Renewables Are Set To Overtake Gas and Coal By 2027 (computerworld.com) 263
Lucas123 writes: Renewable energy, including solar, wind and hydroelectric will overtake natural gas as an energy source by 2027. According to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, ten years later those same renewables will have surpassed the largest electricity-generating fossil fuel: coal. Solar and wind will account for almost 60% of the $11.4 trillion invested in energy over the next 25 years, according to Bloomberg's New Energy Outlook 2016 report. One conclusion that may surprise, Bloomberg noted, is that the forecast shows no golden age for natural gas, except in North America. As a global generation source, gas will be overtaken by renewables in 2027. The electric vehicle boom will increase electricity demand by 2,701TWh (terawatt hours), or 8% of global electricity demand in 2040. The rise of EVs will drive down the cost of lithium-ion batteries, making them increasingly attractive to be deployed alongside residential and commercial solar systems.
It's tough to make predictions (Score:4, Funny)
title seems to be misleading, at best. (Score:5, Informative)
Title and summary don't agree. There is a difference between "surpass coal and gas by 2027" and "surpass gas by 2027 and surpass coal by 2037".
Even ignoring the date differences, there's a difference between "surpass gas", "surpass coal", and "surpass gas and coal".
And let's not get into the whole base load thing. Gas and solar isn't baseload, but coal is....
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Re:title seems to be misleading, at best. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't buy into the projected increasing amounts of coal usage. As the Chinese discovered, one pays a heavy price burning coal, (pollution of water, soil, air), and India will soon learn this lesson first hand.
Coal in the USA maybe a NOP by 2027, where coal generation peaked near 49% (2007), 33%(2015) [eia.gov] and is still dropping like a rock 31% (April 2016).
As for the so called base-load argument, is a fool's argument, eventually we will need to use renewable's to provide more than 150% of our overall demand, using excess energy production to put Carbon back into the ground. Preferably in the form of Methane(CH4), which we can later tap to stabilize the grid when needed.
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Re:title seems to be misleading, at best. (Score:4, Insightful)
Gas and solar isn't baseload, but coal is....
"Baseload" is defined as the lowest point on the demand curve over a fixed time period, it would be meaningful to this discussion if there was a city somewhere on this planet that had a flat demand curve. Such a city does not exist so "baseload" generators must store electricity in giant batteries called hydroelectric dams. When the batteries are still not enough to meet peak demands they have to fire up the gas turbines. There is absolutely no logical/technical reason why renewables cannot use the same infrastructure to match the supply and demand curves.
Agree, the title is misleading but so is every 20yr economic forecast I've ever seen.
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Pumped hydro (your "giant batteries") serve only a single purpose, which makes them much more expensive.
Than what? Other forms of power storage? The natural gas peaking plant alternative? Those are the only relevant points of comparison.
In the U.S., due to the low cost of gas, they are more expensive than gas peaking plants, but not "much more expensive". In the rest of the world they may be competitive with gas. If the cost of gas increases (due to the environmental damage of fracking perhaps, or the imposition of a carbon tax so that it does not get a free ride) then pumped hydro is likely going to be compe
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It's possible to supply base load and everything else by renewables, it will just take some time to get there.
First you build up your intermittent renewable sources and long distance high voltage DC lines for distribution. Then you replace your relatively modest base load requirements with a mixture of non-intermittent renewable (geothermal, biomass/waste, hydro, ocean thermal etc.) and storage (pumped, battery, compressed gas etc.) Finally you adjust your usage to ease the burden a bit, since for example m
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I can't wait to hear why you think Gas isn't a baseload power source.
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Gas isn't a baseload power source.
Indeed Gas wasn't a base load power source, now it is becoming that in many places.
Re:title seems to be misleading, at best. (Score:4, Informative)
As soon as you produce significant amounts of power with wind or solar, obviously you are replacing traditional base load plants with it.
No, you're not. What you are doing is allowing the base load plants to be idle during times the intermittent plants are generating.
A base load plant must be capable of meeting the grid's minimum demand 24x7x365. Wind and especially solar can never guarantee that.
Re:title seems to be misleading, at best. (Score:4, Insightful)
You are mixing things up :D
A base load plant must be capable of meeting the grid's minimum demand 24x7x365.
No it must not. That is the way how old base load was generated traditionally. Meanwhile it is no longer done that way.
The definition is btw the other way around: we need x% base load!! Solution: we build the cheapest plant thinkable and build enough of them and then let them run close to 100% all year, 24/365.
No where in this question and solution is mentioned that a base load plant needs to run allways like that. You can simply replace them by anything else, if the costs are fine. Bottom line every plant type is "base load capable".
Wind and especially solar can never guarantee that.
They don't need to do that, see: Germany, Portugal, Denmark as a few examples. Neither of them has as many base load plants as they need base load.
What you are doing is allowing the base load plants to be idle during times the intermittent plants are generating.
So they are not running always at 100% nice that you figured that.
Modern grids have basically no base load plants anymore, and future grids definitely wont have them anymore at all. That is a no brainer.
Re:title seems to be misleading, at best. (Score:5, Informative)
Two problems with your statements.
The first is the terminology. Instead of referring to them as "baseload" plants, they are now calling them "portable dispatchable power" and they're in the form of natural gas turbines. So yes, there is still backup "baseload" power generation that is non-renewable. The fact that it may be smaller scale and distributed does not change the fact that it is still non-renewable, serves the baseload needs, and runs off of fossil fuel. They might be more efficient in that they can spin up faster and don't cost as much as idling, say, a nuclear power plant, is the only difference.
The second is that Germany falls back on power from France and the Czech Republic (both mainly nuclear power), for example, to meet their baseload needs. They have a crutch to lean on whenever, as they are totally surrounded by other countries whose grids they are connected to. How's that supposed to work in a country like the USA? Grab power from Mexico when needed? LOL You try to look at Germany as a stand-alone shining example of what the USA is supposed to be, yet when you take Europe as a whole you see that it isn't technically possible for it all to generate power like Germany does.
I just think it's funny how your post talks so adamantly how baseload generation can totally go away but you talk around it and never say how that is supposed to happen.
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serves the baseload needs
It does not serve the baseload need. It serves the load following need.
The second is that Germany falls back on power from France and the Czech Republic (both mainly nuclear power), for example, to meet their baseload needs.
No it does not. That is not base laod, but peak load or load following load.
You don't know what the term "base load" means, hence your are writing nonsense.
How's that supposed to work in a country like the USA? Grab power from Mexico when needed?
By starting with
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Let me explain how "baseload" can go away: Demand pricing and electric cars. Currently, generators try to fit the supply of electricity to the demand. Instead, we should flip that around, and fit the demand to the supply. When the sun is shining, and the wind is blowing, you cut the price. When electricity is scarce, you raise the price. I already have a switch installed on my AC that allows PG&E to shut off my compressor during periods of high demand. In return, they give me a discount on my pow
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They don't need to do that, see: Germany, Portugal, Denmark as a few examples. Neither of them has as many base load plants as they need base load.
No, but that's because they use other countries plants (France, Spain, and Sweden/Norway respectively). Without ties into those other grids, they'd be in trouble. In fact, it's difficult to say one thing or another based on a single country in Europe as our grids have such a high degree of interconnection.
So, they couldn't get away with what they're doing without the rest of us picking up the slack. Denmark and Germany in particular are often pushed into negative pricing, i.e. they have to pay us to get rid
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No, but that's because they use other countries plants (France, Spain, and Sweden/Norway respectively).
Not for base load. Why would they? Hint: base load in Germany is about 40% of peak. To be required to import base load would mean Germany has lost 60% of ist power production capability (and more, as we have something like 30% -40% overproduction capacitiy)
Denmark and Germany in particular are often pushed into negative pricing, i.e. they have to pay us to get rid of their excess electricity. Likewise whe
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No, you're not. What you are doing is allowing the base load plants to be idle during times the intermittent plants are generating.
But there's no requirement for the base load to be provided by a designated base load plant. Base load can be provided by a combination of solar, wind, hydro, and whatever would be otherwise designated as a peaker, assuming the combined cost is acceptable. There are no separate circuits in the grid for base load plants and other plants. Traditionally, it has been the case that some plants were designated like that, but that's simply because that was deemed convenient and the consequences of pushing megatonn
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A base load plant must be capable of meeting the grid's minimum demand 24x7x365.
Not at all. If you can guarantee enough intermittent renewable for 90% of the year and only need that extra supply for a predictable 10%, you can keep that plant offline most of the time. Obviously it helps if the 10% is in one or two stints, and you design your plant to support starting and stopping a few times a year (which isn't that hard, all plants need to stop for periodic maintenance anyway).
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Not at all. If you can guarantee enough intermittent renewable for 90% of the year and only need that extra supply for a predictable 10%, you can keep that plant offline most of the time.
The problem is that no one has any financial incentive to build that 90% idle plant. The power company can't just raise rates to pay for it. The PUC (which answers to voters) won't tolerate that, and the shareholders won't support it. Consumers don't want higher prices. Taxpayers are unwilling to subsidize it. If grid prices go up, more people switch to rooftop solar, leaving the grid with stranded assets, but yet increasing the need for idle capacity (e.g. on very cloudy days).
The problem is not techn
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Hydro is a renewable, so clearly something is wrong in your understanding.
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Tidal is also 365, and with various kinds of pumped power systems, you can effectively achieve the same effect even with wind and solar.
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I'm not against renewable approaches, they are the future of power, possibly along side of fusion if we can make that work. I just think it is important to understand all of the benefits/drawbacks
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We should speed this up (Score:5, Insightful)
I see no reason why polluting industries like (oil/gas companies) should be subsidized at all. Frankly, we should be taxing them based on how much pollution they emit and how damaging it is. We are eventually going to have to remove CO2 from the air and it's going to be a pricey project. We might as well start saving money for it now.
Re:We should speed this up (Score:4, Interesting)
Just as long as renewables ALSO don't get any subsidies. I would note that the pollution for wind and solar is remote from the operational location: smelting and refining the rare earths for magnets and solar panels isn't exactly what you would call a "green" process. . .
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I'd be good with that especially here in Ontario. When the whole "green energy" thing started, they were paying 0.87kWh for solar and wind. It's about 2/3's to 1/2 that now, but it's still driving the peak price for electricity through the roof. Compared to nuclear, hydro-electric, coal or natural gas which was paid 0.0005-0.0083 for subsidies.
Re:We should speed this up (Score:4, Informative)
And smelting and refineing the materials for a coal plant or a water turbine, is green?
Actually in civilized countries processing of raw materials is regulated and basicaly non poluting.
Solar Panels don't use rare earthes btw ...
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Subsidies are there to keep energy prices low for consumers and industry, and to encourage the growth of the right type of generation when there are cheaper but undesirable alternatives.
Also, solar doesn't require rare earth magnets and are actually quite clean if produced using modern processes. And before you say it, even China has to use those cleaner processes if you force them to, like the EU has.
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Subsidies do not reduce prices; the costs are still there, you're just paying for it in your taxes instead of at the pump/meter. The stick in the eye is, with subsidies you're paying for it whether you use it or not.
That said, the benefit of subsidies is as you say; to foster growth by hiding the true costs and making the sticker price more appealing, and that is not inherently a bad thing.
=Smidge=
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Just as long as renewables ALSO don't get any subsidies.
Why not? They are not intrinsically polluting and can be made without polluting the environment. Fuels on the other hand are intrinsically polluting and cannot be made without polluting the environment.
I would note that the pollution for wind and solar is remote from the operational location: smelting and refining the rare earths for magnets and solar panels isn't exactly what you would call a "green" process. . .
Smelting and refining can be done in a 100% "green" manner using electricity. The fact that it isn't done this way in China is a good reason to impose a pollution tax on imported goods from China. This tax would allow US companies to compete again Chinese companies that don't have to follow US regulation.
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"I cannot be held accountable for the things I say or do."
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They're subsidized because, as it turns out, modern information-based economies come to a screeching halt when the power goes out unexpectedly, especially for more than 90 seconds. Same reason we do silly things like subsidize agriculture. What do you mean, you can't go an entire winter without eating? You said you wanted to remove subsidies....
I'm sure that those in the great lakes region who rely on electric heat in the winter to keep from freezing to death disagree with your ideas of introducing
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Your post would make sense if reliable grids with lots of renewable energy were impossible. As we know they are possible, you will have to explain how that is nonsense before your point holds any water.
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I see no reason why polluting industries like (oil/gas companies) should be subsidized at all.
Because jewbs and economy that's why. But no seriously, take away all the subsidies and watch the industry rock your world especially all those lovely knockon effects to most other industries as a result of lost energy supply or an upset of the energy price.
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You can't be that stupid, that has to be a deliberate attempt to mislead the ignorant. CO2 is constantly removed from the atmosphere. There's a certain amount of elasticity to the comparative rates of CO2 generation and removal, but to a first order approximation, if all man-made CO2 generation (not including breathing) stopped, the atmospheric levels of CO2 would return to pre-industrial levels fairly quickly (a small number of years) by natural pr
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...t to a first order approximation, if all man-made CO2 generation (not including breathing) stopped, the atmospheric levels of CO2 would return to pre-industrial levels fairly quickly (a small number of years) by natural processes.
"a small number of years" means on the order of a hundred years. Oddly, there isn't a well-defined lifetime, because there are many competing processes of absorption and reemission. About 20-35% remains in the atmosphere after equilibration with the ocean, with a lifetime of 2-20 centuries; and isn't fully removed until it's converted into calcium carbonate, with a time scale of 3 to 7 thousand years. Reference: http://www.annualreviews.org/d... [annualreviews.org]
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Thank you for letting us know you have trouble understanding this, or that you'd rather let someone with vested interests at odds with your own to speak for you. Wonderful stuff. You are a real treasure. Such an intellect, such a waste.
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Thank you for letting us know you have trouble understanding this, or that you'd rather let someone with vested interests at odds with your own to speak for you. Wonderful stuff. You are a real treasure. Such an intellect, such a waste.
Yup, just the kind of reply I expected.
Content-free ad hominem.
Slashdot never fails to disappoint in that regard.
Stay classy!
Strat
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My reply was for people reading your post - you are clearly already lost. I think that is a far more classy endeavour than misrepresenting science in order to make some pseudopolitical or pseudointellectual point. I'll say it again: You are terrible at this. You don't even understand the basics of what's being discussed. It's like if we were talking about the best way to make a car go faster, and you said "improving the engine is a terrible idea because daisies are French, bamboo sandwiches are bad for
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Well if we really intend to freeze the global climate at this present state we will also need to adjust the 'wobble' of the planet's axis ...
The Milankovich processes (i.e., the cause of "ice ages") happen on much longer time scales. The problem with anthropogenic global warming is not that it is changing the climate per se-- the climate has changed before-- but that it is changing the climate on a very fast time scale.
I do agree, however, that it's a good idea to avoid the onset of the next glaciation. The good news is that it looks like we've already accomplished that.
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I see no reason why polluting industries like (oil/gas companies) should be subsidized at all. Frankly, we should be taxing them based on how much pollution they emit and how damaging it is. We are eventually going to have to remove CO2 from the air and it's going to be a pricey project. We might as well start saving money for it now.
Removing CO2 from air would kill all plant life.
Dude, you need to get with the program. CO2 is a dangerous pollutant that kills EVERYTHING!
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The dose makes the poison
- Paracelsus.
Misrepresenting "the other side"'s argument is never a wise idea, especially if "the other side" is supported by the scientific method, and decades of research. All you'll do is expose the superficial nature of your own argument, hurting both it and you in the process.
Too little, too late (Score:2)
Too little, too late humaaaans!
Ban Something, And It Will Be "Surpassed" (Score:2)
Well, obviously. Aren't there efforts to make coal "illegal"?
Extrapolation (Score:2)
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I like how the summary also suggests that battery costs will always decrease. I would say that battery costs will decrease until battery production is inevitably consolidated, then battery prices will increase as demand increases.
I don't understand why analysts always forget that; battery production is an industry which has a fairly high barrier to entry (environmental regulation, high capital requirements, etc.) so it's not an industry in which competition can keep increasing to keep prices low as battery
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We already have really great batteries for cars. See, what you do is store the energy in hydrogen. But just storing hydrogen is hard because it's either a non-energy-dense gas or a cryogenic liquid, so what you do is simply add some carbon to it so that it's liquid at normal temperatures and pressures. Then you can simply pump this "hydr
Warning: 10 Years From Now (Score:2)
Many events are perpetually 10 years from now. Diabetes cures, global collapse for various reasons, commercial fusion reactors, peak oil. My BS detector goes off for any dramatic prediction 10 years in the future.
In theory (Score:2)
It's a theory and has about the same validity as predicting global temperatures for the next ten years. Once the reality of removal of subsidies and replacement costs takes hold, cheaper sources will be back.
By 2027?.. (Score:2)
By 2027? I wonder, if we'll have the flying car by then...
This reminds me of a tale about one ancient prankster [wikipedia.org], who promised a local ruler to teach a donkey to read — in 20 years (in exchange for room, board, and pay). Asked by a friend, if he is not afraid to fail — and face the consequences of the ruler's anger — he replied: "In 20 years either the donkey, or the ruler, or myself will die."
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Not really.
Large scale maybe, but if every home could provide 75% of their load through local solar panels during a hot summer day then the overall grid will be better. As the usage wouldn't spike as much.
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Question is, is there enough factory capacity and available rare earths to MAKE sufficient solar panels to do so ?
Logistics is always the tough part of the solution.
Capacity is a trailing resource (Score:3, Interesting)
Question is, is there enough factory capacity and available rare earths to MAKE sufficient solar panels to do so ?
Factory capacity is an adjustable resource and if the demand is there the factory capacity will follow. There are plenty of rare earth minerals available. We aren't actually utilizing much of the capacity available but if solar panel production scaled sufficiently it would become economically viable to open up more mines. The US has substantial rare earth reserves as do a few other places but there currently isn't enough demand to justify reopening the mines at this time.
Logistics is always the tough part of the solution.
My background is in industrial en
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Ah, but what of the pollution costs of rare earth mining and refining ? **MY** background is as a geologist. Mining and cracking rare earths is a rather energy-intensive and polluting process, as is semiconductor manufacture. I can't speak to the costs of making rare-earth magnets for wind power generators, but the pollution tail of mining and refining applies there as well. . .
All power sources generate some pollution (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, but what of the pollution costs of rare earth mining and refining ?
Probably substantial and it should be factored into the cost of any products that use them. My guess is that the pollutants that result from such refining are substantially easier to mitigate than the CO2 and other crap that spews from every fossil fuel power plant, mine and transport. If for no other reason than scale. I'm no expert so I could be wrong but I doubt it. The amounts of rare earth minerals needed for a typical solar panel is minute. Compare this to the (literally) tons of coal burned for every human on earth it seems improbably that the pollution footprint for the rare earth mining and use would be greater than the footprint for coal mining and use.
I don't think anyone who understands the technology is arguing that there is no pollution from wind or solar. There clearly is. But it also seems clear from the available data that it is an improvement. We're looking for least-worst here. There is no useful form of power without some drawbacks. Even photosynthesis has some negative implications in certain circumstances. Where the problem lies is that some forms of energy (particularly fossil fuels) aren't realizing even close to the full cost of the pollution they generate. It's a tough problem. The solutions are mostly straightforward (taxes mostly) but politically that is very difficult to realize.
Silicon solar cells don't need rare earth minerals (Score:3)
Ah, but what of the pollution costs of rare earth mining and refining ? **MY** background is as a geologist.
... and not a semiconductor engineer. Silicon solar cells (and for that matter, the rest of the glass-encapsulated solar array) don't require rare earth materials.
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Unlike coal mining and petroleum drilling and fracking, which are 100% clean and beneficial to the environment.
Ever visited West Virginia? Kentucky?
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Or regulatory improvements are needed to solve the mis-pricing of fossil fuels and reveal how uncompetitively expensive they are.
Political problems (Score:2)
Or regulatory improvements are needed to solve the mis-pricing of fossil fuels and reveal how uncompetitively expensive they are.
Exactly. This is actually what should happen first. Unfortunately it's such a political hot potato that it's really hard to make progress. Worse it has all sorts of geo-political implications too. No country wants to be the only one to pay full price for their fossil fuels because their ability to compete economically would be sunk.
Fossil fuels should be a lot more expensive than they currently are. Frankly, solar would be extremely competitive today if we adjusted to price for fossil fuels to include
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Solar Panels don't use rare earths.
And the answer is yes anyway ... producing solar panels is one of the fastest growing industries (not in the USA ofc)
Commercial rooftops are wasted space (Score:5, Insightful)
Large scale maybe, but if every home could provide 75% of their load through local solar panels during a hot summer day then the overall grid will be better. As the usage wouldn't spike as much.
I've wondered for a long time why we don't have every commercial building rooftop covered in solar panels. Particularly any building that utilizes air conditioning. It's just wasted space right now. Rather than put the panels in fields somewhere, use the space we already have for something productive.
I realize there are some economic and technical hurdles but in principle it's insane not to use solar panels on rooftops wherever possible. Install some battery systems and smarts to the grid to distribute the power adequately.
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It's mainly lack of understanding of the technology (plus some wilful ignorance) and lack of interest in spending the money up front for savings a few years down the line. Also, many people are afraid to go near their roofs for fear of discovering expensive problems that need fixing, and would rather just wait until there is a sudden failure and maybe hope they can claim on the insurance.
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Mostly for the same reason commercial buildings aren't covered in rooftop gardens in order to supply food to the cafeteria downstairs. It doesn't make any sense to the people who actually have to allocate their scarce resources toward accomplishing useful things.
When you say economic hurdles, what you really mean is "This doesn't make any financial sense to do, and it would cause a massive waste of reso
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Mostly for the same reason commercial buildings aren't covered in rooftop gardens in order to supply food to the cafeteria downstairs. It doesn't make any sense to the people who actually have to allocate their scarce resources toward accomplishing useful things.
Except you're wrong. Right now, solar panels are actually cheaper than roofing per square meter.
The reason it isn't done is simply the inertia of the existing technology.
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Large scale maybe, but if every home could provide 75% of their load through local solar panels during a hot summer day then the overall grid will be better. As the usage wouldn't spike as much.
Sure, and how about the winter? Spring? Fall? You know in places like Canada where the vast majority of our winters are overcast, same with the spring, fall is hit or miss. When windmills don't work because the winds are so high that they'd cause damage. In some parts of the world renewables are a pipe dream and only work when there's something else(mainly nuclear, coal or hydro-electric in Canada) there to back up the energy that's not produced when the environment itself doesn't cooperate.
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When windmills don't work because the winds are so high that they'd cause damage.
When wind speeds are so high that wind mills don't work, you have different problems than lack of electricity.
Hint: I suggest to read till what speeds wind mills actually do operate. And then check how often you have a storm that covers whole Canada that exceeds those speeds. I would wager it is already impossible to even have a storm that big, regardless of wind Speed.
In some parts of the world renewables are a pipe dream and
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When wind speeds are so high that wind mills don't work, you have different problems than lack of electricity.
You mean besides reality? Well I sure don't know what that would be.
Hint: I suggest to read till what speeds wind mills actually do operate. And then check how often you have a storm that covers whole Canada that exceeds those speeds. I would wager it is already impossible to even have a storm that big, regardless of wind Speed.
Well let's see, depending on the site they can stop producing power here between 35-50km/h, how often do that happen? Depends on where you are of course. Alberta? BC? Quite often. Ontario? You near the lakes, areas like around Hamilton or London? Top of a hill where they like to place them? Well whatja know that's fairly often. Can't of course forget during severe weather too, and in a populous area like Southern Ontario, those sudd
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We all know that wind speeds can reach those numbers, but unless it happens across a wide enough region, not all turbines will be affected. A good grid with decent dispersion of turbines mean it's very possible to get a usefully-stable baseload from wind.
You either didn't understand his point or you'd rather misrepresent it to score some quick vacuous "points". Neither is particularly fetching.
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So what you are saying is that we should try to control nuclear reactions and waste safely, something that historically we haven't been all that good at, instead of trying to solve the seemingly much easier problem of building high wind proof windmills and distributing them widely enough and with some storage to mitigate most of the intermittency problems.
Re:Frankly (Score:4, Insightful)
Your right, installing solar panels north of a certain latitude is just nuts, you know like Germany, that's at the latitude as Quebec and cloudy all the time, it would be just stupid to install solar panels there.
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> You know in places like Canada where the vast majority of our winters are overcast, same with the spring, fall is hit or miss.
You've clearly never actually bothered to look a solar resource map, have you?
Canada has some of the best solar resources for its latitude. Calgary, for instance, has a solar resource not much lower than Mohave. Compare to southern German or Switzerland and we're downright balmy.
> When windmills don't work because the winds are so high that they'd cause damage.
And again, you
Citation please (Score:2)
The inconsistency of solar and wind will do nasty things to our electric grid if much more is added.
Really? You're an expert in engineering of electric grids? You have clear data on how there is no way to mitigate any adverse effects of increased solar and wind power? You have unambiguous evidence that a distributed and smarter grid is somehow impossible? I've never seen any credible argument that proves we couldn't substantially increase the amount of wind and solar we use but maybe you have information the rest of us do not?
Really we should be developing more hydro and nuclear.
How do you propose to seriously increase the use of hydro given that most of
Re:Citation please (Score:4, Interesting)
So long as "smart grid" isn't like "smart bomb", ie. yeah it's better, but innocents still die, as it were. The so-called "renewables" can help in some places, but not enough to really make a difference? ie. replace fossil fuels. And it is up to the enthusiasts for renewables to show that they could. I want my green paradise Earth as much as anyone. And humanity is like a cancer that will keep eating everything. So unless renewables actually do work, people will simply keep using coal or whatever they can afford, and nobody can stop that. It isn't a question of whether people are willing to get with the program, it is that when people are stressed, they'll resort to whatever means they can, and if that means completely abandoning green initiatives, then they'll do that. So the first question is just, do renewables actually work to replace base load? It'll only make it harder later if they don't. It is up to champions of renewable energy to SHOW that they can.
Baseload myths (Score:3)
So the first question is just, do renewables actually work to replace base load?
Some renewables already do work identically to base load sources (hydro, geothermal, solar thermal, etc) so to some degree the answer is clearly yes. The other arguments are more nuanced but also at the end are a clear yes.
With sufficient scale, more variable renewables like wind and solar effectively load balance themselves by being geographically dispersed. The wind is always blowing somewhere and the sun is always shining somewhere during the day. As long as you can transmit the power where it is need
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So the first question is just, do renewables actually work to replace base load? It'll only make it harder later if they don't. It is up to champions of renewable energy to SHOW that they can.
For residential base load they certainly can. Otherwise this [homepower.com] or this [offgrid-electric.com] wouldn't be a thing. For commercial base load, that will depend on whether or not the required amount of uninterruptible heavy industrial processes exceeds the amount of available hydro power backed by the usual wind and photovoltaic. Given the size of the list of, for instance, wafer manufacturers [wikipedia.org], this seems at least ball park possible. Figuring out an alternative process for manufacturing cement will probably be tricky, since powder
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Maybe disrupting the grid is a good idea.
Destabilize the grid enough and the demand for self-sufficiency grows, most importantly increasing the demand for home energy storage systems, both dropping their prices and and improving them. This would probably also drive an improvement in home energy efficiency and related technologies, like smart panel boards that can do intelligent load prioritization and shedding.
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Not only biased, looking for investor money.
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Re:Expect the same (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's just that pretending climate change doesn't exist has been succesfully made part of conservative identity, just like being anti-abortion and anti-gay is part of evangelical identity. Some believers rationalize the dogma through conspiracy theories, some by re-interpreting the data, but the real reason is that enough lobbyists told them that people like them believe climate change doesn't exist.
It's actually a pretty fascinating view into the human psyche.
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He wants to re-establish coal, and leave the Paris deal.
He is just saying whatever will win him votes, and this is a great issue for him to go anti-establishment. Coal is big in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. He can't get to 270 without Ohio. Republicans haven't won Pennsylvania since 1988, but anything could happen this year. As James Carville once said: "Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between."
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Nonetheless coal has been supplanted by natural gas and renewables are getting more and more cost efficient.
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Sure, but what is the solution then? Subsidize pollution? Pay the coal mines not to produce, like the Farm Bill does with corn growers?
To be honest, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for these "whole communities being wiped out." Maybe they should have thought about that possibility before basing their entire economy on one industry.
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Sure, but what is the solution then?
By far the best solution is to give the coalminers financial incentives to pack up and move somewhere with jobs. In the long run, that will be much cheaper than putting them on welfare, or trying to move manufacturing or service jobs into these remote areas. As miners move away, the secondary economy will also contract, and the number of pro-coal voters will decline.
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Keep producing coal? No. We need to wean ourselves off coal and other fossil fuels.
But neither can we, with a stroke of a pen, wipe out whole communities. It's funny, that I, as a laissez-faire capitalist have a problem with this while so many progressives who pretend to have concern with the plight of the less fortunate think nothing of ruining lives. (I'm not saying that's your position - but I have
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No, that's not even slightly true. Coal mining has always been a horrible, polluting, dangerous business. Everyone involved with it has known -- or should have known -- for decades that it's unsustainable in the long run not only due to government recognition of its environmental impact (which itself has been a long time coming) but also the simple economics and the fact that mines are eventually deplet
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So every other community has to suffer because some people's dead-end careers need to be propped up? If the market is moving away from coal then it's moving away from coal. A more functioning country would have safety nets for the affected workers and a system of retraining.
Re:lets wait what happens if Trump gets president (Score:5, Insightful)
Coal isn't being destroyed by the stroke of a Pen. Fracking is destroying coal. The new coal regulations aren't even into effect yet and coal has already been devastated by competition with gas. Coal has gotten a free pass for nearly 300 years to dump uranium, mercury and dozens of other heavy metals all over our cities and crops. It's high time that changed, regardless of the impact to the industry. There is so much mercury in fish these days that you probably shouldn't even eat it.
What you see with Trump is selling the narrative that the coal companies would like to see sold. That is the idea that government regulations are destroying their industry, not competition with cheap gas.
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Just repeating these memes endlessly isn't going to help your cause. 7 in 10 Americans dislike the man, he's managed to completely destroy his chances in many battleground states. He's an inept and emotionally unstable man who, after November, will disappear, leaving the GOP fractured.
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You're right. Let's not even bother with the election because absolutely nothing can change between a poll taken in June, and an election in November. Let's just crown Hillary now!
Wait, who's the idiot again? I'm thinking it's you.
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I didn't know Karl Rove had a slashdot account.
TRUMP STRONG, MAKE AMERICA MUCH STRONG! (Score:2)
It's gonna be classy [urbanghostsmedia.com] and it's gonna be HUUUUUUGGGEEEE [businessinsider.com], dripping in gold and marble.
And no loser poor people, anywhere. [google.com]
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Because coal is a cheap and dirty way to get power. At one time the US was mainly powered by coal - that's changed. At one time, China was mainly powered by coal - that's changing. Cheap electricity (which you get from coal) allows your economy as a whole to grow and improve, allowing for cleaner power installations in the future. It's a stepping stone.
The best way to lower use of coal is to grow and improve economies to where the higher installation and operation costs of non-coal based power can be t
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Overall, the problem is that your post is about glib generalizations about an issue for which the real world details are complicated. Even a statement like "Aside from hydroelectric, coal is currently the cheapest source of electricity" isn't as simple as it seems. The price of electricity depends on where you are and when you want it. In most of the US, for example, nobody builds coa