Real Engineering
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2019–2022
18:01 · 1.6M views · May 25, 2019
Real Engineering looks at the numbers for running California on renewables, focusing on the large energy storage needed. It argues about the cost of batteries and the role of other sources.
Offered in energy and nuclear debates as a numbers-based walkthrough of renewable storage costs, though one commenter disliked its tone.
6 comments from Hacker News
Thats is the only reason not counting infrastructure, storage, peak-usage logistics, winter-usage logistics. Oh, and the fact that weather is temperamental, not consistent, not under our control at all, or able to change to meet our demand. Oil and Gas already has infrastructure, and solves literally every one of those other issue due to the fact it can ramp up quickly if necessary. If renewable advocates actually cared about something besides being anti-oil, they would see that the best renewable strategy is something to the effect of 70-80% nuclear, and 20-30% wind/solar/hydro with efficient storage options. And finally, here is a Practical Engineering video that says the same thing but with data to prove it. this video
When people talk about the cost of solar they ignore the price of batteries and underestimate the amount of batteries required. Watch this video about renewables in California[0]. The video mentions a study that would put the cost of energy storage required for California to be 100% on renewables would be over $3.6 trillion which is equivalent to an entire year's GDP for the state. The video author explained that study's methodology got that number by assuming enough to store excess capacity during the summer to provide power in winter when not enough would be generated on most days. This isn't great because li-on batteries are not great for long term storage and would lose power over time. [0] this video
I'd be curious to hear your take on this this video (California's Renewable Energy Problem by the Youtube channel Real Engineering) Walks through the numbers on what it would take to run California on renewables + storage alone. Because of the intermittency, it seems like the costs of storage (even though it gets better/cheaper each year) maker it not possible.
Because, Simpsons. I admit, it's only half joking. But it seems more and more nuclear + renewables (+ some carbon removal) is the only solution forward. For those interested why that might be look at this: this video
You keep focusing on climate change denialists. I am with you on that. It is irrational to dismiss the findings of a multitude of good well-meaning scientists across a wide spectrum of scientific disciplines. Having said that, climate change denialists are not the problem. In fact, they are great for proponents of solar and wind because it shifts the conversation to how dumb and evil the denialists are instead of seeing how bad wind and solar are for the environment and climate change action. Look at our conversation. You keep going back to denialists and not actually any answer any question I have on renewables. And annoyingly you keep linking me with climate-change denialists. Can you stop? Being skeptical about renewables is not the same as denying climage-change or for action to comabt climate-change. >Yes the guy in the video sounds like he's talking to very slow children. That wasn't my concern. My objection was that he skirted answering a question in the same place that everyone from the cult of renewables does. It always ends up with an argument that we just need to tap human ingenunity to invent new technology just as we did when we went to the moon. Maybe we can, maybe we can't. Going to the moon turns out to be easier than a lot of other things that feel like they should be easy. >Just repeating "this isn't possible" when lots of domain experts think it will be isn't convincing. I listed reasons why it isn't possible. You sent me a link that argued the same except