You are not logged in.
Spaniard, I searched the internet and found a copy of Hall and Pietro's EROI analysis free to download here.
https://libgen.li/edition.php?id=136738520Maybe you can find holes in their analysis?
I will reply quick and do it just once, because I already did it in the past.
There is no reason to say things like "You need a EROEI X:1" to support your civilization.
It's pure nonsense.
EROEI just means the ratio of Output vs Input
If you have a Energy source that produce 1 MW with near infinite EROEI it's the same that:
- 1.1 MW for 10:1 EROEI - 0.1 MW will be used to rebuild new energy input
- 2 MW for 2:1 EROEI - 1 MW will be used to rebuild new energy input
- 10 MW for 1.1:1 EROEI - 9 MW will be used to rebuild new energy input
So the EROEI graph they put is purely nonsense.
Second, while I understand the argument of...
"Well. Usually we aren't accounting all the energy in the input, so real EROEI is higher that current standard methodology EROEI..."
You can't mix them like nothing. Otherwise you are doing an unfair imbalance between energy sources. And that's exactly what it happens here. If you want to make a comparison, you need to standarize the methodology. Otherwise is just apple vs orange comparisons.
IF you read the own document, you will find this piece.
Pag 41
"Where possible it is desirable to measure the energy used directly (e.g., on site or in
centralized manufacturing facilities) in terms of physical units. In fact, there is considerable
information about how much energy it takes to make, e.g., a metric ton of steel
(about 21.3 GJ) or concrete (about 5.1 GJ) but less for e.g., transformers or instruments
or fi nancial services. When we are lucky, there are estimates of the total amount
of energy going into a solar PV factory to produce modules and how many units (e.g.,
square meters of PV devices coming out)."
What do you think would happen if you rebuild the calculus after a reduction of 90% on the price?
You need to understand the circumstance when the study was executed. It was nearly twenty years ago, when PV was installed with a >500% feed-in tariff. Of course that PV was non-competitive by then.
Second part of analysis. How to drop the numbers as much as they want.
"Mismatch of Modules" - "Losses Due to Dust" - ...
You have real data about the energy produced. That energy ALREADY SUFFERED ALL THAT FACTORS. Why they introduce the factors?
That's named double accounting.
You need to know where the data of injected energy is measured. If all the data is included in the measurement, you can't introduce that factors because they are already discounted in the generated energy.
You can, as much, introduce factors as loses in the network, as they are probably not included. Most of their factors are redundant.
More parts like pag 62, start to including the wages of the labor AS ENERGY, or other costs as well?
Do you understand how bogus is do that in EROEI?
They are saying that if you put a PV in Africa, where people have very low wages it consume less energy that if people in the developed world, with high wages put the panel.
Of course it impacts the cost. BUT NOT THE ENERGY. The energy produced by the energy source is used to feed people services including the people that put the panels. You could only claim that if having workforce where some kind of limitation in our society.
Again, double accounting.
That most economic to energy computations would have a similar background. Lots of double accounting.
Even if you agreed with their authors (I'm not. It's a cost, but not an energy that should be included in input), do you really believe that factor don't change with the scale?
It's the most simply factor that change. Put one panel and put four panels in the same roof or the same field doesn't scale linearly.
Lots of doubtful facts, like cost of access roads. Do you really believe that if PV grows (as it did) plants have the same size?
That roads to small farms scale to huge farms?
And besides... all of that is included in cost. Do you believe that these numbers remain the same AFTER all that feed-in tariffs were removed?
In Pag 64
When the field was able to build with eight times the current cost, doing things one way like regular roads impact less than that road means duplicate the cost. Of course that should have changed. I'm not gonna check their specific number only pointing how arbitrary they are.
If build a road with gravel is too costly, why don't just avoiding that and just dirt roads? Or build the fields nearer the existing roads?
There are multiples ways to build a solar field, and people is not dumb. They will plan the way that match the required price. Sometimes paving a road has sense, sometimes is not. The projection is clearly overinflated.
I'm just at the middle of the document and I'm already lost my patience.
I'm already met Pedro Prieto long before he did this document. I knew the conclusion of the document before I read it.
Because if he wasn't able to put solar in a bad spot, he wouldn't publish the document in first place.
He first did the money to energy conversion.
And later he played with variables until he was able to get an energy input that met his energy output to calculate the same EROEI so all seems a serious paper.
I'm pretty sure that's the way he did the paper.
The problem is that cost has dropped since then. By a lot.
So more than me pointing the errors of the document, you should ask yourself if you should have some reason to still refer to this document not just because you doubt of the methodology, but just if it's up to date.
Well. I said that I would do a quick replay. I instead lost lot of time replying.
This post is to thank you for the work you put into the recent series with Calliban on how energy will be collected or generated and distributed in the years to come, if humans can avoid obliterating themselves.
Is projection of energy flows in coming decades something you'd like to work on? I have no way of knowing how much of the work of others you have time to read. Void is a contributor who creates topics and then develops them for extended periods of time. Void has learned how to use drawing tools and image storage services to make interesting posts that are often worth a busy human taking the time to read.
I'm not sure what you mean by that.
From my perspective, in this forum, commenters about energy are fixed on showing the present and future from the perspective of physics, not economics.
Our world moves on economics, and economics exposes a lot more info than physics, which is different from place to place.
Every technology, every step can be done in multiple ways. At the same time, each way of working is constantly audited to search for possible improvements.
That's the reason all those physics variables involved are constantly changing, and trying to project the low level to the general values of the whole system is an error. Also, assuming a fixed technology, like how much glass is in a panel (different kinds of glass allow a thinner layer, for example, new perovskite layers help to reduce the polysilicon involved, etc.).
Because of that, analysis at the physical level is prone to errors — too many variables, always changing.
And that's the reason the market usually uses high-level projections. Kind of "every X% increase of power, price gets reduced in Y%."
That reduction is not magical. It represent minor improvements in the production chain. It's a real improvement in the real world. Just it's unpredictable which specific improvement will be.
Of course, real limits exist, and if an unsolvable problem is reached, those projections can be hollow promises. Not only for physical reasons. Also lots of human problems like wars, geopolitical shifts — whatever changes the direction of projections.
The market adapts. New projections are considered and money shifts from one kind of solution to another.
And that's how the real world is driven — using money as a unit of measurement of where we should invest our money.
If PV is the cheapest form of energy, investors are gonna put their money on it.
Of course, it is not so simple. PV has some characteristics and other forms of energy have others. The price you can sell that energy for depends on the network, on the generation pattern of the electric network, on your demand requirements.
That's the reason why you can't forget things like storage, and all of that. And because of the large number of variables involved, there is so much discussion and so many different bets from different investors in different ways of energy.
In summary, when you say "Is projection of energy flows in coming decades something you'd like to work on?" I can tell you my way of thinking is market-driven, like most people work in the real world.
People that use physics trying to understand the market are prone to fail in their predictions. Malthusianism has made those kinds of projections over and over in history, always failing.
It's not about discussing each data point. For example, now kbd512 is insisting again on getting costly prices of current installations (before a true scale economy for stationary storage is established) and projecting them into the future.
While he talks about $300K/MWh with cobalt, current stations are LFP without cobalt, while CATL presented some months ago the Naxtra battery with price future projections of $10/kWh → $10K/MWh based on sodium with a 10,000 cycle life, better than my own assumptions. I ignore the exact composition, but I doubt it will include cobalt if they really think it's gonna match that price.
Sodium based on Prussian white uses all abundant elements, if I remember correctly.
They are different things. A network battery includes a lot more infrastructure than just cells. Even his $300/kWh (which is already higher than current projects in construction), the cells are probably in the range of $130–90.
The other costs require their own improvements, both technological and scale. But it's expected it will happen.
Do you think that this argument is gonna convince him? No. I argued about this in the past, and old arguments are gonna be repeated again and again.
It's a complete waste of time.
It's all based on linear projections assuming a fixed and unadaptable market. That's not gonna happen. People working on that are not wasting time, and know more about their field than people outside it.
Even if this forum had the smartest people on Earth, they wouldn't be able to predict what kind of changes will come that will help every step of technology or every breakthrough that will happen, for a simple reason:
We lack information. Even current information is spread and closed inside each field. Companies don't share their secret sauce until they gain something or they are ready to sell it. And some information is just waiting for us to discover it in the future.
So any prediction is full of unknowns. You can just expect every person working in each field to work to solve every bottleneck they find. And if they fail, then the market will react with a different path.
I can explain why I choose that mix of storage. Why it makes sense. People could find it interesting. Instead, they reply in full rejection mode, attacking prices, repeating the EROEI argument, blablabla. My effort was wasted, so I'm not gonna insist on it.
Expecting the world will stop using PV or batteries because current technology, extrapolated to full usage, has problems is a completely wrong way of thinking. With growth in the market, variables change and money flows to the people working on it. If possible improvements exist, those improvements will happen.
You can check it against past data. While material usage has grown, as expected, the usage per power unit has decreased. And that happened usually even with moderate prices. When a sudden spike in price happens, the reduction is way more aggressive.
Knowing the past, why insist on the same way of fixed thinking about the future?
Insisting on limits that have already been overcome, like cobalt dependency, shows that it's not a debate searching for truth but a fight of egos about gaining the audience by repeating "unsolvable problems" (that some don't even exist).
I'm not gonna play that. I lack the time and I'm not interested.
If you would like to use this forum as a staging area for an article you might write for a major publication, your work here would be of interest to some and (no doubt) irritating to others.
If you would like to work on something in the Real Universe, you can see Calliban's work as an example. You can select a project, let us know what you intend, and then show us your progress (including the occasional setback).
No need for that.
It's just that I was involved in the peak oil movement in Spain decades ago. I was there when they translated the EROEI term into TRE (Tasa de Retorno Energético). It's more or less the same concept in Spanish.
I saw their projections and how they failed multiple times. Until I accepted that this way of thinking is doomed to fail. The economic argument was right. And those arguments I saw debated two decades ago still live today, doing the same mistake over and over. They will never die.
I have seen the errors myself, but also the intentional malicious attacks and group dynamics.
The energy transition struck a chord with me. And I am sometimes unable to ignore the FUD spread about renewables, knowing how important it is to remove our fossil fuel dependency as soon as possible.
I guess it was a mistake to intervene again. I know I don't have the best communication skills (especially in English), nor the time.
Besides, this is a very polarized debate where people involved never change their positions. I have two decades of experience to know that.
It only makes sense to do it when other undecided people read the forum so they can see that the spread idea is challenged. Otherwise, it's a total waste of time.
Follow up: I asked User List to show me your many posts, and was surprised to find this innovative idea in 2008:
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 84#p107884You have (apparently) been provoking NewMars members since your first day.
(th)
Well, yes. Outside of energy debate, I'm a fan of space, that it's the main reason I subscribed to this forum.
Because I like to project into the future, I think the space is the path humankind should walk.
Besides I think being "gardeners of the galaxy" is an exciting concept that can inspire humankind in a future where we have transcended from living for needs or short term wishes but we search for a greater purpose.
I think technology has the chance of break our limits about our current economic model and we will need new ways of thinking to avoid end in disinterest and depression.
That's the reason I think push humankind into long term projects (space colonization, star travel, terraforming) that transcend their own self satisfaction and even their lives it will have a profound importance in the future culture.
Spaniard, It would take me hours to answer every detail in this ridiculous word salad. I don't have it to spare. It is a mixture of denial, wishful thinking and ignorance of physics and engineering.
No. It's a summary of a mix of technologies that are very real. Some are at the point of deployment, some require some time to refinement but the main configuration remains.
Only after understanding that each technologies has advantages and disadvantages you can understand that a mix works way better than a pretended 100% that energy model, and why the world is pushing towards that future.
It wasn't about precise calculations (I'm pretty sure that even if every calculus were right, that probably not, it's impossible that every number will met the real values in the future, but not necessarily on the bad side).
It was about try to understand how a model can be constructed.
Instead, you insist on old arguments based on old calculations, you reach false conclusions. Zero effort trying to understand that you usually extrapolate one energy source to 100% deployment to demonstrate it doesn't work when in the real world that won't be the configuration chosen and a mix change the numbers completely.
I did a significant effort to put some numbers. What kind of response I have obtained? A replay of old debated argument.
Well... Whatever. Just you know. You are gonna insist in your argument forever while the world install more and more renewable and other technologies needed for the renewable model to work.
Do you know why? Because you are fixed in arguments you won't challenge.
You won't try to check if it's real that EROEI 10:1 is needed, or even it has numeric sense.
Neither you will check if the 2.45 is true or fair ("Extended EROEI" what a joke), or if it has changed from the document until now.
You will insist in your argument forever, whatever the reality dismiss your statements or not.
So... because this transition will take decades anyway, old arguments will probably remain the same even after these forum become closed.
I hope my post could help someone. Otherwise it was just a completely waste of time.
At least I hope we will be here to see the fossil fuels peak. Coal peak could be almost here.
Intermittent renewables have short term and long term variability. Batteries are expensive and have high embodied energy, meaning a lot of energy is needed to make them. What this means in practical terms, is that batteries can be used for smoothing short term variability. A battery big enough to power your house for weeks, would be as big as your house. And it would cost as much as your house. And most of the batteries would only be used a few times per year. What would that do to the marginal cost of storage? Would the system ever return the energy needed to build it?
All of this was already replied that time.
Each type of storage has an efficient point of implementation.
Depends on lot of variables, some futures, so it's difficult to say the exact optimal configuration or if I just a new tech not predicted makes all calculus obsolete.
But a kind of solution is like this.
Over X power (let's say for a country with 30 GW average power, 40 GW usage peak).
120 Gwh of peak batteries (4h of average), optimized for efficiency, almost everyday usage. LFP, maybe sodium-ion. 80-90% rountrip efficiency.
250 cycles per year. 4000 cycles. Amortization in 16 years
80 $/kwh 80/4000 = 20 $ per cycled kwh ... + renewable cost/0,85.
3000 Gwh of cheap batteries (100h of average), optimized for low cost per Gwh with medium efficiency. 50-70%. iron-ion. sodium-ion, CO2 battery, flow battery... Depends on advancements.
Numbers depends a lot in the technology.
60 cycles per year. In 40 years, 2400 cycles (almost every tech has higher cycles than that, let's use that as limit).
50 $/kwh. 50/2400 ~= 21 $ per cycled kwh ... + renewable cost/0,65.
A month of energy storage. Fuel. Multiple combinations are possible. Assuming hydrogen for an example.
It requires.
30 GW of thermal power reserve + 1 month energy
Price 1,5 millions per MW or 45.000 millions for whole system. A lifetime of 45 years. 1.000 per year.
30 Gw in a month generates 21600 Gwh or 21.600.000 Mwh
1.000.000.000 / 21.600.000 = 46 $ per Mwh in power reserve
Electrolizers
10 GW. 500 $/Kwh= 5000 millions for 10 G for 20 years. or 250 millions per year.
Assuming 50% efficiency for the 21.600.000 Mwh output
250.000.000 / 43.200.000 = 5,7 $ per Mwh in power generation
So, combined cost from power/generation of 51,7 $ /Mwh + cost of electricity/efficiency. Poor eficiency around 30%, but cheap source cost. Let's say cheap 25 $/Mwh / 0,3 ~=83,3Mwh in energy reserve
Other extra infrastructure costs (salt caves storage) around 20 $ per Mwh
Total cost on displaced season storage 46 + 5,7 + 83,3 + 20 = 155 $ per Mwh
That is more expensive than nuclear, BUT it's just a month of generation.
You have lots of hours around the year when during the day it's covered for wind+energy alone. Around 40-50 $/kwh
Lots of other that are solar+wind+peak battery (nights). 65-75 $ /Mwh
Others that solar+wind+cheap battery (bad weather). 75-85 $ /mwh
And finally, in winter you need to use your power reserve (around 720 hours per year) 155 $ per Mwh
That's the cost. Not necessarily the network needs to express the prices that way.
Something like, of 8760 hours per year...
3500 around 45 $/Mwh
4450 around 70 $/Mwh
720 around 155 $/Mwh
With an average around 65-70 $ Mwh
That's just quick and dirty calculations without a detail revision, but it doesn't matter too much, because real numbers depends on a lot of things that can change.
The idea about the "superpower" of Tony Seba is that we "overbuild" renewables and a lot of adaptable demand will appear in the network, which makes the deficit of non dispatchable demand reduced to almost nothing.
In that case, 720 could be a pessimistic assumption. Also the backup generation is assuming 0% renewable generation that it's false, so the numbers can be lower.
My guess also probably overbuild backup generation. Besides a real model will probably have hydro too. Most countries have.
Because not all should work from the production side, but also can become from the demand side, if the exchange for intermittency energy is cheap energy.
On other side, I only added direct costs but surely there are financial costs.
Besides, that costs I think are realistic, but assume a well oiled supply chain. You can't build that tomorrow, but slowly migrating from current model to a renewable model.
Some numbers could be deviated in some way while others on another. But I hope that help to understand that mixing models (like here, hydrogen + batteries) beats a only one tech model.
Hydrogen is expensive per unit, but it has a low cost for each unit of energy stored. Meanwhile batteries already have good price, but their amortization required hundred or thousand of cycles and that turns impossible when the cycle falls for one per year (the season storage).
So with a mix, it's possible to create a reasonable model.
So, please, stop about arguing about "overbuild storage" (assuming something like 100% lithium that requires too much batteries, or 100% hydrogen that it's clearly too expensive) because I don't propose that one tech model. I'm only pointing that if you get more cheap storage of one type, that numbers I wrote before changes. With extremely cheap sodium-ion, even have a month of storage in peak plant could be viable (although it has other challenges like limit the selfdischarge of that kind of battery).
And a model 100% renewable is possible.
That is unlikely. A renewable system feeding a grid needs a fossil fuel power station as backup.
Once thing is the present, other thing is the future.
In the future, the model could be like I said. In the present, the gas generators ALREADY EXISTS.
It's not more money. The invest is currently working.
It will be very difficult and expensive to build enough storage to obviate the need for backup. And remember that 'storage' is really just another powerplant that sucks in electricity at one end and spits out less electricity as output. Backup means building two power plants and paying for the capital and operating costs of both. You also have to invest in additional transmission infrastructure and frequency control, because intermittent renewables have no inertia. Levelised cost of energy does not account for these things.
I show you some numbers. You can play with them.
I considered using ship engines for backup by the way. Cheaper than open-cycle plants but more efficient. They aren't used because they aren't very good for frequency control. That change if you have batteries as they can work together to make medium-efficiency plants while frequency is guaranteed by the batteries.
At the end of that process, you achieve a modest reduction in fossil fuel consumption. But the added cost is huge. And all of that extra infrastructure has a lot of embodied energy, most of which comes from coal, natural gas and diesel.
That's the fallacy about the chicken-egg problem. A descarbonified society will produce infrastructure without embedded fossil fuels.
It's the same for every other energy model, because the replacement is done in current society which uses fossil fuels, so it has a lot of embodied energy as you said. That's not a real argument as the problem disappear by itself if we move away from fossil.
Of course, that requires MORE than just energy, also industries. We are on it.
The cost of new nuclear power depends primarily on build times. These have stretched from just a few years back in the 70s, to about two decades today. Part of this is due to regulatory burden and part is due to the loss of all scale economies and supporting industries over the past forty years. The French built nuclear powerplants cheaply, because they were able to build quickly and in large volume. They established a national industry that met all parts of the nuclear supply chain. No one has this now. But it was a policy choice to shut that down. It isn't an inherent problem. And we could, with political will, rebuild it.
Build time surely has a big impact on that.
But it's not only that. That's the reason why China, that doesn't have this problem (they install nuclear pretty fast), they still build renewable even faster.
I'm not against nuclear. I'm against EXPENSIVE nuclear and false information against renewables.
Even with a cheap nuclear, being realistic you won't get better than 60$/Mwh, and probably 80$/Mwh in the western world... if you remove the bottleneck in construction.
If you are able to do that, you will obtain that the best mix is NOT nuclear, but a combination that reduce part of the storage. The most expensive part.
For example in the previous model I calculated, 80 is more expensive than the solar+wind+peak, and around similar price for solar+wind+cheap battery&less efficiency while winter is very high cost.
If nuclear displace more cheap energy than expensive energy it will have a negative effect in cost. If nuclear displace energy more expensive, then the effect is positive.
The cheaper the nuclear energy, the easier is to displace energy more expensive than it.
Hinkly Point is over 100, probably over 120 $. And a cost compromised for 40 years minimum.
Do you really think it's a good idea? I think not.
It's different if you can bring nuclear at lower cost. But that remains as a challenge, not as a guaranteed path.
Spaniard wrote: 'Insist in making linear projections of copper. But as offtherock commented (and I did in the past), copper usage per unit power is not fixed.'
Yes it is.
No, it's not. Most copper used in FV installations are just wiring on the site, not in the panel. You can replace that wiring for aluminium TODAY if you want, just adding more mass if needed to compensate other factors.
Why is not doing it then? Because when you account all variables, WITH THE CURRENT COSTS, it isn't profitable.
That's it.
It's not physics. It's physics mixed with ECONOMICS.
If we were using the best conduction, we would use gold cables, not copper. We don't use gold because copper is the most economic in that context of variables.
Are you assuming that replace copper by aluminum generates some kind of energy problem?
It's not. You are always returning to your EROEI when I already pointed that it's obsoleted data mixed with dubious calculations.
Even embedded copper can also change with technologies as CNT. More speculative, but you can't just assume it won't happen.
The other alternative for intermittent renewables, is to accept the fact that power will fluctuate and plan your activities around that. If that is possible, then the energy could indeed be quite cheap, because backup and storage are no longer needed. But how much of society could work that way? Could grids function with continuous rolling blackouts? I don't know. I would guess that an intermittent energy supply would burden society with a lot of other costs. But it is the only way I can see this working.
It's not a 100% one model or another, that's other mistake.
We will add a lot of renewable to make the electrification possible, like industry.
Industry can have lots of embedded thermal storage (that it's a lot cheaper), for example, and make some industries turn off on winter.
Lot's of electricity now goes for home usage. Most people forget that with the electrification, the home consumption, the more difficult energy to balance, it will loose weight in the network in the future.
Factories and transportation that it will have a lot more weight in the future, are a lot more manageable from the demand side than regular home consumption. Home is driven by human controlled events, while factories are mostly programmed and transport at a middle point.
That's a part usually omitted, about demand management. It doesn't require to be 100%. Intelligent appliances for example, can displace some charge.
There are a lot of possibilities in that.
The old fashioned windmills did not try to store wind energy to cover periods when wind was not blowing. They just varied work rate to match supply. And they harnessed mechanical energy from the wind to drive mechanical processes with only basic, short range mechanical power transmission. Those were cheap and simple systems. But the people involved had to work with intermittent power. Can we adjust our society to do the same? Again, I think this is the only way this can work.
It's not a 100% model.
Some consumption can adapt, so they will do to have access to cheaper energy.
Some other consumption can't adapt, at least not in short term, so it will be the systems in the network which will provide the storage/generation management.
I already debated that, I see here nobody changes positions.
Still, it remains the same.
Insist in making linear projections of copper. But as offtherock commented (and I did in the past), copper usage per unit power is not fixed.
The Chatgpt estimation of Copper is based in institution projections. That projections are based on demand projections, which at the same time are based on certain consumption projections.
That's it, most projections are very moderated in renewable growth. They are probably wrong.
But that's the thing. If renewable grows more, it will generate more pressure on copper price, that it will generate more pressure on copper reduction/replacement, that at the same time allows the renewable support higher prices without too much problem.
If you are assuming that the reduction won't be enough, that's because you are seeing a projection based on different circumstances that you are considering. The more renewables we build, the more aggressive will be the reductions.
Aluminum wires are already available. Sometimes is just a matter of convenience. Carbon Nanotubes are an interesting promise, as they already work, but the problem is that we don't know how to make them cheap and good quality at the same time.
And about "renewables need fossil fuels". That's wrong. The right statement is, renewables needs storage. Fuel has advantages and disadvantages, as well as batteries.
Fuel generators are relatively cheap on power, the cost is the fuel. Doing synthetic fuel is fine for long term storage. While the efficiency is poor, the cost of storage and standby power is low. Acceptable for season storage. In short term storage, batteries are fine. Lot's of cycles per year.
No need to insist on "lithium limits". It's not need for fixed storage. In chemical batteries you have alternative compositions, like sodium-ion, potasium-ion, iron-ion.. etc.
Flow batteries like vanadium based, or quinona based.
CO2 batteries (it's not a chemical solution, but based on compress, decompress CO2).
Thermal batteries
...
There are plenty of options.
You are wrong when you are insisting in seeing the problem from the raw material perspective instead of the economic perspective.
We build things with the materials we have. Through the advancement, the technology changes and also change the demands of raw materials. At the same time, the exploitation of raw materials also change the techniques to access to them, like new deposits, recycling, etc.
You are Putting the cart before the horse. You are assuming a limit on a technology in a situation when the demand is not a problem and assuming it will turn into a problem in the future with a doubtful projection.
Today PV is significantly cheaper than thermal and nuclear, and if I'm in the right, it will continue in the future.
That's the way of thinking of the industry, and the reason the world is not dumb as you think they are.
Is it possible that I'm wrong and the industry won't be able to reduce the consumption as much as needed?
It's possible. Maybe I'm underestimating the difficulty of that changes.
Let's say I'm wrong. What's gonna happen? Just that copper will raise the price, and renewable, unable to reduce the usage (the assumption), it will make renewable less competitive. So other ways of generation it will take the lead.
And the copper? Just embedded in the renewable fields, mostly on wiring. When the field will be decommissioned, all the wiring will be recovered and it will enter the market again.
So, what's the problem?
Renewable reduce the fossil fuel usage today per $ more than nuclear. Invest on renewable today helps more on reduce our fossil fuel dependency than nuclear.
Yes, it's not so simple. Because the price depends on the mix. If 50% renewable cost X, 100% doesn't cost 2X. Costs more.
It requires storage and changes.
And that cost money and technologies that aren't competitive enough to make a full deployment today.
That's the reason we are working on them. Still not a big problem as fossil fuels still will be there for some time.
That's the reason we are invest on that. You can't ignore that we are living in a capitalist world and you invest based on current prices, not in far future projections based on changing variables.
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.