Trudeau's pie in the sky environmental policies

[TimG]

45 minutes ago, ?Impact said:

Why do you need base-load if you have dispatchable power? You do realize that in Ontario we are paying dearly for the high level of base-load power from nuclear? 

Because dispatchable power is generally more expensive. Baseload is the cheapest way to provide the core needs of society supplemented with dispatchable sources to cover peak load. You may think that nuclear is expensive but the provides a huge amount of power at a low cost per kWh. Only hydro can beat it. Renewables are often parasites that add cost to the system because you need to have dispatchable sources to deal with their variability. So if you are talking about a market driven system then renewables are not going to be a big part of it.

[TimG]

29 minutes ago, msj said:

NG will be the base and renewables will replace coal and some oil (as vehicles are electrified). 

NG will be the base until demand outstrips supply and prices shoot up. When that happens we will be turning back to coal in a heartbeat. You should not assume that the low NG prices today will be the long term future. Renewables cannot provide the majority of our electrical power needs.

[?Impact]

4 minutes ago, TimG said:

Because dispatchable power is generally more expensive.  ...

Only hydro can beat it.

You do realize that much of hydro is dispatchable. Generally it is only run of the river hydro that is not. Yes there are some huge run of the river installations (e.g. Sir Adam Beck), along with a lot of micro hydro ones as well, but that still leaves a lot behind controlled release dams. 

[TimG]

18 minutes ago, ?Impact said:

You do realize that much of hydro is dispatchable. Generally it is only run of the river hydro that is not. Yes there are some huge run of the river installations (e.g. Sir Adam Beck), along with a lot of micro hydro ones as well, but that still leaves a lot behind controlled release dams. 

Yes - hydro is a dispatchable but it can also provide base load. It really depends on the dam. However, the big problem with hydro is limited supply. We need sources like NG, coal and nuclear. This is even more true if we insist on expanding our population. Renewables are a distraction.

Edited November 29, 2016 by TimG

[msj]

51 minutes ago, TimG said:

NG will be the base until demand outstrips supply and prices shoot up. When that happens we will be turning back to coal in a heartbeat. You should not assume that the low NG prices today will be the long term future. Renewables cannot provide the majority of our electrical power needs.

And you should not assume the costs and technology of today will be the same tomorrow for renewables.  

[TimG]

26 minutes ago, msj said:

And you should not assume the costs and technology of today will be the same tomorrow for renewables.  

Obviously, technology has a way of surprising but usually it does in ways no one expects. The energy system of the future will likely be nothing anyone imagines today. That said, one can reasonably extrapolate existing technologies and point out their inherent limitations. 

[Argus]

22 minutes ago, TimG said:

Obviously, technology has a way of surprising but usually it does in ways no one expects. The energy system of the future will likely be nothing anyone imagines today. That said, one can reasonably extrapolate existing technologies and point out their inherent limitations. 

The big one is power storage.

[Bonam]

9 minutes ago, Argus said:

The big one is power storage.

An electric car in every garage is a good amount of distributed grid energy storage. Charge them in their parking spot while the sun is shining while you're at work, discharge them at night to run your home appliances. There are 250 million cars/trucks in the US, if each one had a 100 kWh battery, that's 25 TWh. Meanwhile, daily energy usage across the country is 11 TWh. So just electrifying people's vehicles can provide up to 2 days of power smoothing. 

I used to be totally with you and TimG in being skeptical of renewables being able to contribute more than 10-15% of electricity needs due to variability, given the need for reliable power and the lack of viable large scale storage solutions besides pumped hydro. But I think electric cars with their potential as smart storage for the grid are going to be changing this equation big time in the next 20-30 years. People will just buy them as cars, and the storage function will be a side bonus, but before long there will be a huge amount of storage in the grid. 

[TimG]

19 minutes ago, Bonam said:

But I think electric cars with their potential as smart storage for the grid are going to be changing this equation big time in the next 20-30 years. People will just buy them as cars, and the storage function will be a side bonus, but before long there will be a huge amount of storage in the grid. 

The issue I see is how to get from here to there. Such a system is not going to be viable until there is a critical mass of EVs on the road because without a critical mass the variability in individual patterns of EV use would mean it is not a reliable source of storage. Even with a critical mass the effective capacity of this distributed battery would likely be some fraction of the rated capacity of the individual components.

During the time that we are building up that critical mass we will not only need to rely on traditional power sources and increase supply to meet the rising demand from EVs.  My fear is people caught up in the renewable fantasy will insist on putting road blocks that prevent the expansion of traditional power sources which will lead to a electrical crisis which makes EVs must less attractive.

Edited November 29, 2016 by TimG

[?Impact]

Rechargeable battery technology does degrade based on the number of charge cycles, so using your car as day to day storage to smooth out the grid will increase the cost. Hopefully we will have more technology improvements that increase the number of charge cycles, decrease the cost of the batteries, and most importantly provide more complete recycling of materials from old batteries. There is progress being made on all three fronts, but still a long ways to go.

[Bonam]

58 minutes ago, TimG said:

The issue I see is how to get from here to there. Such a system is not going to be viable until there is a critical mass of EVs on the road because without a critical mass the variability in individual patterns of EV use would mean it is not a reliable source of storage. Even with a critical mass the effective capacity of this distributed battery would likely be some fraction of the rated capacity of the individual components.

Right, clearly you can't run the batteries down to zero since people don't want to wake up in the morning and find their car discharged. Presumably, the system would have a method for vehicle owners to specify the maximum discharge allowed and their allowed schedule of charging/discharging. I'd expect the available capacity of such grid storage would maybe be on order of half of the rated capacity of the batteries in the vehicles. 

As for getting from here to there, it's actually relatively straightforward... the mix of renewables will gradually increase over time, in concert with the growing mix of electric vehicles available for grid storage. 

Quote

During the time that we are building up that critical mass we will not only need to rely on traditional power sources and increase supply to meet the rising demand from EVs.  My fear is people caught up in the renewable fantasy will insist on putting road blocks that prevent the expansion of traditional power sources which will lead to a electrical crisis which makes EVs must less attractive.

EVs naturally lend themselves well to working with renewable power sources. Besides road trips, they can be charged at any point in time when they are not being used, during the night while their owners are sleeping (using wind power) or during the day when they are at work (using solar). That means that fluctuations in the amount of power available from minute to minute or hour to hour matter a lot less. 

But yes, irrational energy policies based on ill-informed opinions or hysteria are certainly a potential problem as we build out future energy infrastructure. 

Edited November 29, 2016 by Bonam

[TimG]

1 hour ago, Bonam said:

As for getting from here to there, it's actually relatively straightforward... the mix of renewables will gradually increase over time, in concert with the growing mix of electric vehicles available for grid storage. 

I don't think it would work like that. For starters we don't have the grid that would allow such a distributed battery to operate nor any real incentive to build one. That means renewable built in the foreseeable future will require gas or hydro backup. As EVs proliferate the demand for electricity will increase much faster than the hypothetical capacity for EVs as storage which means engineering and financial resources will be directed to towards ensuring the supply using what is known to work (gas, coal, nuclear and hydro). Eventually, the grid upgrades will occur and EVs will reach a critical mass and it would be possible to consider such a plan but whether anyone would want to pay for it depends on what other technology has appeared in the meantime.