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His Divine Shadow posted:What renewables really need is storage, cheap, scalable energy storage. Still really doesn't solve the issue, because either you are charging storage or you are supplying the grid. What solar and wind really needs is something OTHER than gas to back it, like fission. As well as fission can do stuff like hydrogen production or desalination when not providing grid stability. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Jan 10, 2022 |
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Jan 10, 2022 17:00
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Fusion is promising future tech but trying to compare numbers is purely hypothetical. A terawatt fusion plant is just as plausible as a gigawatt one, but the latter would simply be improved fission whereas the former would bootstrap a post-scarcity economy.
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Jan 10, 2022 17:32
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CommieGIR posted:Still really doesn't solve the issue, because either you are charging storage or you are supplying the grid. What solar and wind really needs is something OTHER than gas to back it, like fission. Decarbonising solely with renewables and storage means overbuilding renewables so you can meet demand and charge at the same time. Nukes help with constant demand, but aren't physically necessary, only probably economically necessary. The equation is shifting towards fewer nukes and more storage, though.
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Jan 10, 2022 17:59
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Aethernet posted:Decarbonising solely with renewables and storage means overbuilding renewables so you can meet demand and charge at the same time. Nukes help with constant demand, but aren't physically necessary, only probably economically necessary. The equation is shifting towards fewer nukes and more storage, though. I don't think Storage is ever going to get there. And given that the shift is mostly towards 'Gas backups' rather than storage, the idea that nukes are unnecessary just feels a little premature.
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Jan 10, 2022 18:43
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Aethernet posted:Decarbonising solely with renewables and storage means overbuilding renewables so you can meet demand and charge at the same time. Nukes help with constant demand, but aren't physically necessary, only probably economically necessary. The equation is shifting towards fewer nukes and more storage, though. I feel there's some citations needed here. Especially when storage may require increasingly exotic/rare earth elements or intensive complex production methods that it just may be economically infeasible at the scale your proposing; at least a scale that makes a private market for solar production difficult to sustain because the demand for de facto megaprojects skews the market. Additionally NIMBYism is still going to be a potent concern even with incentives. The fact is in terms of spatial requirements, a nuclear plant, either a hypothetical fusion plant facility or a nuclear plant; takes up a relatively small amount of space for a large amount of production. While renewable, while "cheap" (I'm not sure if their low cost accounts for the environmental impact of their material components though) take up either a lot of space, potentially disrupt increasingly fragile ecosystems, or are geographically bound with diminished effectiveness in some areas. All the while humanity's desire for energy continues to increased by percentages every year, first as a natural result of the equation of population growth and then as a result of rising standards of living; of which mandates for more efficient energy consumption only slow this down so much; you're not sustaining a Kardeschev 1.0+ civilization on renewables alone. The premium on space for renewables is going to be colliding head first on the demand for space for humans to live and to communte. Nukes are just vastly more practical, can go anywhere, and don't require hypothetical future tech for transmission. And even then factoring in hypothetical future tech, fusion just makes it so much vastly more efficient. When considering practicalities and looking ahead at the next couple of decades currently renewables are expanding mostly at the rate of free market economics+government initiatives and subsidies; a good rate but not something at a scale or speed that's going to see human civilization massively reorienting their power grids for; this isn't like a choice; its a matter of economic trends that if like the first successful excess Q energy producing fusion reactor comes online mid 30's then our first commercial plant is probably like mid 40's when renewables probably growing impressively aren't exceeding the demand curve from economic and population growth and can be slotted in without massive and disruptive changes to the grid. If we assume that progress is made on storage they probably just aren't going to be made at a rate where nukes aren't a useful solution.
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Jan 10, 2022 18:44
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Raenir Salazar posted:
It matters a *great deal* whether your Q is > 1 when considering all the power you're putting into the reactor, vs. considering only the actual energy you're putting into the plasma. Lots and lots of press releases talk about only the latter, but it's in fact the former that matters for commercializing fusion reactors. (Ideally, you want infinite Q: the fusion reaction is keeping your plasma hot enough to keep fusing, without having to supplement it with RF or particle injection.)
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Jan 10, 2022 18:47
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QuarkJets posted:The problem is that solar power isn't enough on its own, we need basically all green technologies on deck: solar, wind, fission, geothermal, etc. And hopefully some day fusion South Australia did pretty well with solar/wind and energy store and they did it quickly. Energy storage would be a good thing to invest in. Since you don’t have to worry about kWh/kg, the focus should be on cost and longevity.
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Jan 10, 2022 19:09
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VideoGameVet posted:South Australia did pretty well with solar/wind and energy store and they did it quickly. South Australia is doing a lot of good stuff. But they still back it with Natural Gas. That had to be replaced, and I don't think storage is going to do it. The other issue is South Australia has one of the lowest demands versus other Australian states:  Red is Gas, Green is Wind for SA https://www.sa.gov.au/topics/energy...wer%20stations. You could probably replace the 202MW of Gas with Storage, but all these other guys? Not likely.
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Jan 10, 2022 19:14
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CommieGIR posted:I don't think Storage is ever going to get there. And given that the shift is mostly towards 'Gas backups' rather than storage, the idea that nukes are unnecessary just feels a little premature. Happy to  that in 2030 a mixed portfolio of RES plus storage will be cheaper for an equivalent annual and intraday load factor than a GW-scale nuke.I'd like to pretend that in 2030 I'll have better things to do than post on a dead gay comedy forum, but I'm pretty sure that's not true.
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Jan 10, 2022 19:35
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Aethernet posted:Happy to France currently generates at about 4c/kwhr (59 euroes per mwhr) for its nuclear. South Australia is 37.79/kwhr or 5,000 Australian Dollars per Mw/hr at its peak in July, and then negative at one point, now its rising again.: https://www.aer.gov.au/communication/wholesale-electricity-prices-above-5000-per-mwh-in-south-australia https://theconversation.com/factche...icity%20prices. By all means, dream big. And no I'm not going to enforce that toxx. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Jan 10, 2022 |
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Jan 10, 2022 19:46
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CommieGIR posted:France currently generates at about 4c/kwhr (59 euroes per mwhr) for its nuclear. South Australia is 37.79/kwhr or 5,000 Australian Dollars per Mw/hr at its peak in July, and then negative at one point, now its rising again.: https://www.aer.gov.au/communication/wholesale-electricity-prices-above-5000-per-mwh-in-south-australia It's a little gauche to compare average prices with peak prices, but not to worry I can do it too:  Peak French price today was e316/MWh because France is horribly exposed to the current global gas price crisis because it uses gas as mid merit plant. Because its legacy nukes don't ramp well. Look at the following:  French prices are currently the same as the nuke-hating Germans. Let's see what the cheapest portfolio for new build generation in 2030 turns out to be. NB: you should've used today's peak price in South Australia, which is well above AUS$10,000/MWh because they haven't built enough batteries yet.
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Jan 10, 2022 21:03
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VideoGameVet posted:South Australia did pretty well with solar/wind and energy store and they did it quickly. South Australia has done pretty well, but they aren't actually decarbonized and are uniquely well-suited to solar/wind. Someplace like New York is going to have a much harder time pulling that off. I have been very enthusiastic about the use of HVDC to send solar power from the SW deserts to the rest of the country but it has been made clear to me over the last 20 years that this is actually a lot harder than it sounds and may actually be much harder than building a bunch of nuclear power, even given the state of nuclear power in the US. E: so we really need to try to do all of the above (solar, wind, nuclear, etc), because there's no reason not to and a whole bunch of reasons to not leave nuclear out QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Jan 10, 2022 |
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Jan 10, 2022 21:49
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French prices are the same as Germany's because their electrical systems are tied together. France is currently profiting massively due to the arrangement thanks to their ample nuclear power. They then return those profits to the public via progressive energy subsidies.QuarkJets posted:South Australia has done pretty well, but they aren't actually decarbonized and are uniquely well-suited to solar/wind. Someplace like New York is going to have a much harder time pulling that off. I have been very enthusiastic about the use of HVDC to send solar power from the SW deserts to the rest of the country but it has been made clear to me over the last 20 years that this is actually a lot harder than it sounds and may actually be much harder than building a bunch of nuclear power, even given the state of nuclear power in the US. I think that there's going to be a lot of regional differences in what opportunities there are for clean energy production. New York (and the rest of the East Coast megalopolis) is very well positioned for off-shore wind, for example. Realistically I don't think that there's ever going to be one single solution, if only because it would be too much of a risk to rely entirely on a sole source of power. Kaal fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Jan 10, 2022 |
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Jan 10, 2022 21:52
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I agree completely, that's maybe one of the best reasons to include nuclear power in a comprehensive green energy plan: eggs in more baskets.
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Jan 10, 2022 21:59
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QuarkJets posted:I agree completely, that's maybe one of the best reasons to include nuclear power in a comprehensive green energy plan: eggs in more baskets. Agreed. To my mind at least, the best chance for the world is going to come from regulatory standardization and predictable profitability of a wide variety of green power systems. If companies know that they'll be allowed to build a power array and that it will deliver reliable revenue, then they'll deliver on that opportunity. The conversation about the uncertain cost valuation of a solar farm in only eight years really goes to show, to my mind, that it's the risk factors that are the biggest problem rather than the actual technology. Remove that risk by making site permits predictable and shoring up pricing / reducing externalization with carbon taxes, and whether energy companies are public or private they'll be happy to invest. Kaal fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Jan 10, 2022 |
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Jan 10, 2022 22:03
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QuarkJets posted:I agree completely, that's maybe one of the best reasons to include nuclear power in a comprehensive green energy plan: eggs in more baskets. 100% same. There is a tendency in this thread for posters to claim that their one preferred technology is the only way forward. The differences in climate, land use and politics (and a million other things) mean that this will never be true. Horses for courses.
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Jan 10, 2022 22:12
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Aethernet posted:It's a little gauche to compare average prices with peak prices, but not to worry I can do it too: First off: This does not show the actual price of French Nuclear generating cost. Their price is tied to the market rate, which is largely driven by fossil fuel generation. So no, these graphs are not showing what you think they do. France actually passed a law making their power prices tied to market pricing. quote:France derives about 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy, due to a long-standing policy based on energy security. Government policy is to reduce this to 50% by 2035. France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over €3 billion per year from this. If nuclear was expensive to operate, France would not be raking in those gains. And if they were operating at below market value, they also wouldn't make those gains. Most of that cost is pure profit. France is raking in cash doing this. This is also the problem with "Nuclear is expensive, everything should be cheap!" It is cheap. But that 'cheap' market wants to compete against much cheaper. And the fossil lobby is big. But the idea that we're going to get to net zero emissions on the cheap is laughable. At the end of the day, we need all of them: Renewables, Storage, Nuclear to really end the fossil glut in energy generation. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Jan 10, 2022 |
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Jan 10, 2022 22:14
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CommieGIR posted:First off: This does not show the actual price of French Nuclear generating cost. Their price is tied to the market rate, which is largely driven by fossil fuel generation. So no, these graphs are not showing what you think they do. France actually passed a law making their power prices tied to market pricing. Fair enough. What is their actual cost of generation? I've never seen a source for how their nuclear fleet was originally financed, only current opex.
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Jan 10, 2022 22:46
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CommieGIR posted:You could probably replace the 202MW of Gas with Storage, but all these other guys? Not likely. I've stated it up-thread, but that 200MW of synchronous generation in SA is required for grid inertia/strength. South Australia can generate enough renewables for their demand (at times), provided they can export some of the renewables to the national grid. Work is being done on synthetic inertia, but it's not there yet. An interconnector to NSW is also in the works.
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Jan 10, 2022 23:05
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Aethernet posted:Happy to Has there been some development in storage technology I've missed to give you this optimism for energy storage? My knowledge is a couple years out of date by now, but last I checked batteries were still orders of magnitude off from being able to handle energy storage needs. Pumped hydro, a more than century old technology, was still the best option though regionally limited. My impression of the situation wasn't that it was just a matter of price, but that it was straight up technically infeasible to store the energy needed.
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Jan 11, 2022 01:30
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there’s some interesting things going on with storage actually, especially thermal storage that avoids the issues with batteries. i think this might be where we see some innovation happening and not just this idea of battery storage. with that said i still don’t get this resistance people have to being open to a multi-modal energy strategy. gotta pick a side man
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Jan 11, 2022 01:34
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A lot of the reporting is clickbait, but hydrogen technology is improving and that could take the place of batteries in some use cases.
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Jan 11, 2022 02:28
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The big thing is the whole "Lets just triple our solar nameplate" and there's a good podcast called Decouple that talks with one of the guests why this isn't going to happen https://twitter.com/DecouplePodcast/status/1480653079469080585?s=20
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Jan 11, 2022 03:06
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:A lot of the reporting is clickbait, but hydrogen technology is improving and that could take the place of batteries in some use cases. That's the plan here in South Australia, use excess power to generate hydrogen, use it as fuel for a plant when needed. I don't like people trying to use us as too much of an example though, we have lots of windy sunny land and a small population so we have some major advantages, frankly if anything it's embarrassing that we weren't fully renewable years ago.
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Jan 11, 2022 03:17
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Senor Tron posted:That's the plan here in South Australia, use excess power to generate hydrogen, use it as fuel for a plant when needed. Hydrogen is also potentially transportable. It's really not all that different from LNG albeit less dense, if the production efficiencies can be brought into line there's no reason solar or wind favorable regions can't fill tankers with hydrogen.
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Jan 11, 2022 07:45
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Hydrogen is also potentially transportable. It's really not all that different from LNG albeit less dense, if the production efficiencies can be brought into line there's no reason solar or wind favorable regions can't fill tankers with hydrogen. Hydrogen is already transportable: https://gcaptain.com/worlds-first-liquefied-hydrogen-tanker/
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Jan 11, 2022 08:23
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Aethernet posted:Hydrogen is already transportable: https://gcaptain.com/worlds-first-liquefied-hydrogen-tanker/ well it’s a first if it’s kind so let’s see how it unfolds. also lol that this was all cracked from fossil fuels, making more carbon than just burning them in the first place
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Jan 11, 2022 14:54
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Hydrogen gets a bad rap as difficult to store/transport in the context of a direct comparison to gasoline for use as motor fuel. Most things are harder to transport than MoGas. Moving hydrogen around for use at stationary generation isn’t rocket science.
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Jan 11, 2022 15:23
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Hydrogen is pretty nice for rocket science, too  I love how this energy crisis has exposed the hypocrisy going on in the EU, particularly in Germany. Adding to that, it has put nuclear power back into the public consciousness in Norway, and it seems a lot more people are positive to it now than the last time it was discussed... In the early 1970s...
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Jan 11, 2022 15:36
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MrYenko posted:Hydrogen gets a bad rap as difficult to store/transport in the context of a direct comparison to gasoline for use as motor fuel. Most things are harder to transport than MoGas. Moving hydrogen around for use at stationary generation isn’t rocket science. for sure. generally speaking in the past i’ve been more gung ho about h2 than a lot of people here. i look forward to seeing how this goes but i don’t think a first-ever trial is good enough to just say “hey this works” it’s good to see people working on this but im really interested in seeing the end-to-end pipeline - because as long as we’re cracking it from ng it’s not remotely green “oh but we’ll deffo switch to solar production asap” which is nice to think about but very suspicious.
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Jan 11, 2022 16:08
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If the cost of solar and wind electricity keeps dropping, then electro-chemical generation of H2 or hydrocarbons, to store the very cheap intermittent solar and wind electricity as chemical energy, might make sense.
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Jan 11, 2022 16:14
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silence_kit posted:If the cost of solar and wind electricity keeps dropping, then electro-chemical generation of H2 or hydrocarbons, to store the very cheap intermittent solar and wind electricity as chemical energy, might make sense. The problem is you need an energy glut to really generate hydrogen at scale, and in many cases there's not a glut with pure renewables alone. This is why France has likely the best chance at a successful Hydrogen program because they have a glut of energy from nuclear that can be used during non-peak hours.
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Jan 11, 2022 16:17
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If electro-chemical generation of fuels is very electricity-intensive, it would make more sense to use very cheap electricity, like wind & solar electricity, instead of very expensive electricity, like nuclear electricity, to generate them.
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Jan 11, 2022 16:21
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The point isn't what electricity is cheaper to generate, the point is that solar and wind are intermittent, so to have enough generation for peak demand, even on bad days for intermittency, you need overbuilt capacity. Then since you can't easily turn your distributed sources off, you need energy sinks to soak up excess generation as demand falls to balance to grid. Cost per watt doesn't factor into it since it's only there in a no-CO2 grid in the first place.
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Jan 11, 2022 16:33
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silence_kit posted:If electro-chemical generation of fuels is very electricity-intensive, it would make more sense to use very cheap electricity, like wind & solar electricity, instead of very expensive electricity, like nuclear electricity, to generate them. Again: Nuclear energy is not expensive. The cost of electricity generated by nuclear is on par if not lower than renewables. CommieGIR posted:First off: This does not show the actual price of French Nuclear generating cost. Their price is tied to the market rate, which is largely driven by fossil fuel generation. So no, these graphs are not showing what you think they do. France actually passed a law making their power prices tied to market pricing. This is especially true for plants that are already built like in France. Market prices do not represent the actual cost per kwh of nuclear generation. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Jan 11, 2022 |
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Jan 11, 2022 16:35
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A group is developing thermal storage with molten silicon: https://www.solarpaces.org/mit-proposes-pv-to-discharge-energy-from-2400c-silicon-thermal-storage Silicon is almost uniquely suited for energy storage. It melts at 2400C, has a high heat capacity. It's also cheap and the most abundant element in Earth's crust. This group is using multi-junction photovoltaics to extract energy, and graphite vessels. An IMHO cooler idea is to use liquid-solid phase change of silicon - store energy by melting it, and release it by freezing. Si has a crazy high latent heat of fusion, way more than water even, so this could give densities comparable (but less than) batteries. https://oa.upm.es/40561/1/Datas_2016_LHTES%26TPV_Postprint_final.pdf cat botherer fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jan 11, 2022 |
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Jan 11, 2022 17:10
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cat botherer posted:A group is developing thermal storage with molten silicon: yeahhh this is the kind of stuff i'm talking about. i've seen like four or five come out of stealth in the last couple of years that i think have very good chances of being commercialized. one thing i really love about these is that you can theoretically slot them in to current NG peaker plants. if there is a glut of clean energy, you pull power from the grid to heat things up. when you need to pull power back, you release some of the stored thermal energy and push it out to the same generators you'd have used with NG
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Jan 11, 2022 19:42
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cat botherer posted:A group is developing thermal storage with molten silicon: What's the heat->electrical conversion? Steam Turbines? And visa-versa? Resistance elements?
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Jan 11, 2022 20:25
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VideoGameVet posted:What's the heat->electrical conversion? Steam Turbines? everything i've seen has these being used for steam turbines instead of burning fossil presumably you could also use these to store up heat for direct steam heating at night where that exists
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Jan 11, 2022 21:09
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since we constantly talk about germany in here Germany’s energy consumption rising, renewables share falling in 2021  quote:Energy consumption in Germany has increased in 2021, as the economy recovered from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the country weathered a cold winter. At the same time, a year of depressed wind power production let the share of renewables in the country's power mix shrink, while coal power made a strong comeback. The developments bode ill for the new German government's plans to reduce energy use and boost renewables to record shares by 2030 - the same year it plans to end the use of coal. Energy industry representatives say the government's plans are still feasible, but will require resolute and swift action to succeed.
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