When renewables flood the grid with more electricity than is needed at that moment, we don’t say „How wonderful!
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@timjclevenger I'd rather use it to run giant CO2 scrubbers to clean our atmosphere from the poison we put into it by burning fossil fuels
@jwildeboer Living completely without SciFi in ones life would be boring, agreed.
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@jwildeboer Living completely without SciFi in ones life would be boring, agreed.
@phf I know it is technically unfeasible to do this. But we need to keep on thinking about ways to make our planet healthier. It's the only one we have. But using renewables for desalination plants to produce drinking water that can also be used for agriculture in desert regions is not that much science fiction
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@timjclevenger I'd rather use it to run giant CO2 scrubbers to clean our atmosphere from the poison we put into it by burning fossil fuels
@jwildeboer @timjclevenger
that would be great, if such things existed. -
@jwildeboer @timjclevenger
that would be great, if such things existed. -
When renewables flood the grid with more electricity than is needed at that moment, we don’t say „How wonderful! Let’s find ways to store that excess electricity so we can share it back to the grid when needed.“ Instead we sing the song of fossil fuel capitalism that claims this is a BAD thing and we need to shut down the renewable plants so The Grid can keep on working based on scarcity and rent seeking. It's like we all have been brainwashed by the grid operators and the fossile fuel industry.
@jwildeboer I've found that efficiency incentives are not the same as profit incentives, at least not directly. Profit incentives tend to form centralized systems that operate on optimizing for their own version of efficiency, which can look very different from what is prioritized for those outside those systems. This isn't just for energy, food is another big one. We can all technically grow our own produce. Nature gives us a "framework" to follow. Energy is more abstract, it's of our design.
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When renewables flood the grid with more electricity than is needed at that moment, we don’t say „How wonderful! Let’s find ways to store that excess electricity so we can share it back to the grid when needed.“ Instead we sing the song of fossil fuel capitalism that claims this is a BAD thing and we need to shut down the renewable plants so The Grid can keep on working based on scarcity and rent seeking. It's like we all have been brainwashed by the grid operators and the fossile fuel industry.
@jwildeboer If I am not mistaken, they are working on energy storage compounds in China, with some success.
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When renewables flood the grid with more electricity than is needed at that moment, we don’t say „How wonderful! Let’s find ways to store that excess electricity so we can share it back to the grid when needed.“ Instead we sing the song of fossil fuel capitalism that claims this is a BAD thing and we need to shut down the renewable plants so The Grid can keep on working based on scarcity and rent seeking. It's like we all have been brainwashed by the grid operators and the fossile fuel industry.
@jwildeboer the grid frequency stability need huge rotating machines with lots of inertia so we cant stop these too much in case of renewable surplus. This is an issue that could be technically fixed but IDK if we have that much workarounds for that right now.
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@jwildeboer the grid frequency stability need huge rotating machines with lots of inertia so we cant stop these too much in case of renewable surplus. This is an issue that could be technically fixed but IDK if we have that much workarounds for that right now.
@f4grx And with enough storage capacities to fill the gaps we don't need these huge rotating machines, dictating the frequency, any longer
That is the fear of Big Grid. That we can get to a point where the concept of Base Load simply stops being relevant. -
When renewables flood the grid with more electricity than is needed at that moment, we don’t say „How wonderful! Let’s find ways to store that excess electricity so we can share it back to the grid when needed.“ Instead we sing the song of fossil fuel capitalism that claims this is a BAD thing and we need to shut down the renewable plants so The Grid can keep on working based on scarcity and rent seeking. It's like we all have been brainwashed by the grid operators and the fossile fuel industry.
@jwildeboer eh, to be fair both things are true at the same time
if at any single minute (or even second) you have more production on the grid than consumption and you're out of
* batteries (and other storage) that can still be recharged
* factories and other big consumers that can increase their use of energy on demand when there is more of it available (and thus cheaper)
* private customers with smart homes that can run things like their AC now and store that energy as air temperature for later (or water heaters, etc.)
then you do need to shut down some renewable plants, otherwise things will end up in blackouts and/or fires.But also, it's perfectly fine! Especially solar panels that don't have big moving parts can do so basically instantaneously, *without suffering any consequence* (and wind and hydro require just a few minutes to bring their big chunks of spinning metal to a halt). True, some energy will be wasted, but then a lot of light from the sun is hitting built surfaces that don't have solar panels on them, and that's also wasted, isn't it?
On the other hand, if you have to do so more often than “now and then”, (and you still have times when energy is scarce), then on a longer time scale it's time to build more (and more. and MOAR) of the above things, so that the basically free energy can be put to a good use.
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When renewables flood the grid with more electricity than is needed at that moment, we don’t say „How wonderful! Let’s find ways to store that excess electricity so we can share it back to the grid when needed.“ Instead we sing the song of fossil fuel capitalism that claims this is a BAD thing and we need to shut down the renewable plants so The Grid can keep on working based on scarcity and rent seeking. It's like we all have been brainwashed by the grid operators and the fossile fuel industry.
@jwildeboer I'm constantly amazed by this. I live in Arizona (in the United States). It's a desert where 115F (46C) is common. The sun beats down on us to the point being without AC can be a death sentence, and you'd be shocked at the number of people here who have only negative opinions of solar power. It should be ubiquitous. Every structure should be lined with it with batteries in every building. It's just not the case, and it's nothing short of flabbergasting.
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@jwildeboer we should be happy even if we didn‘t have enough space to store the energy. why not warm (public) baths a little more? bake another cake? take a hot shower? melt some metal? etc.
having to much energy is just great anyway!
@lechimp @jwildeboer I knew I was doing it wrong when my new solar panels started to produce more than I was using this late winter, but could still not push energy to the grid (here in Italy there is a couple months wait between the installation of the panels and the installation of the proper meter)!
I should have baked cake! not ironed clothing!
(to be fair, most of my cake recipes require some hours of advance planning, ironing clothing was the thing I could do on demand. and I still needed to do it.)
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(No need to reply with "not me!", I know you know better. I exaggerated with the inclusive "we" to make my point clear. The majority of people out there don't have thinking about a better, more decentralised and self-balancing grid to make electricity more of a flat rate commodity on their priority list.)
@jwildeboer all capitalism works on scarcity. We need to transform into a system of abundance, and energy might be a first sector where it starts.
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@jwildeboer eh, to be fair both things are true at the same time
if at any single minute (or even second) you have more production on the grid than consumption and you're out of
* batteries (and other storage) that can still be recharged
* factories and other big consumers that can increase their use of energy on demand when there is more of it available (and thus cheaper)
* private customers with smart homes that can run things like their AC now and store that energy as air temperature for later (or water heaters, etc.)
then you do need to shut down some renewable plants, otherwise things will end up in blackouts and/or fires.But also, it's perfectly fine! Especially solar panels that don't have big moving parts can do so basically instantaneously, *without suffering any consequence* (and wind and hydro require just a few minutes to bring their big chunks of spinning metal to a halt). True, some energy will be wasted, but then a lot of light from the sun is hitting built surfaces that don't have solar panels on them, and that's also wasted, isn't it?
On the other hand, if you have to do so more often than “now and then”, (and you still have times when energy is scarce), then on a longer time scale it's time to build more (and more. and MOAR) of the above things, so that the basically free energy can be put to a good use.
@valhalla The current incentive system (at least here in the EU) is completely wrong, though. In times of excess electricity from renewables, you are forced to shut wind/solar down and the electricity companies then have to pay you for NOT generating electricity. This disincentivizes from building storage capacities that would allow for better capture and use of renewable electricity. Things are changing, though.
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Meanwhile, in Australia, with the highest penetration of rooftop solar in the world:
"The installation of home batteries in Australia in the month of March accounts for around 10 per cent of global grid scale battery installations, an extraordinary number."
Then we are giving away 3 free hours of electricity in the middle of the day, to use up some of the curtailed large scale electricity and shift energy from coal powered off peak.
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@jwildeboer the grid frequency stability need huge rotating machines with lots of inertia so we cant stop these too much in case of renewable surplus. This is an issue that could be technically fixed but IDK if we have that much workarounds for that right now.
actually exact this concept can be used for storing surplus energy and frequency stabilization.just search for Flywheel storage (Schwungradspeicher)
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@valhalla The current incentive system (at least here in the EU) is completely wrong, though. In times of excess electricity from renewables, you are forced to shut wind/solar down and the electricity companies then have to pay you for NOT generating electricity. This disincentivizes from building storage capacities that would allow for better capture and use of renewable electricity. Things are changing, though.
@jwildeboer yeah, I suspect that the incentive system is lagging behind reality by a few years, and needs to be brought up to date.
At least for smaller, home-sized plants, now the incentive is in favour of having batteries (it is here in Italy, I don't know elsewhere in EU), but I suspect that as a system it has a bit less inertia than that of bigger plants.
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@jwildeboer yeah, I suspect that the incentive system is lagging behind reality by a few years, and needs to be brought up to date.
At least for smaller, home-sized plants, now the incentive is in favour of having batteries (it is here in Italy, I don't know elsewhere in EU), but I suspect that as a system it has a bit less inertia than that of bigger plants.
@valhalla And you are perfectly right. When more and more private homes reduce their dependency on the grid by installing solar and batteries, that is a bottom-up approach that will change policy over time. And it shows you that electricity can be more of a flat rate system, where the infrastructure cost is shared, but electricity itself is more less for free for domestic settings. Industry consumption of electricity is a very different thing.
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actually exact this concept can be used for storing surplus energy and frequency stabilization.just search for Flywheel storage (Schwungradspeicher)
@derunglaublichefalk @jwildeboer I know flywheel are a thing but is this scalable to country/continent size and when?
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@derunglaublichefalk @jwildeboer I know flywheel are a thing but is this scalable to country/continent size and when?
@f4grx Batteries are cheaper and readily available. And store less mechanical energy
It's always surprsing to see how many people ignore the obvious solutions and focus on techno phantasies instead Fusion energy, anyone? @derunglaublichefalk -
@jwildeboer all capitalism works on scarcity. We need to transform into a system of abundance, and energy might be a first sector where it starts.
@Reinald There's real scarcity and artificial scarcity. I dare say that the whole digital/internet business is based on artificial scarcity, where we accept things like Digital Rights Management to keep the reality of abundance more or less a secret.
