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.

View attachment 739717

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.

 

[Quintillus]

Anecdote: Today I found a power plant that was still rolling coal in West Virginia. Big coal stockpiles on site, lots of chimneys, which included advanced pollution-control technologies (mainly for sulfur and other breathing tract irritants, not CO2).

Looked up the plant online afterwards, found out that the new phase of the plant, which I couldn't see, has 50,000 solar panels, and opened in late 2023.

The story will be similar with oil. It won't disappear overnight, but will be gradually displaced. At some point, seeing an oil-powered vehicle will be as surprising as this coal-fired power plant was today, even though 15 years ago, it would have seemed common as a dormouse.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Using oil as a primary energy source is practically a thing of the past, and internal combustion cars have the days numbered. It is simple: solar energy is unlimited and free (once you have it installed of course), all we need is a good way to store it, and problem solved.

Nuclear fusion may even become moot before it's fully developed.

 

[ainwood]

Hydrogen?

As a petrolhead myself, I prefer to drive gasoline cars to soulless electric cars any day too. I especially hate electric cars in Formula 1. Current hybrids have taken all the fun out of it to the point i just don't watch it anymore. Miss V10 races so much... but I understand that these are irrelevant whims, and the future belongs to hybrids and 100% EVs in the short and medium term (even I'm thinking about buying an EV for daily use), and probably to hydrogen cars in the long term.

Also, I don't see 100% electric cars being able to completely replace internal combustion engines either, not only due to energy consumption but also due to infrastructure. Most people live in apartment blocks without garages where they can plug in their EVs. But there is a solution, and it's hydrogen. Let's take Spain, for example. Here, solar energy is overwhelming. During the day, we produce so much that we don't know what to do with it. We even have to self-limit it since if we run more than 50% on solar, we run the risk of blowing the fuses, as was seen a few months ago. This surplus energy can be used for water electrolysis to obtain hydrogen. This "solar hydrogen" (green hydrogen) can be used as an energy store for the night and to replace gasoline. That is the Spanish government's long-term energy plan. The switch to this hydrogen economy is colossal, but part of the infrastructure is already in place; it is none other than the natural gas infrastructure. In fact, Spain has always wanted to build gas pipelines and big capacity power lines to connect the Iberian Peninsula with the rest of Europe to sell solar energy and green hydrogen in the future, but these plans have always run into obstacles from France, which fears its nuclear energy exports being harmed and, in the future, it won't be able to compete with purple nuclear hydrogen, which is more expensive than green.

Hydrogen, as you have alluded to, is a battery. Conversion from solar to hydrogen, compressing it for storage or transmission, then back to heat for transportation is pretty inefficient. Fuel cells are a little better.

Re using natural gas infrastructure for hydrogen, it is typically only feasible in the low-pressure gas distribution networks. For high pressure transmission, the risks of hydrogen embrittlement mean that the amount of hydrogen must be limited to around 10-20% by volume. Research ongoing.

 

[ainwood]

Using oil as a primary energy source is practically a thing of the past, and internal combustion cars have the days numbered. It is simple: solar energy is unlimited and free (once you have it installed of course), all we need is a good way to store it, and problem solved.

Nuclear fusion may even become moot before it's fully developed.

After what, nearly 30 years since Kyoto, and the amount of primary energy provided world-wide by oil has increased from 41.6 TWh to 55.3 TWh.

Coal, Oil and Gas still make up over 80% of the world's primary energy. Solar is less than 1.5%

Global direct primary energy consumption

Energy consumption is measured in terawatt-hours, in terms of direct primary energy. This means that fossil fuels include the energy lost due to inefficiencies in energy production.

ourworldindata.org

Solar energy really isn't free. Is it nearly useless without storage, and storage isn't free. It causes problems with frequency control in grids (no inertia). Technologies to stabilise the grids are not mature.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

After what, nearly 30 years since Kyoto, and the amount of primary energy provided world-wide by oil has increased from 41.6 TWh to 55.3 TWh.

Coal, Oil and Gas still make up over 80% of the world's primary energy. Solar is less than 1.5%

Global direct primary energy consumption

Energy consumption is measured in terawatt-hours, in terms of direct primary energy. This means that fossil fuels include the energy lost due to inefficiencies in energy production.

ourworldindata.org

Solar energy really isn't free. Is it nearly useless without storage, and storage isn't free. It causes problems with frequency control in grids (no inertia). Technologies to stabilise the grids are not mature.

'primary energy' in those graphics includes fuels for vehicles, heating, everything, not only electricity production:

"Primary energy is the energy available as resources – such as the fuels burnt in power plants – before it has been transformed. This relates to the coal before it has been burned, the uranium, or the barrels of oil.Primary energy includes energy that the end user needs, in the form of electricity, transport and heating plus inefficiencies and energy that is lost when raw resources are transformed into a usable form.You can read more on the different ways of measuring energy in our article."

They apparently count the oil barrels before they are used, so I wonder if the oil used to make plastics an stuff is also counted there.

In any case as claimed in the article in OP oil today is not used for electricity production in developed countries anymore, even in USA still totally dependent on fossils fuels for electricity generation, oil represents only a 0,4%:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

www.eia.gov

About solar energy, it is basically free after installation costs, and you can use only solar during the day unless you live in Mordor (and at night too if we are talking about thermosolar energy). In fact in Spain during sunlight hours when solar reach 50% or more of the total, electricity is very cheap, like a 10-30% the price of electricity at night when nuclear and gas are the main generators. Some days particularly weekends when demand is lower, electricity is basically free after fixed costs. Hardly 'almost useless'.

The lack of inertia iseue appears when solar photovoltaic reaches the 60% or so of the total energy production in a grid, as happened in the Iberian grid this year, but it is solved installing synthetic inertia inverters which mimic the behavior of turbines. Spanish traditional improvisation lack of prevision propicied the conditions for this to happen, but in Australia, another country highly dependent on photovoltaic energy, synthetic inertia solutions are already being implemented to make it a non-issue:

What is synthetic inertia?

An explainer on how big batteries can stabilise the energy grid

larissa-fedunik.medium.com

 

[amadeus]

Looking up the data, Japan was 60% (2½ now) oil in 1970. What a relief that the price of that would be stable forever and not subject to geopolitics.

 

[ainwood]

'primary energy' in those graphics includes fuels for vehicles, heating, everything, not only electricity production:

You specifically said:

Using oil as a primary energy source is practically a thing of the past

Oil is primary energy. The graph is primary energy - primary energy is a very specific term. Electricity is secondary energy, derived from primary energy.

In any case as claimed in the article in OP oil today is not used for electricity production in developed countries anymore, even in USA still totally dependent on fossils fuels for electricity generation, oil represents only a 0,4%:

The main reason oil is not used for electricity generation (when it is, it is mainly for emergency generation, or for places far off the grid), simply because it is too valuable for using it for that. It has a high energy density, and is easily transportable.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

www.eia.gov

About solar energy, it is basically free after installation costs, and you can use only solar during the day unless you live in Mordor (and at night too if we are talking about thermosolar energy). In fact in Spain during sunlight hours when solar reach 50% or more of the total, electricity is very cheap, like a 10-30% the price of electricity at night when nuclear and gas are the main generators. Some days particularly weekends when demand is lower, electricity is basically free after fixed costs. Hardly 'almost useless'.

The lack of inertia iseue appears when solar photovoltaic reaches the 60% or so of the total energy production in a grid, as happened in the Iberian grid this year, but it is solved installing synthetic inertia inverters which mimic the behavior of turbines. Spanish traditional improvisation lack of prevision propicied the conditions for this to happen, but in Australia, another country highly dependent on photovoltaic energy, synthetic inertia solutions are already being implemented to make it a non-issue:

What is synthetic inertia?

An explainer on how big batteries can stabilise the energy grid

larissa-fedunik.medium.com

I disagree with your view that lack of inertia is 'a non-issue'. Synthetic inertia is complicated, and not yet full mature. I know that there are some systems using it with batteries, I'm not aware of anything other than micro-scale (basically experiments) with solar or wind.

Using batteries for grid stability is interesting. Theoretically, it makes sense, but it is fairly expensive and to have it just sitting there as a contingency is a... challenging use of capital. There will always be the temptation to arbitrage power prices with batteries: Store power when it is cheap / there is excess of it; discharge it when the price goes up (fun fact - in Australia, electricity prices are often negative during peak solar generation, and yet Australian electricity prices are going up. Fancy that.).

Solar may be "free", but it can be described as a parasite on the network. When it is offsetting baseload generation, usually (currently) that baseload generation is still required to be maintained and available as back-up when solar isn't available (similar for wind). This means that the traditional baseload has much less utilization, but still the same maintenance costs. In fact, maintenance costs can increase, and equipment life decrease, because regularly starting and stopping (for example, gas or steam turbines) is not good for them (peakers are different). It is an interesting economic argument as to where the increased maintenance costs for the baseload should be reflected.

I tried to build a business case for converting one of our plants to solar. Would have needed a paddock for the solar, and another one next to it for the batteries (we run our plant 24x7). Had a horribly negative NPV.

 

[Ordnael]

Lack of inertia is pointed as one of the many "culprits" for the

2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Variable renewable energy use​

The blackout has prompted discussion about how to ensure stability of electricity systems which have a high proportion of variable renewable energy. At the time of the incident, solar energy accounted for approximately 59% of Spain's electricity supply, with wind providing around 12%, nuclear 11%, and gas 5%.[9] The initial fault is believed to have originated in Extremadura, a region that hosts a large proportion of Spain's solar farms, hydroelectric facilities, and the 2 GW Almaraz Nuclear Power Plant, Spain's most powerful nuclear power plant.[100]

In power systems, mechanical inertia is used to provide stability. In hydropower and thermal power stations, (the latter including fossil-fueled, nuclear and solar thermal) the inertia typically comes from the rotating mass of spinning turbines.[14][better source needed] A major aspect of transitioning to renewable electricity systems is the reduction in inertia on the grid. Solar, which accounted for the majority of Spain's electricity at the time, uses grid-following inverters[101][22] for 80% of the solar power supply,[78] which provides little firming to the grid.[102] An energy consultant also pointed to the small amount of controllable inertia, comparing the blackout to the 2016 South Australian blackout, and suggesting the same solutions for Spain as Australia did; synchronous condensers and large batteries.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

You specifically said:


Oil is primary energy. The graph is primary energy - primary energy is a very specific term. Electricity is secondary energy, derived from primary energy.



The main reason oil is not used for electricity generation (when it is, it is mainly for emergency generation, or for places far off the grid), simply because it is too valuable for using it for that. It has a high energy density, and is easily transportable.

I disagree with your view that lack of inertia is 'a non-issue'. Synthetic inertia is complicated, and not yet full mature. I know that there are some systems using it with batteries, I'm not aware of anything other than micro-scale (basically experiments) with solar or wind.

Using batteries for grid stability is interesting. Theoretically, it makes sense, but it is fairly expensive and to have it just sitting there as a contingency is a... challenging use of capital. There will always be the temptation to arbitrage power prices with batteries: Store power when it is cheap / there is excess of it; discharge it when the price goes up (fun fact - in Australia, electricity prices are often negative during peak solar generation, and yet Australian electricity prices are going up. Fancy that.).

Solar may be "free", but it can be described as a parasite on the network. When it is offsetting baseload generation, usually (currently) that baseload generation is still required to be maintained and available as back-up when solar isn't available (similar for wind). This means that the traditional baseload has much less utilization, but still the same maintenance costs. In fact, maintenance costs can increase, and equipment life decrease, because regularly starting and stopping (for example, gas or steam turbines) is not good for them (peakers are different). It is an interesting economic argument as to where the increased maintenance costs for the baseload should be reflected.

I tried to build a business case for converting one of our plants to solar. Would have needed a paddock for the solar, and another one next to it for the batteries (we run our plant 24x7). Had a horribly negative NPV.

Well, yes. In fact one of the issues that made the Iberian blackout this year worse was most nuclear reactors were stopped in the peak solar hours because electricity was so cheap it was not profitable to have them running.

But then all this sounds like a problem of traditional generation methods becoming obsolete more than a problem of solar energy, along the issue with turbines being damaged for being stopped. Technology must adapt to how humans use it not the other way around. It also explains why in Australia electricity is more expensive despite price of electricity being negative thanks to solar. Should make it clear where is indeed the problem.

About inertia, the lack of inertia wasn't the primary cause of the blackout either. It made it worse and more extended though. The primary cause is still unknown. In fact still without inertia correction, in Spain photovoltaic solar power reaches the 50% of the mix or more everyday and nothing happens. It will need a solution of course to make it sure such kind of blackouts don't happen again and to go over that 50% safely (at the moment of the blackout photovoltaic was 60%), but it will be solved, and sooner than later I bet. And if we can have turbines running unnecessarily making electricity more expensive, I guess we can also have some batteries as backup too.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I think there was a similar thread some time ago, but posting there would be necroposting or whatever it is called so:

The 165-year reign of oil is coming to an end. But will we ever be able to live without it?

Like whale blubber, oil as a dominant source of energy will gradually be phased out over the next decades. Here's what that transition may look like.

www.livescience.com

I remember that just a few years ago, the biggest fear along a nuclear war was about oil reserves dwindling, production declining and oil prices skyrocketing. (The Mad Max scenery) This was called the peak oil. Well, it seems we've reached that peak, but not because reserves are declining, which are not at all, but rather because demand is declining, and rapidly, along prices. The use of oil is obviously not going to disappear completely. There are products like plastics that will be made with oil in the foreseeable future, but in general, it will become less and less necessary in the coming years, especially in places with the most advanced infrastructures, like Europe, Japan, South Korea, and China. In fact, it's already happening. These places stopped burning oil to get energy almost completely and the automotive industry is also phasing it out slow but inexorably, these two sectors accounted for the vast majority of oil consumption just a decade ago. It's harder to stop using oil in ships and airplanes, but they will do so too; still it represent a small percentage of total consumption. Of course, this trend varies by region. We have underdeveloped places like India and Africa, and to some extent Latin America, that will continue using oil massively in the next decades, and others that are not that underdeveloped but backward by choice, like the United States, which will apparently maintain oil as a essential resource for longer. Even so, oil could be on the same path of decline as whale oil at the beginning of the 20th century, and countries that rely on oil production, like Saudi Arabia and Russia, face the same bleak future as whaling stations.

So, that's the way things apparently are. What do you think will happen to oil in the coming decades, and how will it affect you and secondarily the world order?

I was deeply scared by peak oil 20 years ago, but the fracking revolution moved the running-out-of-oil time to beyond my lifetime.

Thank goodness.