Sometimes we create our own problems.
Sometimes we create our own problems.
226 comments
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I get the sentiment but... When sun isn't shining the negative prices cause problem for baseline power producers who need to turn off their power plants to avoid the zero to negative power prices.
This causes the power prices to become volatile, since the investments for the power plants that run during the night need to be covered during the night only.
Eventually though the higher price volatility will encourage investments into either demand side adjustability or energy storage systems. This will play out in energy only markets.
The other alternative is to implement a capacity market, which will divide the cost of the baseline production across different production hours by paying producers more for guaranteed production capacity.
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Ya I'm not an engineer at all so I'm not sure how hard it is to store that much power but that always seemed like a good idea. Even for electric cars, if we designed a universal battery pack good for a few hundred kilometres that we could swap out at recharge stations I feel like that would be a smart way to do things. But again I have no idea if thats feasible or how it would be implemented.
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The problem with batteries is that they are costly to produce if we’re talking about ones that reverse chemical reactions. This is why I rolled my eyes at Elon suggesting we connect batteries to all our renewables. (The cost I learned from Factorio). Other types of batteries, like potential energy buffers are more practical, but also extremely location specific. There is a Technology Connections video about it. Also for example, some rollercoasters have flywheels to slowly build up rotational inertia and then release it all at once. So if we were to store the excess energy, it would probably be done so this way, but baseline power obviously just seems more practical
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It's a problem today, but in 50 years we're projected to run out of non renewable sources. AI and EVs have the potential to skyrocket energy consumption well beyond our current capacity.
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We didn't really have good batteries at that scale. I believe the large scale power storage is still done using water and gravity. Which is honestly pretty neat, but requires lots of land and a high location.
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Much harder than you’d think, though there are some interesting schemes (like huge tanks filled with molten stuff, superconducting rings, giant flywheels). And there’s always a loss with storage.
TBH having a diverse array of power sources (including a little storage) is much better.
Also, batteries in electric cars are unfortunately extremely expensive, and extremely heavy. They’re less efficient than you’d think. Standardization and swappability (and reusing idle batteries for the grid) is a great idea, but even just focusing on the technical aspects, challenging.
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But where are the opportunist industries, like a recycling plant^[or a desalination plant, or carbon capture, or H2O to Hydrogen generation] that will only run during high insolation hours, set inside multi storey structures, sharing land area with other, lightweight industries?
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interesting! ya this is a whole world I know very little about but it seems very relevant these days.
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TBH the best solutions are boring and supply-side. Or regional.
Random examples: heat pumps instead of heaters! Insulation! Geothermal loops or spacer panels for big buildings! Lightweight cars! All would save a hilarious amount of energy, but are way too dull to trend, heh.
…And probably suppressed by industry interest groups. whistles
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226 comments