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DTurtle posted:I‘m simply objecting to the statement that renewable energy is in the same boat as nuclear energy with regards to addressing its problems in the last thirty years. Solar power costs, for example, are a tenth of what they were ten years ago and the yearly capacity addition are ten times what they were ten years ago. The post you're replying to was citing "renewables alone", as in a hypothetical generation strategy where renewable energy supplies 100% of a region's power. It comes down to the "baseload" argument, which never really went away; in recent years we've allowed renewables to ignore the baseload argument only because everyone accepts that the fossil fuel industry has been wildly successful at blocking renewables from achieving the scale of adoption necessary for baseload to become something worth worrying about. In the US right now we achieve baseload using primarily carbon sources, and we allow renewables to do what they do best: provide variable amounts of power as part of a mixed grid. That is a massive benefit toward the affordability of renewables; energy storage is very expensive, so not having to deal with energy storage is the best case scenario. But what happens if you start considering a power portfolio that really is mostly renewables? What do the costs of wind and solar look like if you try to achieve baseload with wind and solar alone, to meet a region's minimum power needs regardless of whether, regardless of time of day or day of year? One of the sources for the first graph you post has some LCOE estimates for energy storage; here are the numbers from Lazard: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ They quote $85-$158 per MWh of storage for 1. 50 MW of power 2. For up to 4 hours (200 MWh) 3. Designed to be hooked up to a PV system with a 100 MW nameplate capacity. This does not include the cost of the PV system, this is only the cost of storage. So while the LCOE for PV is as low as $28-$37 per MWh in the best case scenario of a utility scale facility allowed to provide variable power, you can see how the cost rapidly scales up once you start including storage. That post that you were quoting was referring to this problem, which is that energy storage loving sucks and is expensive. It's also worth noting that 30% of solar deployment worldwide is on rooftops, not at utility-scale facilities. The cost of rooftop residential PV power is way higher than the utility cost: $147-$221 per MWh according to your source, and $67-$180 for commercial rooftops. I'm a very big fan of rooftop solar panels and how they make better use of already-developed real estate, but it's not nearly as low-cost as solar panels in the desert on sun-tracking gimbals. 
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Nov 30, 2022 10:08
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And for interest, Western Australia should be the poster child for renewables alone over the coming years. ~ No nuclear ~ Islanded grid (South Australia is put up as a poster child but it's hooked by connections to a robust network of thermal grid taking excess power and delivering shortfalls). WA is ~3k km/miles away from another grid. ~ Coal generation is in a really really bad way outside of climate considerations - both not providing an excuse to change but further that WA absolutely needs to build something new soon ~ Wealthy as gently caress (relatively) population in general that are happy to overinvest in their houses with good amounts of low labor cash flows in the form of mining royalties coming in. There is money available. ~ plenty of sun, limitless space, wind is around, access to water, ~ Justifiable need for dispatchable consumer requirement in the form of desalination. ~ bugger all/no hydro ~ Very solid experience in the local population for building projects (from trades to project management) - the gas plants recently delivered in the north are multi billion dollar affairs, mineral process plants are delivered on time on budget on a consistent basis and in fact WA companies and skills are port of call for project management in the likes of Africa. The only caveat is; ~ Gas is currently important, a second pipeline would be expensive and it's probably better off sold to Europe but local politics may push for cheap gas to be mandated available from the gas fields for cheap power. If WA can't do it, it is probably not going to happen anywhere. One to watch.
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Nov 30, 2022 13:57
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His Divine Shadow posted:I would really like to see some reliable cost estimates for power to gas personally. It's just a hunch but I figure once that's factored in, nuclear won't look so bad in comparison anymore. https://generation180.org/the-absurd-truth-about-fossil-fuel-subsidies/ cat botherer fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Nov 30, 2022 |
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Nov 30, 2022 16:11
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this is two years old but i found the numbers useful to anchor some context https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-separating-hype-from-hydrogen-part-one-the-supply-side/ quote:The EU Hydrogen Strategy is predicated on driving down the cost of producing green hydrogen in Europe, currently [e: 2020] between 2.5 and 5.5 euros per kg, to between 1.1 and 2.4 euros per kg by 2030. Is that a reasonable target? this ones more recent and has a graph https://about.bnef.com/blog/europes-green-hydrogen-rules-raise-costs-for-industry/  I read somewhere else that the IRA includes a full on $3/kg subsidy for green hydrogen, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out MightyBigMinus fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Nov 30, 2022 |
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Nov 30, 2022 18:56
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Electric Wrigglies posted:And for interest, Western Australia should be the poster child for renewables alone over the coming years. I recall that they basically walked headlong into the "oops all renewables" problem a few years ago without also unfucking how to keep their fossil peaking capabilities profitable. Didn't they have to hand out subsidies to peaking plants to keep them online? At the risk of attracting ire from that guy who insists that you can't use "baseload" to describe a system intended to be servicing baseload demand, is WA doing anything about storage? Or putting in some non-fossil baseload capacity to unfuck the need for fossil peakers?
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Nov 30, 2022 19:09
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Random thought: Have there been any proposals to use a stirling engine or something to partially recover energy used in liquefying hydrogen, as like some kind of combined-cycle deal?
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Nov 30, 2022 19:13
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Once it's chilled and liquefied, the goal is to try to insulate the tank as best as possible. Attaching some kind of apparatus doing PV work is counterproductive, because that thing is going to be less effective as you add more insulation--and if you could afford to add a heat engine to the system, why not just spend less and add more insulation? Liquefied light gas storage systems always always always have some kind of bleed off, even the huge supply tanks at your local Airgas distro center. Unlike larger, more-polarizable hydrocarbon gasses like propane, is impractical and dangerous to store light gasses purely with pressure. They need to be chilled as well. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Nov 30, 2022 |
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Nov 30, 2022 19:16
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Potato Salad posted:Once it's chilled and liquefied, the goal is to try to insulate the tank as best as possible. Attaching some kind of apparatus doing PV work is counterproductive, because that thing is going to be less effective as you add more insulation--and if you could afford to add a heat engine to the system, why not just spend less and add more insulation? : vvv Wow, thanks! I'm guessing this will fall into the "possible, but not cost-effictive" bucket. cat botherer fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Nov 30, 2022 |
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Nov 30, 2022 19:19
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....I know a researcher primarily looking at natural gas distribution infrastructure resilience, where heat exchange at different pressure levels throughout the national transport network is a huge and complex topic all on its own. She's looked at hydrogen transport topics before, I'll ask.
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Nov 30, 2022 19:22
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Potato Salad posted:I recall that they basically walked headlong into the "oops all renewables" problem a few years ago without also unfucking how to keep their fossil peaking capabilities profitable. Didn't they have to hand out subsidies to peaking plants to keep them online? WA has over 60% of their power coming from hydroelectric electricity, not much intermittancy to worry about there.
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Nov 30, 2022 19:40
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Western Australia not Washington State 30 MW installed hydro capacity
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Nov 30, 2022 19:47
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cat botherer posted:Random thought: Have there been any proposals to use a stirling engine or something to partially recover energy used in liquefying hydrogen, as like some kind of combined-cycle deal?
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Nov 30, 2022 21:47
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oh nice
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Nov 30, 2022 22:06
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DTurtle posted:Hydrogen (and natural gas) storage in the huge scales required is done and planned as a compressed gas, not as a liquid. https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/site-and-bulk-hydrogen-storage the DOE posted:Cryogenic liquid storage tanks, also referred to as dewars, are the most common way to store large quantities of hydrogen. Large-scale storage of hydrogen the abstract posted:Although the storage of gaseous hydrogen in salt caverns already is used on a full industrial scale, the approach is not applicable in all regions due to varying geological conditions. Therefore, other storage methods are necessary. In this article, options for the large-scale storage of hydrogen are reviewed and compared based on fundamental thermodynamic and engineering aspects. The application of certain storage technologies, such as liquid hydrogen, methanol, ammonia, and dibenzyltoluene, is found to be advantageous in terms of storage density, cost of storage, and safety. Commercial interest: https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/japan-australia-firms-look-build-large-scale-green-liquefied-hydrogen-supply-2021-09-15/ https://www.offshore-energy.biz/mcdermotts-unit-and-kogas-to-explore-large-scale-liquid-hydrogen-storage/ Sounds like it's not some kind of weird niche thing. Given that compressed hydrogen is low density, needs high-pressure vessels, and the high-pressure hydrogen diffuses through the walls easily, it's not hard to see why. cat botherer fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Nov 30, 2022 |
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Nov 30, 2022 23:42
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Salt cavern storage is compressed hydrogen and mentioned in both your sources. Natural gas pipelines and storage tanks can be (and are) filled with hydrogen up to a certain percentage. That percentage is currently relatively low (a few percent), but it is apparently possible to increase it to 50 or so percent relatively easily. All of that is compressed gas. Germany‘s natural gas infrastructure, as an example, provides storage for hundreds of TWh of energy for compressed natural gas. Converting that to compressed green hydrogen (or methane from CO2 + green hydrogen) would mean that physical storage is not a problem - being able to economically and efficiently fill that storage is the problem.
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Dec 1, 2022 00:34
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Out of sheer curiosity, how is ground storage of LH handled for the space program? Does it just slowly boil off and they manufacture in situ to replace? Or just keep resupplying?
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Dec 1, 2022 00:41
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DTurtle posted:Salt cavern storage is compressed hydrogen and mentioned in both your sources. Hydrogen to methane makes sense, but compressed cng is not compressed hydrogen. The natural gas infrastructure also isn’t as reusable as you say. Compressed hydrogen has much lower energy density than natural gas at the same pressures. Also, like I said, it diffuses through metal easily.
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Dec 1, 2022 00:47
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DTurtle posted:Salt cavern storage is compressed hydrogen and mentioned in both your sources. 50% green hydrogen still means you're burning 50% natural gas, which isn't great. Still, it's better than nothing
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Dec 1, 2022 02:49
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Capt.Whorebags posted:Out of sheer curiosity, how is ground storage of LH handled for the space program? It's allowed to slowly boil off, but cryogenics are used to slow that process. Some sites produce hydrogen on-site but usually places like Airgas supply the raw gas and then a lab on-site handles liquefication and storage. CERN purchases bulk He and Ar gas prior to liquefying it in huge on-site cryogenics facilities. The same facilities are also exporting these liquids to other CERN-affiliated labs in the region in big dewars, so it's not all just being used by the LHC and its experiments. Here's one of the papers that describes the LHe storage facility that is specifically used for the LHC: https://cds.cern.ch/record/1377047?ln=en
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Dec 1, 2022 03:06
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QuarkJets posted:50% green hydrogen still means you're burning 50% natural gas, which isn't great. Still, it's better than nothing Let's say it's 50% hydrogen. Let's say it's a 1500psi pipeline, which is at the very upper end of what they run at. So half the pressure is CH4 and half the pressure is H2(*). The energy density of hydrogen at 750psi is lousy. The energy density of hydrogen at *3000* psi is lousy, it's only about 26% of that of methane at the same pressure. Filling your pipeline with half-hydrogen is dramatically reducing the amount of energy your pipeline can transport. (*) - Okay, ideal gas is probably not a valid assumption for 1500 psi but at *any* pressure the volumetric energy density of methane gas is 3.2 times that of hydrogen gas. the point remains that if you're trying to store large volumes of hydrogen you either need much higher pressures than what natural gas pipelines are rated for or you're doing it cryogenically. The volumetric energy density of hydrogen is terrible, there's more hydrogen in a cubic meter of water than in a cubic meter of liquid hydrogen.
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Dec 1, 2022 03:35
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cat botherer posted:It's not a contest whatsoever the moment you factor in co2 and other pollution. Natural gas production is also heavily subsidized. Thanks for the link it was interesting, but I think you misunderstood me, when I said power to gas I meant like windmills making hydrogen, then storing and burning it. I'd love to see some cost analysis of that.
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Dec 1, 2022 05:10
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Corn lobbyists still run the EPA, apparently: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-epa-propose-boost-biofuel-blending-volumes-sources-2022-12-01/ quote:The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will propose increases in the amount of ethanol and other biofuels that oil refiners must blend into their fuel over the next three years, two sources familiar with the matter said.
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Dec 1, 2022 15:55
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His Divine Shadow posted:Thanks for the link it was interesting, but I think you misunderstood me, when I said power to gas I meant like windmills making hydrogen, then storing and burning it. I'd love to see some cost analysis of that.
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Dec 1, 2022 16:05
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Liquid or gas hydrogen is definitely not an effective storage option due to the inherent low energy density and challenges in storage. Hydrogen is much better suited as a feedstock to produce something like methanol that is liquid at room temperature, utilizes captured carbon and is both safer and better understood for storage.
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Dec 1, 2022 17:10
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You'd store it long-term or transport it as methanol (h2 + co2) or ammonia (h2 + N). All those Australien green PtX schemes involve loading ammonia on freighters to ship it to Japan et al. The cost of converting green electricity to ammonia or methanol for long-term storage and then converting it back to electricity would seem prohibitive though. We'll need it for chemical inputs in industry and agriculture and for fuel in ships and planes but I'm not so sure about using it as storage for power generation. I suppose maybe you could have a few peakers to take the edge off.
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Dec 1, 2022 17:30
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Bedshaped posted:Liquid or gas hydrogen is definitely not an effective storage option due to the inherent low energy density and challenges in storage. Cost, efficiency, scale for converting back and forth are the problem.
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Dec 1, 2022 18:07
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I thought that hydrogen embrittlement made reusing existing infrastructure designed originally for natural gas a somewhat risky venture.
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Dec 1, 2022 22:18
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Smiling Demon posted:I thought that hydrogen embrittlement made reusing existing infrastructure designed originally for natural gas a somewhat risky venture. I'll have to check but I'm pretty sure the issues with hydrogen embrittlement.... are due to a mechanism called high temperature hydrogen attack and typically its an issue for refineries or such places where its the high process temperatures resulting in high metal temperatures. And certain particular metal alloys that don't mix well with hydrogen that that particular state that have issues. *EDIT* I am wrong. High Temperature Hydrogen Attack and Hydrogen embrittlement are 2 different things. However, I did do some digging... Your very common carbon steel pipe, ASTM A106, can be used for hydrogen service. Although depending on how high of temperatures/pressures you're talking about, could be an issue but would have to look further. **EDIT** A lot of the recently built (circa 2010 and probably back as far as 2000) infrastructure is the EU in terms of pipe networks is capable of transporting Pure H2 as a gas. I believe the pipelines in the U.S. are capable, metallurgically. The question, as raised by the previous posters is which.... mechanisms places will end up adopting. I know for gas turbines they're already making some designed for pure methane/natural gas that can go to some blend to gaseous Hydrogen. I believe they're also trying to design some that can go the full range from pure methane to blend to pure Hydrogen. However, at the same time. A lot of money is being spent re-researching re-examining use of Ammonia (NH3) and Methanol as the effective transport mechanism. Or potentially even using those to combust with inlieu of methane. Capt.Whorebags posted:Out of sheer curiosity, how is ground storage of LH handled for the space program? 2.) Yes, it will boil off. Even in a vaccum insulated flask it will typically boil very slowly. To do a comparison to LNG, we have the capability to essentially take that boil off gas, recompress and reliquify it back into the tank. However, in the case of LNG tank does not boil off that quickly if the liquid is not being disturbed. Now obviously Hydrogen being a lot colder is going to boil off more, but the principal is the same. I am pretty sure that both NASA and Space X do not make their own liquid hydrogen. Also, pretty sure they get their bulk orders from Linde or Air Products as those are the only 2 companies I know of who deal with "large" quantities of liquid Hydrogen. Pretty sure they order X amount to fill their onsite storage tank(s), that arrives via truck. Then when they are ready to rocket for launch, they fill it from there. Senor P. fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Dec 3, 2022 |
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Dec 3, 2022 07:06
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Potato Salad posted:I recall that they basically walked headlong into the "oops all renewables" problem a few years ago without also unfucking how to keep their fossil peaking capabilities profitable. Didn't they have to hand out subsidies to peaking plants to keep them online? I don't know about subsidizing peakers except from concrete efforts towards making sure that gas supplied is not at international market rates. The other issue is that due to subsidies, (predominately rooftop) solar has gotten huge in WA (it's the largest single source of power) to the point that they are paying industrial scale solar farms to turn off their supply at times due to oversupply as well as moving some businesses to weekend production, early shutdowns each day before the evening increase in power consumption combines with the downslope of solar supply etc. That 30 WM hydro that was referred to is not on the South West grid by the way. There is no hydro on the grid except the care and maintenance Wellington dam which is not operating (I don't know if it even could/be worthwhile, being a 2 MW unit built in 1956). The major coal power stations (~ 950 MW, leaving 400 MW Bluewaters operational for now but it is a basket case as well) are shutting before the decade is out and the biggest windfarm (and only three others are of substantial size) averages about 76 MW of output. In summary, it looks like the WA grid will eventually be overpriced solar (subsidised rooftop solar) will likely squeeze out the coal, then industrial solar leaving wind to try and minimise night time gas use while being curtailed during the day. Maybe smart grid to make sure everyone cools their house to 15 degrees C during the day while excess solar is about to poor mans load shift cooling off evenings and night as well as other demand side management to help hide the cost of expensive electricity. Maybe solar power to NH3/H2 production? The facility will need to produce all it needs in about six to eight hours I guess where solar is in excess supply but maybe the capex is cheap enough to only use it 33% to 25% of the time?
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Dec 3, 2022 12:44
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Electric Wrigglies posted:In summary, it looks like the WA grid will eventually be overpriced solar (subsidised rooftop solar) will likely squeeze out the coal, then industrial solar leaving wind to try and minimise night time gas use while being curtailed during the day. Maybe smart grid to make sure everyone cools their house to 15 degrees C during the day while excess solar is about to poor mans load shift cooling off evenings and night as well as other demand side management to help hide the cost of expensive electricity. As one might expect WA is building a lot of batteries - 100MW/200MWH battery started construction in august and Neoen Australia plans 4 GWh battery for WA. How they solve for seasonal variations and exceptional weather I don't know. They could over-build solar and dump excess into ammonia/methanol for export maybe.
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Dec 4, 2022 12:08
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It's cheap to overpanel all the things 
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Dec 4, 2022 12:14
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Owling Howl posted:As one might expect WA is building a lot of batteries - 100MW/200MWH battery started construction in august and Neoen Australia plans 4 GWh battery for WA. That really is some beefy batteries relative to the local coal generation. It should enable retirement of all coal in WA I would have thought, once all built. Germaine to the discussion is that today kicks off a conference for Hydrogen economy in WA (with the outgoing state ministor for Hydrogen opening the proceedings). First step being 1% of generation to be from green hydrogen (I assume blended into the natural gas power network). QLD is in a much happier place. Coal is not the same sort of basket case as in WA so QLD can kick the can down the road long enough for the sensible pumped hydro opportunities to be properly assessed and built. Borumba dam is where I used to go sailing on as a kid, 2 GW for 24 hrs would be significant, Burdekin dam in the north also a big possibility as well as other smaller ones. I don't think the dams would be delivered much quicker than (non-pioneer build) nuclear judging by the normal nine year builds for South Korea, UAE and China or cheaper and I like to think in time (20-50 years) when nuclear gets production lined, that the govt will go away from encouraging more and more investment into houses (rooftop solar, batteries, expensive electricity saving measures, etc) and rather just get back to cheap ubiquitous grid supplied power that a nuclear/grid-solar/prime wind/PHES combination would provide.
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Dec 6, 2022 13:44
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In other storage news the first sodium-ion battery factory entered operation in China last week. Sodium is interesting because it's cheaper and more abundant than lithium although it doesn't work as well for applications where weight is a concern which is to say EVs, phones, laptops and whatnot. It's important because the rapid increase in lithium production for EVs and storage has created bottlenecks and supply shortages. PG&E has been forced to revise prices for a number of their battery storage projects and in 2022 Li-ion battery prices rose for the first time in a decade. Meanwhile finance bros are dumping huge loads of cash into Iron-air batteries. On paper it looks pretty good for storage but I have no idea if it's just some investors getting moody or if it's a viable technology. We'll know in a few years. Some Italians want to sell you giant gasbags and it appears there's some tentative interest from different corners of industry.
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Dec 7, 2022 06:22
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investors are gambling addicts that are always looking for a new game / W (or if youre into findom , Ls).
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Dec 7, 2022 07:50
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Hey, how's our grid decarbonization doing nowadays? ...yeah. Apparently wind hasn't been a thing this week in Europe.  (There's like 20GW installed capacity lol). Hopefully TWh of sodium ion batteries are coming soon and cheaply.
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Dec 10, 2022 22:52
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Always moving much faster than I expect and much slower than we need it. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/06/energy/iea-renewable-energy-turning-point/index.htmlquote:In a report published Tuesday, the International Energy Agency forecast a sharp acceleration in installations of renewable power. It now expects green energy to overtake coal to become the largest global source of electricity by early 2025.
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Dec 12, 2022 14:56
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Installed capacity or actual generation?
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Dec 12, 2022 15:00
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His Divine Shadow posted:Installed capacity or actual generation? Says "capacity" in the second paragraph, so, yeah, see previous post for what that means.
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Dec 12, 2022 15:33
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His Divine Shadow posted:Installed capacity or actual generation?  Renewables = Hydro + Wind + Solar + Bio 
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Dec 12, 2022 18:13
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Since this is the appropriate thread for it: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/politics/nuclear-fusion-energy-us-scientists-climate/index.html quote:CNN
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Dec 12, 2022 19:27
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