What is the real limit of expanding solar+wind power?

Renewables up another 6% of the total generation in December 2022, compared to 2021. Coal down about 5 percentage points.

Screenshot_2022_1230_013839.jpg
 
Last edited:
Idk. Solar+Wind is actually eco-unfriendly imho. (Sorry to be a sceptic :( ) Even 25% still looks not that good compared to the consumption , and those windmill blades (engines , masts , etc. ) still need to be produced at some steel foundry I guess , unless uncle joe makes them in his tool's shed xD Solar panels too.) Besides they occupy a huge amount of space forcing animals to die off or relocate to god knows where and forests to be chopped, razed to the ground in order to put a windmills or solar panels there - they are not space efficient at all ! In my subjective opinion atomic power is the only way to go . It will sure require a lot of CO2 released into the atmosphere to be set up once it is set up it will be far more efficient and eco-friendly than any of those windmills or solar panel "farms" as far as the eye can see.
Wind doesn't work great in forests. Chopping them down to put windmills up seems special in the bad way. The blades are carbon fiber and maybe some aluminum pretty sure?

Solar farms out in the countryside are pretty dumb. They replace the solar catch of plants. Should probably move towards getting paneled surface on the top of almost everything we're already ruining, like the tops of buildings and corporate lawns around warehouses and stuff.
 
Coal is terrible at that flex load following role, which is something that does exist in traditional low renewables grids. Usually it's hydro or gas that does it.
Whatever, as long as it is a stable source
 
Wind doesn't work great in forests. Chopping them down to put windmills up seems special in the bad way. The blades are carbon fiber and maybe some aluminum pretty sure?

Solar farms out in the countryside are pretty dumb. They replace the solar catch of plants. Should probably move towards getting paneled surface on the top of almost everything we're already ruining, like the tops of buildings and corporate lawns around warehouses and stuff.
And on the side of some towers as well.
I've seen some examples of moderatly tall and codensed solar farms.
I wonder how tall and condensed we can yet make them, considering sunlight angles.
 
About energy storage issue a solution would be to store the excess produced at day as potential energy instead of chemical energy, for instance pumping water uphill and then releasing it at nigh to move a turbine, so pumped hydroelectric. I dont know why this solution is not more speaken of.
 
About energy storage issue a solution would be to store the excess produced at day as potential energy instead of chemical energy, for instance pumping water uphill and then releasing it at nigh to move a turbine, so pumped hydroelectric. I dont know why this solution is not more speaken of.
Australia is going at it at a scale that would work, but is having some issues.

2019

9 months ago

America used to be able to do big engineering projects like this, but California today shows why most of the glory days of big engineering are in the past.


Some fraction of the energy is lost in the pumps and evaporation, so it will always cost more than if the energy was produced and consumed directly at the needed moment.

That is just the nature of the grid though.
The generated energy needs to match the consumption every single second.

"Cheap" solar and wind needs expensive pumped hydro or natural gas plants to pair up with.
 
Last edited:
I don't think Snowy 2.0 is gonna amount to a whole lot, it's looking a bit boondoggly. Taking twice as long as planned and costing 5x as much as initially projected.
Solar farms out in the countryside are pretty dumb. They replace the solar catch of plants. Should probably move towards getting paneled surface on the top of almost everything we're already ruining, like the tops of buildings and corporate lawns around warehouses and stuff.
Both of these are necessary things. Utility scale PV solar farms on the one hand, and rooftop PV on the other. Each have the advantages that centralised and decentralised ownership respectively confer.
 
Wind doesn't work great in forests. Chopping them down to put windmills up seems special in the bad way. The blades are carbon fiber and maybe some aluminum pretty sure?

Solar farms out in the countryside are pretty dumb. They replace the solar catch of plants. Should probably move towards getting paneled surface on the top of almost everything we're already ruining, like the tops of buildings and corporate lawns around warehouses and stuff.
Not a lot of demand for electricity in forests. Everywhere there's a lot demand, there's plenty of open space.
 
Whatever, as long as it is a stable source


In case you didn't catch what Arwon was saying, it takes a long time to bring a large boiling water steam generator online. Doesn't matter the fuel source. Coal, nuclear, gas, oil. It takes a long time to bring that from standby to production levels of heat. So long that it cannot be used for load leveling.
 
What the hell's a Gigawatt ?!
 
Not a lot of demand for electricity in forests. Everywhere there's a lot demand, there's plenty of open space.
Squirrels have to power their air fryers somehow!
 
The issue with wind and solar and such is that they ultimately can newer ever reach the actual demand we have in order to become properly ecologically sustainable. Doing that would require not just replacing our current energy production but also switching many of the things (transportation, heating, industrial furnaces etc.) that we currently do not use electricity for to use electricity to use exclusively electric mechanisms. And we have to do so in a way that can keep up with rising demand that comes with rising populations essentially indefinitely.

And unless we want to pave over the entire planet with solar panels the only technology we have today that can actually do that is atomic energy.
 
Not a lot of demand for electricity in forests. Everywhere there's a lot demand, there's plenty of open space.
There's always plenty of space somewhere else.
 
The issue with wind and solar and such is that they ultimately can newer ever reach the actual demand we have in order to become properly ecologically sustainable. Doing that would require not just replacing our current energy production but also switching many of the things (transportation, heating, industrial furnaces etc.) that we currently do not use electricity for to use electricity to use exclusively electric mechanisms. And we have to do so in a way that can keep up with rising demand that comes with rising populations essentially indefinitely.

And unless we want to pave over the entire planet with solar panels the only technology we have today that can actually do that is atomic energy.
None of this is true, of course. Electrification and grid decarbonisation are just a matter of policy and capital, and are underway, they're certainly not some pipe dream. These are like talking points from 2005, you'd think people would get some new material.

Those questions of capital and of policy support are also two things among several that largely sink any possibility of nuclear power rapidly expanding. It's been steady at like 10% or so of global electricity generation for decades and there's only 3 countries where it is even currently the majority of electricity production (and two of those, France and Ukraine, weren't built for anything like market reasons).
 
None of this is true, of course. Electrification and grid decarbonisation are just a matter of policy and capital, and are underway, they're certainly not some pipe dream. These are like talking points from 2005, you'd think people would get some new material.

Those questions of capital and of policy support are also two things among several that largely sink any possibility of nuclear power rapidly expanding. It's been steady at like 10% or so of global electricity generation for decades and there's only 3 countries where it is even currently the majority of electricity production (and two of those, France and Ukraine, weren't built for anything like market reasons).
Of course they are not. The only pipe dream is human survival if we don't.

But in order for us to achieve proper decarbonization atomic energy needs to be a large and indeed the dominant part of the package. It's simply the only one that actually fulfills our requirements of easy scalability with minimum environmental impact and minimal environmental requirements. Renewable energy sources like hydro, solar and wind are all nice to have but they simply do not scale as well as atomic due to the large environmental impact of setting them up and their reliance on environmental conditions to work. So they will always be at best a supplemental source of energy.

And unfortunately you are right that right now public opinion and certain very misguided lobbies in the green sector are preventing us from actually using it properly. Which is why my opinion on the future of mankind is grim in this respect.
 
But in order for us to achieve proper decarbonization atomic energy needs to be a large and indeed the dominant part of the package.
This is just literally the opposite of things lol. Just a sci-fi feels post unencumbered by the actual state of play.
 
This is just literally the opposite of things lol
No it is not. It's a fact.

Solar, wind and water power require huge investments in terms of land to function. Atomic does not.
They depend on the environment being just right. Atomic does not.
And in terms of surface area and environmental impact per unit of energy generated they are vastly less efficient.

That is why they have not and will not ever truly take over. You just can't risk your power grid going down entirely because the wind decided not to blow that day or global warming decided to turn your collection lake into a pond.


An atomic power plant can be built anywhere. It has no special requirements for construction or operation. And it is utterly independent of all environmental conditions short of a meteor impact. And it produces huge amounts of energy in a very small footprint. Atomic has all the benefits of traditional power generation with none of the downsides.
 
Top Bottom