this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

To those of you who propose 100% renewables + storage. In cases with no access to hydro power. How much energy storage do you need? How does it scale with production/consumption? What about a system with 100TWh yearly production/consumption?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Interesting product. Reading about it quickly it seems to have a problem with self discharge. But perhaps they have ironed out that problem. There is no shortage of promising battery news, but there seems to be a problem getting them to mass production. Hoping this one is different.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

EVs with VTG. Problem solved. More importantly, energy production (solar plus wind) and storage (batteries) are completely decentralized, which is a huge security improvement for the grid. It amazes me that a platform that is decentralized doesn't beat the drum for the same for energy production and storage.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How do you generate energy during the winter? Are we going to run HVDC to the Sahara and connect them globally?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Finland has it figured out - see link below.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yes: nuclear plant:

https://en.mercopress.com/2023/05/22/finland-connects-nuclear-plant-to-power-grid-eu-classifies-nuclear-as-sustainable-energy

Over time, Olkiluoto-3 is expected to reduce the need for electricity imports from Russia, Sweden and Norway and lead to lower prices. Olkiluoto-3 will run alongside two existing reactors, eventually becoming Europe's most powerful reactor.

Once regular energy production ramps up in July, the reactor will supply about 14% of Finland's energy at 1,650 megawatts

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is there any more in-depth analysis to show how many EVs would be needed to make this feasible, how this would work with time of day use of power from commutes vs generation from solar power, how long the grid could stay powered this way, impact on consumers range, etc? I think the concept seems simple at first but would it actually be resiliant relying on just EV batteries? A cloudy week could see everyone run out of power, for example.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah at higher latitudes the energy consumption is highest when renewable production is lowest.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

On coldest days in jan and feb the wind production here is nearly zero.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Doesn't energy made out biomass (like wood-fuels) release a lot of CO2 as it's still a carbon source?

Also, in the same article, nuclear energy seems to be pretty high up too (if not higher) and they're building a new reactor, showing that it's not one or the other, but a combination that's probably the best.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Present day carbon cycling is okay. It's when you take captured carbon from millions of years ago and release it without capturing it that has gotten us into trouble.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Geothermal would work, but it is very expensive unless you have a large property or a decent sized pond.

It would still require power from other sources, but would dramatically reduce demand.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Geothermal was trialed and deemed unprofitable. Nuclear power has been serving our baseload needs for 50 years.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A single Tesla powerwall has 13.5kwh of usable energy. An average Tesla car has between 70-100kwh of usable energy. The average American home uses about 30kwh/day (https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3). There are about 141 million houses in the US. There are 275 million personal and commercial vehicles in the US. So there would be plenty of capacity once you replace a significant chunk of those vehicles with EV.

Cloudy weeks don't occur over large areas - if you look at solar or wind production over an entire county or state, for example, it varies very little (that's also the advantage of using both sun and wind - when one is bad the other is typically good). So the solution to intermittency is mass adoption.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

In regards to V2G. Tesla is not even supporting bi-directional charging at this point and it is just now starting to become a bit more common in newer models. It would be interesting to see more detailed example about this. You would also need to include the usage of industry and commercial which as far as I know together account for more than residential usage. How about availability in terms of SOC and being plugged in or not. I think this is a bit more difficult to solve than you are alluding to but I'm happy to be proved wrong.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is a far easier problem and solution than building a nuclear reactor. And it’s utilizing something (EVs) that we need anyway so improved utilization of resources.