When renewables flood the grid with more electricity than is needed at that moment, we don’t say „How wonderful!
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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.
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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 ik ben vooral ook verbaasd over de bizarre manier hoe gekeken wordt door veel Nederlanders over het afschaffen van de saldering. Met dank aan bepaalde schreeuw-media en het daarna overnemen van hetzelfde narratief door de rest.. en dan allemaal boze middelbare mannen (vooral) die echt heel goed verdienen. Brr
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@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
since I'm no expert, i don't know if this has a valid use case, is just interesting, maybe already used or a techno phantasy. I just read some stuff years ago (but different sources and projects) on that tech and it was more plausible than let's say nuclear fusion power plant.
@f4grx -
@jwildeboer
since I'm no expert, i don't know if this has a valid use case, is just interesting, maybe already used or a techno phantasy. I just read some stuff years ago (but different sources and projects) on that tech and it was more plausible than let's say nuclear fusion power plant.
@f4grx@derunglaublichefalk The idea of energy storage in flywheels sounds good. But in practice you talk about mechanical elements that will degrade over time, making the practical use complicated as you have to take into account mechanical failure and the huge amount of kinetic energy stored in a flywheel that can lead to catastrophic damage when things get out of whack. It has been tried several times, but never emerged as sustainable solution. @f4grx
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@jwildeboer
since I'm no expert, i don't know if this has a valid use case, is just interesting, maybe already used or a techno phantasy. I just read some stuff years ago (but different sources and projects) on that tech and it was more plausible than let's say nuclear fusion power plant.
@f4grx@jwildeboer @f4grx
as far as I remember the argument was a very high discharge current. -
@derunglaublichefalk The idea of energy storage in flywheels sounds good. But in practice you talk about mechanical elements that will degrade over time, making the practical use complicated as you have to take into account mechanical failure and the huge amount of kinetic energy stored in a flywheel that can lead to catastrophic damage when things get out of whack. It has been tried several times, but never emerged as sustainable solution. @f4grx
@derunglaublichefalk There are other principles that do better, though. Hot sand is as thermal energy storage is one of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage @f4grx
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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 @linjari We have!
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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 So so so right.
Just imagine immediately after pulling fossil sources from the ground we burn it to generate power. Then complain we have to much power available and should stop drilling and pumping.
We've been storing fossil for decades and don't find that strange at all. So why is storing renewables so difficult or strange?
Well, because if we store it, we can use it when renewables are scarce (night / no wind) and the fossil/nuclear lobby really doesn't want that to happen.
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@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 @derunglaublichefalk I have absolutely no fantasy, quite the contrary, I just know that accurate grid frequency management is extremely complex and that it cant be done reliably with solid state devices. I could change my mind by reading convincing elements that describe how to do it in a way I understand.
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@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.)
@valhalla @jwildeboer ironing clothing should be fine as well
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@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.
@mike @jwildeboer
Billboard campaign idea: "Why buy energy from far away at extortionate prices when you can harvest it directly from the sky?" -
@derunglaublichefalk The idea of energy storage in flywheels sounds good. But in practice you talk about mechanical elements that will degrade over time, making the practical use complicated as you have to take into account mechanical failure and the huge amount of kinetic energy stored in a flywheel that can lead to catastrophic damage when things get out of whack. It has been tried several times, but never emerged as sustainable solution. @f4grx
@jwildeboer @derunglaublichefalk I know that, so I wonder how to keep the grid sync without these.
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@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
@jwildeboer @phf if we used all the fossil fuel subsidies handed out all over the world and put that into renewables and cleaning up the planet, we would make some remarkable progress. Considering all the possibilities we have, one must assume the majority doesn't want a clean, liveable world. Or is too busy with survival to consider it?!
