively quick ramp-up and then a rapid plateau as all of the low-hanging fruit is used.
We're going to need a lot of solar power to keep the northeast online in the winter. The amount of build to do that will result in obscene over-generation in the summertime, which means we also need to figure out long-term storage options, which green hydrogen would be a good target.
Comment box
Thanks for this insightful comment.
I shared a different article yesterday evening about thermal energy storage, which I think could make up a large amount of the difference at a much lower cost. Thermal energy would be good for one the "inelastic" uses of energy you mention: heating.
I've seen some interesting contraptions similar to pumped hydro storage that don't involve large bodies of water. What comes to mind is a facility that lifts into the air very large cubes of concrete using excess peak energy, therefore storing its energy as potential energy rather than thermal or electrical energy, and then lowers the cubes to spin a turnbine when that energy is needed by the grid. This is called a gravity battery. The facility I'm thinking of is being developed by a company called EnergyVault.
I don't think that lithium-ion batteries can be the storage solution for everyone, but a combination of different solutions can probably get us to sufficient storage faster than the timeline you mention.
Gravity batteries are certainly interesting, I should explore building one in my house. :)
Nobody does. We don't know how much the demand will re-shape itself to match supply of cheap energy, because we don't know how cheap energy will get nor what future innovations will be invented that rely on cheap energy and low capex to make the intermittency still profitable.
Actually, we do have some pretty good ideas of what is available to us and what demand is needed. Because the vast majority of household demand is relatively inelastic: Heating and Cooling. Most other electrical uses are rounding errors compared to those. Cooling is easier, as the periods it needs to work harder is also peak generation time. Heating is harder, as its both less efficient and is needed during the time when there is the least amount of solar generation.
Odds are we'll get something like I already have, because cheap/free energy isn't a new thing: Baseboard heaters that supercharge several hundred pounds of ceramic block for a thermal battery during the cheap hours which emit that heat slowly throughout the expensive hours. I can tell you with certainty that unless electricity goes to 0 or negative, the hassles involved with using these things is tremendous. Perhaps if it was in my basement/crawlspace and hooked into the main heat pump system it would be less-bad, but essentially you've got to cope with wildly fluctuating temperatures throughout the day. Especially since thermal batteries don't care much if the temps jumped to 70 on a fluke January day, and now it's 95 degrees in your home.
These things have been around forever, they just usually only got installed in places where there were huge difference between daytime and nighttime electric rates.
89 percent drop since 2010 is absolutely insane!