Oil!

[Thorgalaeg]

We have to move away from oil for personal transportation. I think bikes have to be the answer, it is SO inefficient to use a two tonne object to move one person.

Air travel is a much harder problem. What happens to this graph in the future will determine what happens. If say Solar Photovoltaic cells drop by another factor of 5 or so then we will be flooded with more electricity than we know what to do with during the day. One thing we could do is charge electric vehicles, so it may become effectively free to charge you battery during the day.

We will not be able to make enough lithium based batteries to store all this, and any chemistry will be expensive. It could be that the best way to store this power is to convert it to hydrogen and convert that to something easier to store, like ammonia or hydrocarbons.

If that tech becomes mainstream it could save air travel and possibly even ICE vehicles in specialized circumstances. It would certainly kill out need to use oil as an energy source.

Charging electric cars during the day has the problem most people use cars during the day and charge them at night.

Here in Spain we are already in the situation of not knowing what to do with solar energy during the day and not having way to store the surplus. Storing it as potential energy at pumped hydroelectric energy storage plants is the main way right know.

As you can see in the graphic below right now 2614MW of solar power is being used for pumping water uphill (Consumo bombeo) and it will reach 5000MW at 2:30 PM or so. Still it is not enough to cover night comsuption for a landslide. So we need to build more dedicated pumped-storage hydroelectricity plants but that implies giant engineering works and proper places with hills and mountains, we have plenty of said places in Spain but not all countries have them (think in Netherlands for instance) and then comes the environmental thing since building such installations usually means sacrificing areas of special natural interest, so it is not a perfect solution either. Still countries as Switzerland for instance have adopted this solution and have the energy storage issue mostly solved. China has lots of places too and are not particularly ecosensitive so they are leading in this field in terms of installed capacity at least.

 

[Perfection]

Eventually our children's children are going to be like

"We used to use compressed dead dinosaurs to power everything?" and somebody will respond "No it was actually mainly compressed dead plankton and algae that had over time become hydrocarbons, but a small part of that could have been compressed dead dinosaurs I suppose" and that first person will call that person a nerd, likely using some sort of a futuristic insult that doesn't exist yet, like smorg.

god warpus you're such a smorg

 

[Samson]

Charging electric cars during the day has the problem most people use cars during the day and charge them at night.

Here in Spain we are already in the situation of not knowing what to do with solar energy during the day and not having way to store the surplus. Storing it as potential energy at pumped hydroelectric energy storage plants is the main way right know.

As you can see in the graphic below right now 2614MW of solar power is being used for pumping water uphill (Consumo bombeo) and it will reach 5000MW at 2:30 PM or so. Still it is not enough to cover night comsuption for a landslide. So we need to build more dedicated pumped-storage hydroelectricity plants but that implies giant engineering works and proper places with hills and mountains, we have plenty of said places in Spain but not all countries have them (think in Netherlands for instance) and then comes the environmental thing since building such installations usually means sacrificing areas of special natural interest, so it is not a perfect solution either. Still countries as Switzerland for instance have adopted this solution and have the energy storage issue mostly solved. China has lots of places too and are not particularly ecosensitive so they are leading in this field in terms of installed capacity at least.

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There is a new report from Ember out (and a discussion here).

They say that battery prices have dropped so low that solar + batteries is cheaper than coal or nuclear.

24-hour solar generation is possible – just 17 kWh of battery storage is enough to turn 5 kW of solar panels into a steady 1 kW of 24-hour clean power.

It is possible to get 97% of the way to constant solar electricity every hour of every day of the year (24/365) in the sunniest cities.

The economics are great in sunny cities – just $104/MWh to get 97% of the way to 24/365 solar, 22% lower cost than just a year earlier and cheaper than new coal or new nuclear.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Problem I see with batteries is at the very large scale. You can already buy a bunch of batteries and panels to be almost energetically auto sufficient, but for a whole city it is different. I think we are not there yet. Even if they are getting cheaper current batteries use relatively rare materiald as lithium and are difficult to build. Probably in next years a solution for large scale batteries will be found. I wonder if the same molten salt tanks used in thermal solar plants could be used in photovoltaic plants, heating then with resistors instead of deflected solar radiation. Probably worse performance, but if you have almost unlimited solar power performance is not a big problem.

 

[Samson]

Problem I see with batteries is at the very large scale. You can already buy a bunch of batteries and panels to be almost energetically auto sufficient, but for a whole city it is different. I think we are not there yet. Even if they are getting cheaper current batteries use relatively rare materiald as lithium and are difficult to build. Probably in next years a solution for large scale batteries will be found.

There are different chemistries based on sodium and/or iron, which are heavier so not good for cars but suitable for static batteries.

I wonder if the same molten salt tanks used in thermal solar plants could be used in photovoltaic plants, heating then with resistors instead of deflected solar radiation.

There are heat batteries. I think they use sand. I think we should have them in our homes, and use them to make heat pumps more efficient when it is cold out but I do not understand the thermodynamics really.

 

[Birdjaguar]

What is the "levelized cost per MWh" shown on the map?

 

[Samson]

What is the "levelized cost per MWh" shown on the map?

It is complicated and I do not know the details, but it is a way of comparing forms of electricity generation that taking into account important factors like if it is available when it is wanted.

 

[Birdjaguar]

It is complicated and I do not know the details, but it is a way of comparing forms of electricity generation that taking into account important factors like if it is available when it is wanted.

I asked because currently in NM charging stations are charging about $0.42 per MWh and the electrical cost encumbered by the charging site is about $0.13.

 

[Samson]

I asked because currently in NM charging stations are charging about $0.42 per MWh and the electrical cost encumbered by the charging site is about $0.13.

I THINK that may kilowatt not megawatt. $0.13/kW = $130/MW

 

[Birdjaguar]

I THINK that may kilowatt not megawatt. $0.13/kW = $130/MW

You are correct. My prices were kW. Sorry.