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For Spaniard re #19
Thank you for providing more detail.
I think I can see an opportunity to provide some feedback for your analysis....
The length of a second on Mars is NOT fixed by humans. I think that is a possible source of confusion?
A second on Mars is determined by the rotation of the planet itself.
Long ago humans (astronomers) decided to call the rotation of Mars a Sol.
They divided the Sol into 24 hours, the hours into 60 minutes, and the minutes into 60 seconds.
And THAT WAS A MISTAKE, that it was fixed later.
You see, it's true that the units of measurement are just conventions, chosen by humans.
BUT, using a living physical reference is a terrible idea, as that physical reference can change over time AND have multiple units of reference make us doing lots of conversions that are prone to errors.
We have failed missions because that unit conversions. So NOT a trivial thing.
AT FIRST, yes, the definition of a second was that. BUT... what happen if the speed of rotation of Earth changes.
Well... not need to imagine it, as IT DOES. As the Moon get farther away slowly, it also decreases the speed rotation. Yes... it's just a tiny bit... but when extreme precision is needed, that difference ruin the calculus.
Do you imagine people trying to make sense to a century calculus, because the units of measurement changed in that time?
That's the reason was redefined.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second
The second [...] is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency, ΔνCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9192631770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1.[1]
Yes... Of course, that arbitrary number was created to match the same time than the old definition of "a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400)".
That way we didn't have to put every calculus in the trash and redo everything. The old and the new one is the same... for now.
But the thing is... as the Earth rotation become slower, the definition of the second on the International System of Units WON'T CHANGE ANYMORE. It will change the seconds per day, increasing in seconds (fractions or whatever).
And the unit remain stable across time and space.
Second is related with the rest of the units. Speed. space/time. Power. Energy/time and so on.
If you change your definition of second... all the calculus change. if Mars where stars away and communication with Earth were anecdotal, I guess it wouldn't be so important if we had local calculus of everything with own measurement units. Although be ready to change EVERYTHING (like things as time of elements decay of the isotopes for example).
But as Mars and Earth will share a close relationship, having too different measurements systems is just a call for unit conversion errors, as you need to change from "Mars seconds" into ITU seconds (so Earth seconds) EVERY TIME.
It's just a big hassle to do that.
That's the reason I proposed that for scientific purposes, just use a timestamp. A simple big counter. Computers can do "unlimited integers" without problems. And float of arbitrary precision too.
And the date is just a transposition of the timestamp, being that only for human displays as big numbers are difficult to interpret and use directly by humans. Yes... this formula timestamp <-> local date can be rather complex, but it's just a formula, used for human interaction. Internally all values would be converted to timestamp and operated with simplicity.
So for scientific and engineering purposes, that date is not used and not having unnecessary precision errors.
Yes, of course, you can have a local date in invented units, convert it to a timestamp in ITU units and do that from that, but that will induce human mistakes as doing calculus manually will force people to remember that you can't use your local seconds mixed with ITU units. Computers can do fine, but people will stop doing anything manually or it will unnecessarily complex.
I thing is just easier to adapt to more "weird clocks" but using standardized units of time, not "local seconds" that are very easy to be confused with another unit of the same name.
That's the reason using a different second, one of the seven basic units of measurement of the physical model is a very bad idea.
IMHO, of course.
Of course, instead of my idea of the concept of the Chrono-gap, also think as an alternative to go plain
So the time goes upward beyond 24hours
After 23:59:59 goes 24:00:00
And continues until the length of a Martian day.
Up to 24:39:34 ... and then jump to 00:00:00
Equally valid, of course.
Also the thing of just readjust and invent the concept of "Martian second" slightly different from the second we know.
But that I dropped because a second has a physical description based on cesium decay. So I dislike to do that and I fixed the second by definition.
About the 24:39:34 and the chrono-gap, I choose the later because I think it's bad to make the idea of "an hour has 60 minutes except the 24 hour. And a minute is 60 except the 39 minute of the 24 hour.
Yes... I understand that it's not exactly that. But I though that move that minutes from the 24 hour to a special nomenclature could be more clear.
Anyway... if the option chosen is the 24:39:34 format (I don't know. I didn't find it in the thread.) so I guess it also works.
For Spaniard re a calendar for Mars....
The calendar you see here each day has been in operation for four Earth years and two full Mars years. It has been scrubbed thoroughly.
However, this forum is set up to encourage everyone to achieve whatever they are capable of.
If you think you have a better idea for a calendar, you are welcome to create a topic and then fill that topic each day for four years, to see how well your design works.
Alternatively, you can take the time to actually study the design created by RobertDyck a number of years ago.
The design is laid out in detail in a post #82 of the Holidays topic. Here is the link:
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 57#p154257I am hoping you will take the time to help me help other visitors who take a look at the Calendar.
It has been my privilege to post the calendar for at least four Earth years, and I have become so close to it I cannot see what you are seeing.
Your assistance will be greatly appreciated.
But before you can provide assistance, you need to invest the time to understand the calendar.
(th)
The thread is so long that it's difficult to read.
Anyway... I already understand where is the difference in days. You SUBSTRACT in quarters, instead of adding.
So you pushed upwards and remove days instead of going down (like in my calculation) and adding the remaining days.
Well... it's a different method, I guess.
I still haven't found (if you discussed that part) how your proposal counts the hours minutes seconds (or similar units) for a day on Mars.
The Business Calendar for Mars has 24 months. All months are 28 days except for quarter ends. The Calendar is synchronized with the Astronomical calendar at midnight of New Year's Eve.
Well... We have a problem here. Maybe I'm in the wrong, but...
First... a martian day, I understand should be aligned to the sun from the perspective of Mars.
A Mars year have 686 Earth days, but have only 668 sols or martian days. Your proposition have more days than that.
I think a Earth day is of little usage on Mars.
You have aligned your calendar to Earth days! Or I have miscalculated something.
Maybe you have synced Mars to a different reference. But I synced my calendar to Mars days (like in Earth, you will see the sun at the top at midday), and against seasons.
For the population on Mars, I think to don't do that kill the purpose of a local calendar. They will have interest on having season synchronization and sun synchronization. At least that's what I believe.
If you think your calendar do that too, and it's just a miscalculation, we can check the numbers again.
But it would be probably better to do that in the proper thread.
For Spaniard re fascinating ideas about a possible calendar for Mars.
The Calendar you see here has been in operation for two full Martian years.
I'm sorry tahanson43206 but the thread is so long and full of things that I was unable to understand anything.
I was thinking about the calendar thing here. Unfortunately, as the thread is filled of irrelevant data, I couldn't read it entirely.
It's just too much.
My idea of a calendar it has these key points.
One: The unit of time measurement, the second, can't be changed. It's a universal measurement unit, and we have to respect it.
Two: Because second is an near arbitrarily unit of measurement (well, not really, but it can be very, very precise), we will have a "scientific unit of measurement". A Mars timestamp. Using certain time as a point of reference as 0, we can count with float point any moment of time in the future or in the past.
The timestamp is the most useful for scientific and computer calculations, due it's precision as easy of management, but it's not a good method for humans to use.
So we have a "scientific timestamp". Just a number with zero gaps and weird numbers. Just a number with supposedly perfect precision.
And then a "calendar date". A transposition of the scientific timestamp into a representation that it's useful for people in Mars.
Every valid "mars calendar date" has a unique translation into "mars (scientific) timestamp" and also the opposite is true.
It can be translated into a formula.
The periods more interesting in Mars are.
Day. The day-night cycle has a duration of a day.
Year. The seasons remains in the same places of the year.
Week. A group of days that helps people to organize short term tasks, like a rest day each a few days, shop day, works days, whatever.
Some number between five and ten days.
Month. Another group of days, so it helps to split the year in fractions for better management. Between three and ten the size of a week.
Ok.
Let's start for the day. It's 88776 seconds and probably some other microseconds which precision I ignore.
Our current day uses hours, minutes and seconds. We use combinations of numbers which factorized by 2, 3, and 5 only. There is no good number close to the real day length that do that.
So after thinking about it, I suggest just still use our known 24x60x60 system. And the remain time between days?
That's my proposition. Create a new time named "(interday) Chrono-gap".
It represents the remaining time from one day to the next, as minutes and seconds remaining, in negative.
That's it.
After 23:59:59 comes C-:39:34.
Next second: C-:39:33. Next: C-:39:32 ...
After C-:39:00 comes C-:38:59
After C-:00:00 comes 00:00:00 next day
From 39:34 to 00:00 there are 39*60+35 (yes... we must add the zero) up to a total of 24*60*60+39*60+35 = 88.775 seconds.
There are some microseconds that are added to the first second of the count down, so the precision of the day is exact.
The supposed length of a mars day,
The reason of the negative is just for usefulness. It's more difficult to remember when the number ends. But you can remember that a inter-day chrono-gap is around 40 minutes. Just that it's enough. When you see the clock, if you are at the CG itself, you now exactly how much time remains to the next day.
Ok. Now weeks, months and such.
A Mars year is 59,355,072 seconds length so divided by 88,775 seconds (aprox) per mars day, it comes to ~= 668,6 days.
If I factorize 668 it comes to 2*2*167. Unfortunately 167 is a big prime number.
Ok... So let's get quarters (seasons) of 167 martian days.
I searched close numbers, and I get 160 as 2^5*5. So, a possible combination could be.
A month is five weeks. A week is eight days. Each quarter are 4 months. So 160 days in total.
Plus each quarter gets an extra week of seven days. As it's a week linked to season, why don't name it after the season.
Winter week. Spring week etc.
Summary:
In total we have. 16 months, splits in groups of 4. Each month is 8 days per week, five weeks per month.
Plus a seven days week per season (every four months).
AND an extra day from time to time, to complete a partial day for the remaining time which is a year.
That would be added to the winter week as they are the last (or first, both ways work) days of the year.
Eight days week instead of seven.
(4*8*5 + 7 ) * 4 = 668 sols (martian days).
It seems highly likely to me that it is possible to make solar panels using nothing but solar energy for input.
Is that a goal you would find worth pursuing?
You must consider that if you use a source of energy that can't control the input, then the difference between the input profile and the output profile becomes too great.
It can be done, but it's a lot more expensive than a mixed combination.
One of the reasons is because solar+wind has a better match to our demand curve than any of them alone.
Also, they have a lot of times where if they lack one you have more than the other (anticyclons usually reduce wind but increase solar, while storms increases wind and decreases solar).
Still, it's not a perfect match, so other techniques and technologies are suited for different profiles of offer-demand coordination.
For example, the classic duck-curve of solar is better suited to be matched via batteries as it's a very frequently circumstance and the storage required is way below a day. (Still needs lower prices for batteries, but the goal of 50$ per kwh for sodium ion seems a LCOE of cycled kwh good enough).
The small variations and clear differences between seasons are better mitigated through some levels of curtailment with the participation of new consumers designed for very low fixed costs that can operate a small numbers of hours per year to reduce the costs of the energy generated over the unregulated demand.
While very low generation days, the infamous dunkelflaute can be solved via some generation backup through fuel and demand management.
For example you can pay to some industries that accept the accord, of being disconnected when the generation is extremely low.
That comes from the circumstance that if the number of hours per year is very low, is a lot cheaper to adapt an industry to turn of for some days per year, than pay the equivalent storage just to be used a very low number of days.
It's the smart and big equivalent to an offgrid model where the consumer adapts to the availability of energy to certain extend, to reduce the requirements on the storage.
It's not that you can't build the storage. But reduce the consumption is just cheaper if it's a small number of times per year.
Calliban,
He doesn't seem to understand that we're saying LCOE of wind and solar plus storage, which becomes a hard requirement for a 70% renewables grid, is far in excess of the cost of all other competing options. We're also stating that the EROEI of photovoltaic electronics are far too low, unless ideally located in a desert, which excludes most parts of the world where people actually live.
These are two different debates.
An overall LCOE is different than a LCOE value standalone. And an integrated costs depends a lot of what kind of configuration you can build.
As I said before, current storage is still non competitive. You can build a model with only wind+solar+storage+curtailment but it would be significantly more expensive than current values.
BUT there are multiple configurations and multiple promising storage technologies claiming prices that reduce that price dramatically. Not only through batteries, but also other technologies.
In the meantime, overall LCOE analysis (not specific PV LCOE) using current prices, points a mix of natural gas with renewables as the cheapest combination, at least when natural gas prices are contained, and that's the reason why we are adding more and more renewables to the mix.
That's the "here and now".
The way I can tell that the LCOE, whatever he thinks it is, is still far too high, is that the rates paid by consumers have doubled or tripled anywhere there is a lot of renewable energy on the grid. True cost is not so easy to hide. Someone must always pay the bill for the equipment and services provided, and the consumer is always "that person".
He thinks the argument is being shifted, despite the fact that he's the one that keeps going back to LCOE, as if it makes EROEI irrelevant, to avoid addressing the fact that the LCOE is too high and the EROEI is too low, all at the same time. He's using future LCOE projections, which cannot be used to construct a new energy system, in the here and now. He's saying EROEI doesn't matter or that the calculations are wrong.
You are shifting because you claimed that the EROEI low values come from the high energy costs of the PV panel , while the LCOE of the PV itself is cheap.
There is no need to calculate a EROEI of PV + STORAGE for a full 100% model, as already LCOE of that model says that it's non competitive so only heavily subsidized pilot plants are mostly installed. Sometimes just for frequency because the cost for peak plants and regular storage has two different prices.
Well... Now we are installing the firsts renewables+storage, but the data is still coming, as it's too recent. That's because cheap batteries are also just too recent and the price still fluctuates, not a clear goal that has been surpassed and can be taken for granted.
This is what hard core "green energy denialism" looks like.
That's how the "skeptic" movements works.
He seems to have bought into the idea of the future possibilities of wind and solar, because he has no coherent arguments about the "here and now", unless all data that doesn't show what he wants it to show is wrong / bad / lies. He called the charts I posted "FUD", because they came from a website that doesn't support his beliefs about energy, but then provided a link to a study a couple of posts later, which used the exact same numbers from the website I posted the charts from. It's ridiculous.
Not only my "beliefs". But also a bunch of links of a lot more trustworthy source that a guy that name itself as "The Fracking Guy" on twitter with values a lot higher than any common source.
Spaniard,
Do you understand what LCOE and EROEI mean? Do you understand that these are two different things? EROEI is a ratio of useful energy out / required energy in. Levelised cost of energy is measured in dollars, pounds or euro per MWh. It is an estimated monetary cost of energy. Two different things. A low EROEI may have the effect of increasing the LCOE. But that isn't automatically the case in all situations. It will depend on the cost of the energy used to make the energy source and the cost of labour. Do you understand why that is the case?
I know how it works. Still, PV "skeptics" wants to use China as a escape goat.
But that argument drops when you compare old chinese costs with recent chinese costs.
Of course skeptics always force western vs China to make like the argument has weight.
The net energy study at the head of this thread is less than 24 hours old. It pretty much confirms the most pessimistic EROEI calculations for PV. Poor EROEI is not contradicted by a low LCOE calculation. It happens because the energy used to make the panels is cheap.
I'm gonna explain it in a simple way.
When Prieto & Hall claimed that 2008 Spain PV EROEI was around 2, PV had a LCOE around 200-400$/Mwh
So they claim that at least 100-200$ where energy costs.
Now the PV panel costs around 30-50$. So they can't have more than 50$ in energy costs. And obviously can't have so much. Probably around 20$ at most and going down.
If the energy costs drops x5, and the panel generates similar energy, How it's possible that the peakoil community claim the same EROEI?
--- EDIT ---
Here I did a mistake.
"So they claim that at least 100-200$ where energy costs." -> That sentence is not true. It's not "at least" but "as maximum"
As there is a fraction of non-energy and energy costs, only the fraction of energy costs should be applied to the EROEI factor.
Still, to claim that the EROEI remain fixed, something like claiming that in the past, most cost was non related to energy, and now it's is needed to force the result. There is no reason that to be true.
Any how know something about the inside PV knows that the manufacture of PV, mainly drive by manufacturing costs (including energy) has gone down, to the argument remains almost the same.
Spaniard wrote:LCOE is based on cost, so a lot can affect. But one thing is sure. Costs include energy costs. So it's impossible to cost less than the energy embedded on it.
Agreed.
Spaniard wrote:So if LCOE is cheap then the EROEI is a lot higher than claimed.
Not true. As I have said before, the Chinese are making their polysilicon in Xinjiang. They are using forced labour to extract coal which is then burned to produce electricity in powerplants at the minehead. This results in some of the cheapest electricity in the world. It is entirely possible for panels to have an EROEI that is <1 in many locations, but still to be cheap to buy. This happens because the energy being used to make the panels is so cheap it is almost free. The problem is that the panels can only remain cheap if the coal based energy used to make them remains cheap.
You are saying two incompatible things.
While I don't agree with your exaggeration about China, it doesn't matter. Just for the sake of the argument I will ignore it like it were true.
Still, you are claiming low EROEI, while the LCOE is less than the energy you are assuming it has. It doesn't matter if they use magic free robots that move the coal from the mine to the furnaces, the energy of the raw materials is still there. It is not possible so low LCOE JUST ONLY ACCOUNTING THE ENERGY YOU CLAIM IS USED IN THE PROCESS. Because if you calculate that energy as coal, copper, etc. costs in the market, you obtain more money that TOTAL LCOE. That's even removing labor costs so the slave work argument doesn't change anything.
LCOE includes a lot of other concepts and it was getting cheaper and cheaper. Are you claiming that China used better labor BEFORE and it's worsening to pay the gap?
Because wages were only increasing. LCOE under the Prieto & Hall was done in a time where PV costed around one order of magnitude higher.
The first post in this thread, which I posted only yesterday, is a net energy analysis that I carried out for solar PV built in UK and Spain. It is based upon embodied energy data from University of Bath. It confirms the EROEI calculated by Prieto and Hall. You can check the data yourself if you like. The discussion has shifted to LCOE because that is what you stated that you consider to be important.
But you are shifting my argument from PV along to PV + STORAGE.
LCOE is based on cost, so a lot can affect. But one thing is sure. Costs include energy costs. So it's impossible to cost less than the energy embedded on it.
So if LCOE is cheap then the EROEI is a lot higher than claimed.
But because my argument is about the energy embedded in PV, the LCOE should be also about PV alone.
If you change the debate speaking about PV + STORAGE, you aren't rebating my argument against PV EROEI, because you are speaking about a different thing.
Also I must notice how the debate has changed to deviate from the original intention.
Lets remember how it was.
Calliban - PV can't reduce cost and are fossil fuel extenders because they use a lot of energy to build the materials. (EROEI studies linked)
Me - That EROEI studies are outdated or wrong, because the energy involved in PV using that studies contradict LCOE values of PV. They aren't even enough to pay the energy claimed embedded in the EROEI studies.
Now another thread about EROEI is opened.
But to claim that LCOE of PV is high, they don't use LCOE of PV standalone, but PV + STORAGE. And the raise of the price is in the storage part, not the PV that is dirty cheap.
But the argument about low EROEI was claimed about the energy costs to make the PV panels, not the storage part.
Isn't it obvious that the argument has changed?
The EROEI of PV ALONE should be compared with LCOE of PV ALONE. Not to mix debates and use the values of one case to another.
LCOE of PV ALONE is pretty cheap, and that's a fact of the (recent, yeah) past. That means that EROEI of PV ALONE should be a lot higher than you claim.
This a very interesting report about the same matter
https://iea-pvps.org/wp-content/uploads … ration.pdf
It's a compendium of studies, that includes the link to your previous study.
But it includes some others, a lot more optimistic.
Seriously kbd512. Are you unable to recognize a FUD site that only spread lies full of (intentionally) bad data?
Video Explains How Having More than Enough Renewable Energy Capacity Can Make the Grid More Flexible
What the video doesn't explain is who is paying for all that extra grid capacity that is not required when it's provided by a reliable energy source, such as a nuclear reactor receiving the same level of subsidization as solar. It also doesn't explain where all that extra material is coming from.
From the same site we obtain current materials. Why they need to answer an obvious question? Why you repeat the same question over and over again like it weren't answered?
You can disagree with the answer, but it's tiresome to return to the same question again and again.
The extra grid capacity also is needed to the electrification anyway. Remember that we want to remove fossil fuels from the mix for multiple reasons. We can do it slower or faster, but it's need to be done.
Also there are multiple studies around renewables+storage. Because YES, storage is A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MATTER.
It's connected, of course. We already know that for high mix of renewable storage is a must. And storage is still non competitive although costs are changing quickly.
But use storage as a sure thing for blame solar to have a high cost is not how it works. Because that costs depends on a lot of factors.
Network capabilities. Total storage capacity and kind of storage. Demand flexibility. Etc. etc.
That's the reason why electricity network coordinators are limiting the quantity of renewable integrated in the networks, and working in the best way to adapt all of this. While the storage is limited or too expensive, they just won't allow integrate more renewables.
Still, there is plenty of room for growth, while storage technology become cheaper.
Some countries has a better situation than others. For example, in my country, Spain, we have some pump hydro and there are proposals for a significant increasing of that.
Curtailment is generally low. Just a minor number of days. And it's clearly a symptom that we lack storage. We all know. LCOE usually already integrate in their predictions moderate levels of curtailment. Because it's low, it does affect little and it's still far cheaper than other sources of energy.
If the levels increases in the future, the speed of renewable installations in my country will slow because we have already a high penetration level of renewable. The government will limit the ability to add more renewable into the network. We will continue to use a mix as we have now.
Still the renewables will continue to grow as we add electrification of things, so while the percentage of renewables could stuck until cheap scalable storage becomes available, a lot of old fossil fuel will be changed by a mix with high levels of renewable.
And that's my country. In the planet, there is plenty of countries with networks still to integrate that levels of renewable.
There are multiple calculations there.
It depends on multiple variables. If you consider the price of energy extremely cheap or a lot cheaper than storage, then high levels of curtailment has more economic sense.
As there is a lot of debate which level of price we can reach in any of the technologies involved, this needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Also "curtailment" is generally accepted as "energy dissipated". But there is an immense potential for the concept of "under LCOE generation". Curtailment could be seen as a extreme case of that.
The concept of "under LCOE generation" is that it's cheaper to create non-optimal but cheap consumers adapted to absorb generation peaks.
Anyway, this study take the things to the extreme. Put solar without storage and try to produce the demand curve. It's most a theorical thing that anything.
It's obviously a lot more reasonable a good combination of some curtailment, storage and demand adaptation. The problem of the projected costs in that study are that they are based on old data of storage. Things have changed a lot. Although still not enough.
Because storage prices are not in the competitive level, that's the reason why electricity renewable penetration remains currently limited.
And the LCOE is low, not that absurd numbers of the FUD.
You are NOT going to have a functional grid without electrochemical batteries, because nothing else except a supercapacitor or flywheel can respond that fast to a PV power output drop of that magnitude and speed. The total capacity of all super capacitors and flywheels is even more insufficient than batteries. You will cease to have an electric grid without one of these technologies.
That's the reason why some operators are demanding a minimal level of storage on close to saturation networks.
But that level of batteries are not very expensive, as I posted earlier.
It's not the same the storage need to regulate frequency than to fill the network to 100% renewables.
You can check the experience of Australia with Tesla Megapack. The model works. I insist, not in the price we really want, although batteries are already very close to competitive level if it's for frequency/peak manage.
Sorry, but this doesn't work. If you have to charge $2.50/kWh because you have to over-build the PV
That numbers are not realistic, at least, not with current prices. It could be right using old data.
Current batteries are already at 100$/kwh and going even lower. We will see what price we can reach with sodium-ion.
So when you divide by the cycles that it can support, let's say 1000 (and stationary storage usually can do better) you have 0,1 $/kwh
To reach 2,5 you have to add a lot more costs. That's not current costs of solar + some hours of batteries.
That's the reason the link I post before projected around 60$/Mwh WITH BATTERIES.
But as anyone can see, to dismiss PV, a lot of assumption of future model is used. Instead of current LCOE and reasonable analysis about how to build a profitable model, it's needed to project absurd curtailment levels of old storage prices instead of projected curves of expected future storage costs.
Oh. About the author of that article
https://www.americanexperiment.org/abou … /isaac-orr
Isaac has written extensively on hydraulic fracturing, frac sand mining and electricity policy, among other energy and environmental issues. His writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the New York Post, The Hill, Orange County Register, The Washington Times, and many other publications.
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://tw … 4Y_Nh4HnNo
TheFrackingGuy
How surprising, a advocator for massive fossil fuel industry to reach a LCOE 5x-8x higher than any serious study and real confirmed projects reach.
If you think that FUD is a myth, here you have a clear real example what a FUD spreader is.
Well... It seems that the source of data matters.
While "badboysenergy" claims PV LCOE of 471$/Mwh
Here I come with different sources
Projected 2027 (USA) - (including extra costs like network)
Solar standalone - $36.09 $/Mwh
Solar + 4hr battery - $58.62 $/Mwh
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/el … ration.pdf
Out World in Data. 2022, worldwide 0.05 $/kwh (second cheapest after onshore wind)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/leve … ?tab=table
Lazard - Utility scale from 24 up to 96 $/Mwh
https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/l … l-2023.pdf
In 2020. Past confirmed data
$56/MWh average in Spain $68/MWh in Italy
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news-and- … -in-europe
OR... you can believe BadBoysEnergy and think that Solar costs 471$/Mwh with a methodology of their own invention that nobody uses to obtain a value that nobody in the market cares.
we developed a model to calculate the levelized cost of intermittency (LCOI)
That's how FUD works.
Spaniard, EROEI tells us how viable an energy source is as an energy source.
The EROEI you are insisting is more and more difficult to conciliate with the data of the constant advancements and renewable forecasts of Terawatts of new power.
I already told about it. The industry focus on LCOE, because that's the important number for investors to calculate their return of investment.
But continuous improvement of LCOE are incompatible with fixed EROEI. More and more excuses are needed to "explain" why this happen.
While the answer is simple although some people dislike. EROEI data is obsolete or wrong. Sometimes even intentionally manipulated. After all, one of the most focused community around this value is the peakoiler community and their discourse depends on that value to be bad.
Otherwise the renewables would be perfectly fine to replace our current energy model and their proposition for "degrowth" is unnecessary.
For the same reasons, other groups how dislike the competition of the renewable in their markets also uses this to justify attacks and stops to the renewable initiative.
But... whatever. If you want to believe that EROEI calculus are in the right, and LCOE are just temporary, suit yourself waiting for the renewable to fail.
Some 20% of the world's refining capacity is at risk of closure.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-Gene … osure.htmlMostly in OECD countries. The official stated reason is declining demand due to EVs. Saying that makes people feel happy about it. But so far this is having a minor effect on petroleum product demand. Product demand has been dropping in OECD countries since 2008. At this time, EVs were little more than prototype curiosities. One real factor behind declining demand is declining prosperity for the majority of people. As people get poorer, oil products become less affordable. Couple that with demographic ageing in the western world and you have a perfect recipe for falling demand. Falling EROIE of petroleum is making it less affordable to a poorer population. At the same time, workforce is shrinking. Declining oil demand is therefore a harbinger of economic ruin.
I seems I lost my last response.
Anyway, as I said before, investors doesn't look EROEI. Investors only care about return of investment. They will only see if the investment will be good or bad. As the number of voices against the usage of fossil fuels grows, and it exists a growing risk of fossil fuel bans or massive investment on replacement, the risk of investment on oil also raises.
Besides, BEV are not the only technology that reduce oil. Hybrids, while only reduce a fraction, that reduction is also noticeable. But the greatest reason is not CURRENT data, but bad FUTURE perspectives. This kind of infrastructure can have amortization periods of three decades, so the risks are high.
Investors will wait in countries where the growing demand is not clear, waiting if the prices raises. With higher prices, the amortization period shrink and also the risk of investment.
OR... the demand will really shrink, and the new capacity won't be needed. The old capacity will probably be extended beyond their optimal lifetime because there is no enough time to the new capacity to amortize, at least at the same levels than the previous years.
I personally expect a mix of both. If the BEV replacement come sooner, oil prices should maintain or even reduce a little, but I expect to maintain and even increase a little because the infrastructure becomes old and cost more to maintain. Also the reduction of oil investment will generate a cascade of reduction of scale that will hit against it.
But it's also true than if we replace fast enough, the first oil wheels to close will be the least profitable (so, most expensive) so there are a mix of variables in both directions.
I expect slightly raising price in oil, while contained, as too high will push the BEV replacement sooner. Still, there is a limit to the speed of the replacement because multiple bottlenecks, so there will be multiple spikes in prices as the change is very fast and not enough and too much offer and demand can change very quickly.
The same can occur in the renewables/EV side. In fact, there is currently growing voices warning about a lack of lithium PRODUCTION. Nothing about reserves, but a possible surge in BEV interest beyond some predictions that will require to use more lithium than current investment in the lithium industry.
That can surely occur, and the reason is basically the same. Contradictory projections about the future. Most investors prefer to wait than risk in a investment that it's not clear.
If the EV expand more than the conservative projections, they will soon lack lithium production, raising the prices, generating a new wave of investments that will drop the price sometime later.
These phenomenons are not energy related, but pure economic.
Much depends on how long the Chinese system holds together. They are using forced labour to convert stranded coal into a product (PV modules) that they can ship out by rail. It is an innovative, though inhumane, approach. But it does offer some insight into how stranded fossil fuel reserves can be exploited in other places. Most other places on Earth have no equivelant of Uiyger forced labour. Nor would it be acceptable in most countries.
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/wages
Wages in China has being on the rising all of these years, and coal in the mix has slightly lost weight (relative. Of course, in total consumption they have grown because total energy has grown more than the change of the mix).
You can check the mix here.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix
Although you need to select manually China instead of worldwide and relative instead of absolute. Then the trend is clear.
So both arguments, worsening labor conditions and more coal usage doesn't match the data on China.
https://medium.com/@erofeev.yury/solar- … 711debf309
Solar photovoltaic energy is growing at a monstrous rate. For example, BloombergNEF expects that about 400 GW of solar energy capacity will be commissioned around the world this year.
One of the factors for rapid growth is the reduction in prices for equipment and solar panels.
Aside from a two-year bump between 2020 and 2022, when solar module prices rose more than 50%, the cost of photovoltaic systems has fallen steadily since the mid-2000s, averaging about 10 to 15 percent per year.
In 2023, module price declines resumed, reaching an all-time low of around $150/kW (15 cents/W) — a staggering 42% drop from the January 2020 price.
Rethink Energy predicts that wholesale solar module prices will halve again by 2040 in a new report.
The decline in silicon prices through 2030 will be driven by “a wide range of incremental technology upgrades that will continue at a slower pace through 2040.”
“By 2040, silicon-perovskite tandems — perhaps some will even be silicon-perovskite-perovskite — will account for 61% of the market share,” the authors say.
A report from Rethink Technology Research predicts that the price of PV systems, based on the current “off-the-line silicon solar module cost in China” of US$154/kW, will fall again to US$92.2/kW by 2030 year and 71.1 US dollars/kW by 2040 — a decrease of 53%.
Prices of renewables haven't been plummeting during the past 4 years. They've been going up. I published a link to an IEA report asserting that renewable prices will go down in 2024, whereas they've gone up for the past 4 years, from 2019 to 2023.
Just a little comment to end. Your own link also said that remain competitive.
What increased was transportation costs... by a lot, which make then more expensive outside of China. BUT it also happened the same for fossil fuels. Most countries also needs to transport fuels. So as expected, impacted more on fossil fuels than renewables, so they remain competitive.
Renewables are cheaper than having no energy at all, but they are not cheaper than coal, obviously, else China wouldn't still be using any coal to make them. The evidence backing that statement is the number of brand new coal fired power plants being constructed in India, China, and other countries in Asia and Africa.
The only reason why China don't replace coal for renewables, it's because they didn't produce enough renewables.
Scale factories takes time. They are scaling factories at an impressive speed but it's still not enough, and of course it continues to grow.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/06/08/ … w-by-2024/
The issue with cost, which you seem to be working overtime to ignore, is the cost of not having any energy. Renewables without storage are an absolute guarantee of having non-functional electric grids. After we do an LCOE on photovoltaics or wind turbines and batteries or any of the other storage solutions proposed by our green energy fans, you no longer have an argument to make about the cost of renewables being cheaper than the cost of hydrocarbon fuels.
They are two different markets. A market with a mix of non-dispatchable renewable (as solar and wind) with others that it can do it (like hydro or natural gas) and as the market move through more and more wind and solar, storage and other techniques needs to be added.
We are way below the level of require storage in most places of the world, so expect renewable to continue, while at the same time storage continue their advancements lowering the costs, waiting to reach the competitive goal of renewable+storage to beat natural gas.
What we can expect in coming years are a reduction in coal for electricity, replaced by renewables.
Spaniard,
The prices of metals is going up, not down. Green energy machines require metals. Now that input materials cost is 70% to 80% of the cost of these green energy machines
All of this projections are based on things you are assuming. There is no need to repeat, we already told our points before (change materials, quality, energy assumption, etc)
Lithium was already double before. Because price is a mix of variables, one compensate others. The reserves had increased because we found new lithium faster than we are currently using it.
There are a bunch of variables to play, and that costs are not as fixed as you said. Otherwise it wouldn't have a reason to coming down again.
Yes... there will be spikes in prices from time to time. Still, as the prices doesn't come as high from raw material as you said, and a lot of players in the market knows possible movements if there is a bottleneck, reacting investing in possible solutions like I mentioned before.
As speaking about the future is cheap, we could continue this loop forever, so as we aren't adding new information, I don't see the point about continue this.
Only we can do is to wait... and this is slow so... stay tuned.
Spaniard,
If the materials to produce something don't presently exist, and the green energy metals do not presently exist in the quantities required to do what you want done, then that material must be pulled out of the ground and processed into brand new green energy machines. Those processes require enormous amounts of energy, far above what was required with hydrocarbon fuels, so the energy cost of creating these new machines is a non-trivial matter.
You can claim whatever you want. Yes, renewable require a lot of new things. But also fossil fuels require a constant influx of fuel and infrastructure. Nothing new in our way to do things.
Renewable are cheaper, because the total numbers are better than fossil fuels. You can doubt and claim whatever you want. There is no magic involved.
Market does a thousand times better calculation than you can do with lots and lots of studies.
Studies are there (when they are well done) for doing forwards moves and investments. Market tells you CURRENT costs, not future costs, so studies are still important to help us to do future moves.
But things like the plummeting price of renewable in past years it's a FACT. It's already past. And claiming that EROEI hasn't change regardless that fact it's not backed up by reality. And if you search enough you will found more and more discrepancy. The reason is that EROEI is mostly pushed by the people that want to discourage the investment in renewables and the conclusion was decided from the start. That's the reason you can't expect that people to give you good numbers.
Industry and investors are focused on LCOE, because real world move using money, not complex energy formulas. LCOE convince investors, not EROEI.
Still, you will have to search more and more excuses why the supposedly embedded energy in renewables, that low EROEI proponents claim is enormous, has more monetary value than the infrastructure itself. It's like a godly miracle of multiply bread and fish, just with kwh.
Instead of searching excuses like massive subsides, all has a lot more sense when you assume that people that claim higher and growing EROEI on renewables are on the right.
Then, the lower cost has sense. Also continue to investment on renewables, as they will pay their own cost. Renewables moved by renewables. Just we are starting. You can't request to move on renewables TODAY when renewables are still growing and we are still waiting just to reach the point where renewables grow more than the current growth of energy consumption.
Although that moment maybe will be soon enough to the forum to see it. Another thing completely different is to REMOVE all fossil fuels from the mix. I doubt not only the forum, but us will live enough to reach the zero emissions moment.
In any case, invest in renewables is a lot better than do it on fossil fuels. And the people that claim that nuclear is a lot better, only have to invest on nuclear and demonstrate that they can reach better LCOE in real projects.
They won't lack investors if they can back up their claim with real proof.
The difficulty with EROEI calculations, is always where to set system boundaries. It is entirely reasonable to factor things like roads into EROEI calculations, if they were built specifically for the powerplant or if the presence of the powerplant increases maintenance burden in a way that can be quantified. It is also quite reasonable to factor labour into EROI calculations. Labour is a resource after all. People paid to do a job are giving up time to do it and are paid in money which is used to buy energy products.
First... you shouldn't compare values obtained through different methodologies. It's an apple to orange comparison.
Second... How do they know how the roads are using? Did they go one by one installation checking if the road was used exclusively to that renewable installation?
Of course not. They will just get some generation places as a template, get the costs of the project, doing "conservative" assumptions and extrapolate to the whole infrastructure.
These "refinements" are not that. They are just numbers adding to the input to obtain the EROEI that they want. That's the reason they change the methodology constantly and the reason they insist in almost fixed EROEI values with a clear pattern of lowering costs in the real world.
Labor costs weren't ever accounted in classic EROEI calculation. The reason is simple. People need very little input. The salary is unconnected with the human needs to make the work there.
Computing salaries has sense in a cost model like LCOE, and of course it's computed. Not only for renewable, but every source of energy.
But in terms of energy, what sense it has you said that in a poor country they uses X energy and in other a total different value just because they paid differently. How that change the energy involved in the installation?
The purpose of energy installations is to generate energy for the society. And workers are just part of that society. If you account the energy for the workers as energy used in the input, you should then remove that energy from the requirements of useful energy needed to generate in the output net energy of the source, that of course, they won't do.
Because of that, count salaries as energy input is double accounting.