Display MoreAs I showed in above trend, Solar and Wind now supply 9% of annual global electricity supply.
Hardly a niche product anymore.
And no, in the Sunny places on the globe, NO subsidies are required for solar, same for wind many places.
AND cost for solar and wind is still falling.
any countries with renewables providing base load yet? Are Germans still as exited about renewables as they were 10 years ago?
any countries with renewables providing base load yet? Are Germans still as exited about renewables as they were 10 years ago?
Switzerland has renewables since more than 100 years 80% of the electricity is from hydro... That's the main reason we did not push solar. We in average always did export about 50% of our nuclear electricity highly profitable during rush hours what no longer works as business model. Today solar is ideal to cover the midday peek on energy demand based on cooking & air-condition.
A solar island solution also saves 20% of the average total grid transmission loss. The best storage solutions today are medium size flow batteries. Solar on a roof also helps to cool the building etc..
In Germany only the old energy mafia is not excited because the cost for 1kwh from the dirty brown coal is much lower than wind (around 2c) . It's a license to print money. They - like the Chinese - prefer to destroy the whole landscape in favor of profit. (Like the US that is flattening the Appalachian mountains.) We not even talk about the CO2 and climate change.
There is no way around to 100% renewables. All European countries are committed to this target.
any countries with renewables providing base load yet? Are Germans still as exited about renewables as they were 10 years ago?
Yes Norway has done 100% renewable for 100+ years.
And Hydro Power in Norway could probably become a large scale battery for all of Europe.
There are already several cables to/from Norway - Europe, and more is being built as we speak. So Norway will become Europes battery at some time in the future..
So all we would need is Solar + wind + Pumped Hydro as storage.
Some batteries should be added for fast acting grid stability as done i Australia with huge success 
Hi everyone,
Just found this analysis that Disected the BS movie from Michael Moore and Jeff Biggs
As I stated earlier and is confirmed here, the Moore movie presents a lot of outdated claims, which is NOT facts by present day.
The analysis reveals that renewable information from 2005 and 2010 is used as "facts" in the movie, which is absolutely no longer are part of present facts, and was not real facts back then..
And "Just have think" also agrees with me on biomass and biofuel, good.
Sorry. Forget to exclude hydro from the mix since it is not widely available as solar and wind.
Stories about Norway, Switzeland and Quebec are nice but reare.
We are going to see more Hoover dams and Muskrat Falls stories with hydro.
Solar panel efficiency:
A breakthrough makes 41% efficiency:
https://newatlas.com/energy/ne…cells-efficiency-records/
Most solar panels operating today make about 20%:
Display MoreYes Norway has done 100% renewable for 100+ years.
And Hydro Power in Norway could probably become a large scale battery for all of Europe.
There are already several cables to/from Norway - Europe, and more is being built as we speak. So Norway will become Europes battery at some time in the future..
So all we would need is Solar + wind + Pumped Hydro as storage.
Some batteries should be added for fast acting grid stability as done i Australia with huge success
Who else is thinking that many other countries on this planet can possibly live like Switzeland and Norway?
Renewables should be called 'Intermittablels'. We need to add materials needed to manufacture storage or transmission (there is always sunlight somewhere, there is always 5 o'clock somewhere, blah blah) to Zephyr's numbers.
While the tech itself is feasible as a niche or supplement it only exist now due to massive subsidies and the fact that traditional produce base load.
Germany had subsidies in the past. Nowadays they are more or less gone and the big energy companies have lobbied a ton, so that coal is still prefered over gas here, our solar industry is destroyed and currently the goverement is also working on destroying the wind power industry. Despite all these political problems for renewables they are still growing. That is because they are cheaper than regular energy even with all the burocratic bullshit you have to deal with here, if you want to install pv on your roof .
And we are talking about germany with 1600 sunshine hours a year compared to 2500 in many parts of spain. In april we had many days with 50-70% of overall electricity production from renewables. This technology is not a niche anymore - even here in germany with problematic regulation and little sunshine. Renewables + gas power plants + power to gas is the future of energy generation and does not need a single battery storage or other crazy storage technology. If there is enough renewable overproduction (converted into gas) the gas plants will only run from november to february with not much load.
Edit: Just to make it clear. We have very little hydro (1-2% ?) energy in germany - so I am just talking about wind and pv.
If there is enough renewable overproduction (converted into gas) the gas plants will only run from november to february with not much load.
And what if there is not? Will you import it from Switzerland? They may not have any extra energy. Office lights and computers take a lot of power.
Germany freaked out with wind and solar and lost decade of progress in nuclear energy now has to use coal instead.
Display MoreHi everyone,
Just found this analysis that Disected the BS movie from Michael Moore and Jeff Biggs
As I stated earlier and is confirmed here, the Moore movie presents a lot of outdated claims, which is NOT facts by present day.
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This is good information, but the fact remains, "renewables" are nowhere near to powering civilization.
The older footage not labeled with dates in Planet of the Humans is wrong. When I am putting my doc on cold fusion together, the earliest video I have is from 2011, and it wll be labeled as such. It is important to show context and dating is one way of doing that.
Also, I agree the population issue was not fully analyzed either. I was reminded from Carl Page's lecture at MIT that education makes women have less children, and that were we to educate people around the planet more, we would have less people. Consumption by those people is another issue. Unfortunately, the world is clammering for more power, food, amenities, so that people can live like rich Americans, and that is not sustainable. What to do? Powerdown:
....a strategy that will require tremendous effort and economic sacrifice in order to reduce per-capita resource usage in wealthy countries, develop alternative energy sources, distribute resources more equitably, and reduce the human population humanely but systematically over time. https://newsociety.com/books/p/powerdown-pdf
Will the Americans who can't even wait one month to go out and get a haircut and are willing to let tens of thousands more people die from a virus rather than stay home going to powerdown? Sadly, not unless they have to. (And I believe they will have to.)
I did a "unit conversion" activity with first-year liberal arts students based on UNDERSTANDING ENERGY Math Review
Module 1 – Unit Conversion CEE 107A/207A/EARTHSYS 103 (a Stanford U course) where we showed that a Nissan Leaf emits only 1/3 of the carbon than a gasoline powered Honda Civic. (see attached)
In the computation, natural gas is used for charging. That is good because that is less carbon than coal, and I am in favor of this. Yah. But coal is still the majority of power sourced for electricity. According to BP data (not my first choice for data but something I have on hand) natural gas production increased 40% and coal increased 22% over ten years. And when we talk of grid-tied systems, let's remember the grid itself loses what is the number about half the power generated?
Claim: The entire grid system has to go eventually. Our grid in the US is already falling down, and in fact, at one point in the northwest US, new wind capacity couldn't even be connected because it could handle the load. AND it is not being repaired because there is no money or will to do so. Sigh.
Also, see https://www.iea.org/news/renew…cades-of-strong-expansion Renewable capacity growth worldwide stalled in 2018 after two decades of strong expansion
"New net capacity from solar PV, wind, hydro, bioenergy, and other renewable power sources increased by about 180 Gigawatts (GW) in 2018, the same as the previous year, according to the International Energy Agency’s latest data. That’s only around 60% of the net additions needed each year to meet long-term climate goals"
and
“But the IEA’s analysis shows the world is not doing enough. Last year, energy-related CO2 emissions rose by 1.7% to a historic high of 33 Gigatonnes. Despite a growth of 7% in renewables electricity generation, emissions from the power sector grew to record levels.”
I always put in energy examples to my basic skills math class that utilize "renewable" energy, meanwhile advocating for cold fusion as the real solution. So look, I am not saying NO to "renewables". We should investigate everything! We need to get off of fossil fuels ASAP. But I am seeing solar as a stopgap, a transition, a back-up, until we get nuclear.
But "renewables" are not actually renewable, and, they don't come close to providing what humans want from power.
Transportation alone is using so much gasoline and coal is powering the majority of systems. See https://ourworldindata.org/gra…city-generation-by-source
The facts remain, only the energy density of nuclear power will give us the power humans want at this time.
And not the dirty nuclear of yore (long ago!), but new small modular reactors and dammit cold fusion. We need a breakthrough for sure, but with proper funding for multi-testing pathways we could do it.
Planet of the Humans shows in a visceral way that "renewables" are not actually renewable, and have a greater cost than is apparent. I'll agree their analysis is not entirely accurate, but it is not entirely wrong either. Nevertheless, I still find this movie to be a Prequel to "Planet of Water Fuel". That's what we need to move forward, everybody together, in a humane way that treats our natural world with the respect it deserves.
THANK YOU for your advocacy of "renewables". You are doing a good job maintaining integrity of the field.
Germany freaked out with wind and solar and lost decade of progress in nuclear energy now has to use coal instead.
German CO2 emissions are down since 1990 thank's to renewables.
Nuclear cannot be built fast enough to matter. It takes 15 year to build a single nuclear plant.
German CO2 emissions are down since 1990 thank's to renewables.
Nuclear cannot be built fast enough to matter. It takes 15 year to build a single nuclear plant.
dream on
Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2 ......
I fail to see why people shy away from fast neutron fission breeder technology.
Not only does it renew its inventory of fissile material, it produces more than it consumes.
It's like having a wind turbine that not only produces energy from the wind, but produces extra
wind for those turbines downwind of itself.
Germany freaked out with wind and solar and lost decade of progress in nuclear energy now has to use coal instead.
You just talk nonsense... They still (not instead) use coal and the mafia who owns it tries to stop wind by heavily financing the ruling mafia.
I never understood the activist wing of the environmental movement. 30-40 years ago, if you asked them what would replace the coal/nuclear they were protesting against, they would say wind/solar. Which at the time even they knew was impractical for many reasons, but that "inconvenient truth" did not matter to them. And now that solar/wind is finally practical, what do they do?..why protest, and obstruct against of course. 
Go figure with these people.
Safe to say, that were it not for their activism against the same things they advocated for just a few years ago, the past 15 years would have seen even more growth in renewables. How much more progress will be lost just because of this new Moore video? The "China Syndrome" movie alone did great damage to nuclear. Will this documentary have as much a negative impact? I doubt it, but it could definitely set back some projects in the works.
Speaking of the China Syndrome; at least some of the older leaders of the green movement have done a 180 on nuclear. Looking back, they realize how wrong they were to have played a role in killing the planets best source of CO2 free energy. Little too late for the big traditional plants to kick back into gear, as they have become too costly. But as Carl Page, Ruby and many others have said, there are newer, smaller scale versions ready for market.
Doing that will take getting all the activists on board though, as all it takes is one person filing a lawsuit to throw a wrench in the machinery to make it come to a grinding halt. Unfortunately, I do not see that happening anytime soon.
Maybe volcanoes could be tapped as heat/geothermal power sources more intensively than they have been, all that energy going to waste
The springs of Puna had some troubles with angry Kiluaea..2018
They have resolved their diiferences..two years later..hopefully .
The geothermal plant may expand capacity
