LENR vs Solar/Wind, and emerging Green Technologies.

Quote from interested observer

Of course, it was just a few years ago that these “experts” were warning that power grids would crash if renewables exceeded 10% of the generation capacity.

Yup. Whereas in Iowa 40% of the electricity now comes from wind, and they expect to generate a lot more soon. It did call for new technology. The 10% limit may have applied to older technology. (I heard it was 20% in the 1990s.)

Quote from interested observer

Wind and solar are usually asynchronous, storage is becoming increasingly cost effective and scaleable, and demand management can provide significant load shifting.

Nowadays, wind can be made asynchronous or beneficially offsetting with combustion generation, and even nuclear generation. Because weather reporting has improved tremendously. Nowadays they can predict the wind 5 days ahead of time more accurately than they used to be able to predict it 1 day ahead. So they know that next week there will be a lot of wind power. Or not much power. They can schedule combustion plant shut down and maintenance 5 days ahead knowing there will lots of wind, or wind turbine maintenance for days when there will be less wind.

You cannot predict the output of one turbine with precision. But over a large area -- such as the whole state of Iowa -- with thousands of turbines you can predict total wind power 5 days from now with confidence, and with a small margin of error.

Quote

The arguments against renewable energy get more feeble all the time

Except that fossil fuel consumption grows steadily in both absolute both - what's even worse - in relative numbers. It's not so surprising, because for every kWatt of renewable electricity
some additional fossil fuels must get burned somewhere else (for production of neodymium, lithium, cobalt, indium, copper, glass or concrete).
And they gobble up an increasing amount of subsidizes - and carbon dioxide levels curve gets exponential instead of logarithmic.

Quote from Zephir_AWT

Is wind electricity of Iowa cheap, because its cheaply produced, or because grid providers have no interest about this unpredictable and volatile electricity?

What does "no interest" mean? Do you think they don't use the electricity? They don't deliver it to customers? Also, regarding volatility, what do you think happens in an nuclear plant when a pipe gets plugged up with rust or debris, or plugged up with kelp after a storm when ocean water is used to cool the plant? What happens is, the cooling fails; the plant is SCRAMed, and 1 GW of power vanishes from the distribution grid. In an instant. That never happens with wind turbines. Plumbing problems are the most common cause of SCRAM events in nukes. They were also the cause of the Three Mile Island accident, that destroyed the plant. Wind turbines do have accidents, such as fires, but the accidents only affect 1 tower, which takes out 1 or 2 MW of capacity at most. The whole wind farm does not suddenly vanish from grid. So, wind power is less volatile than nuclear or large scale combustion generation. It is more reliable, and more predictable nowadays, because weather reporting has improved so much.

Quote

over a large area -- such as the whole state of Iowa -- with thousands of turbines you can predict total wind power 5 days from now

It actually doesn't matter until you have no cheap backup. What makes wind / solar electricity so expensive is the fact, that over whole large periods of years (winter) they must be balanced and backed by additional capacity of fossil fuel plants, which remain unutilized for the rest of yea. So that at the end you'll need fossils anyway..

Quote from Zephir_AWT

It's not so surprising, because for every kWatt of renewable electricity
some additional fossil fuels must get burned somewhere else (for production of neodymium, lithium, cobalt, indium, copper, glass or concrete).

What is that supposed to mean? Do you think that combustion and nuclear plants do not require copper, glass or concrete? Do you think that mining equipment and gas pipelines do not require steel and concrete, plus millions of tons of oil to run the mining machinery and pumps? Combustion require hundreds of times more material over the life of the plant when you include the fuel, and the equipment needed to mine, refine and transport the fuel. The energy overhead for any combustion or nuclear plant is far higher than the overhead for wind or solar, both in the manufacturing, installation and ongoing operation. There is no energy overhead for wind or solar once it is installed, whereas a large fraction of the electricity generated with combustion has to be used to run the plant itself, and an even larger fraction has to be used to supply the fuel, with mining or drilling and refining, railroad trains, pipelines and so on.

Quote

What does "no interest" mean? Do you think they don't use the electricity? They don't deliver it to customers?

The grid distributors able willing to pay less for unpredictable electricity, because it increases cost and load of their infrastructure. In addition wind and solar fit poorly the actual demand for electricity during winter (when consumption of heat gets highest) and during morning and evening hours. They simply introduce positive feedback into instability of grid.

Quote from Zephir_AWT

What makes wind / solar electricity so expensive is the fact, that over whole large periods of years (winter) they must be balanced and backed by additional capacity of fossil fuel plants,

You have that backwards. Nowadays, wind is more reliable and predictable than fossil fuel. The entire fossil fuel plant -- or nuclear plant -- goes offline with a plumbing problem. 1 GW gone in an instant, for hours or days. Whereas wind accidents only take away 1 or 2 MW, and you know 5 days ahead of time how much wind power will be available, so you can maintain those unreliable old coal plants, or refuel the nuke. Fossil fuel must be balanced with more reliable wind; not the other way around.

Quote

Do you think that combustion and nuclear plants do not require copper, glass or concrete?

But renewables need way more massive grid = more copper. And at the case of fossils you'll really need the glass for insulators and plant windows only. Their demands are simply incomparable.

Quote

Nowadays, wind is more reliable and predictable than fossil fuel.

Nothing is more distant from truth. Lets agree that we are both living in alternate realities. My problem with "renewables" is solely environmental and geopolitical: as they increase global fossil fuel consumption, they make fossil fuel peak imminent and they make geopolitical situation problematic each day. I'm just being consequentially "green" and environmental.

Quote from Zephir_AWT

The grid distributors able willing to pay less for unpredictable electricity,

Wind is predictable nowadays. It is not controllable. That is to say, you cannot turn it on, turn it up, or turn it off in response to demand. Perhaps that is what you had in mind.

As a practical matter, you cannot modulate nuclear power either. It is either running at close to 100% of rated capacity, or turned off from a SCRAM or maintenance, and producing nothing. It is physically possible to turn down a nuclear plant to produce only a fraction of the rated capacity, but that is very uneconomical. The plant itself costs a fortune to build and run. Far more than any other source. If you do not run it at 100% of capacity 24 hours a day, for baseline generation, you are paying huge amounts for interest on the building and maintenance costs, and you are bleeding money. Whereas the overhead costs of gas turbine or wind turbine is much lower, so you can afford to have them run only a fraction of the time.

The fuel cost at a nuclear plant is low. That's an advantage over coal and natural gas. The fuel cost for wind and solar is zero.

Quote from Zephir_AWT

Nothing is more distant from truth. Lets agree that we are both living in alternate realities.

Again, you are confusing "controllable" with "predictable." The wind drought low wind conditions can be predicted days or weeks in advance. So they do not surprise the plant operators, the way kelp or rust suddenly brings down a nuclear plant. Weather affects other sources of energy. Cold weather disrupts the mining and delivery of coal, making coal generation less predictable and less reliable.

Quote from Zephir_AWT

But renewables need way more massive grid = more copper.

The grid uses aluminum power lines, not copper. The grid is not way more massive for wind. Why would it be? Whenever possible, wind farms and combustion plants share the same main distribution high voltage lines. Large power plant solar installations are always built next to natural gas generators, so they always share the equipment. When the wind or solar power increase, or customer demand drops, the amount of natural gas consumption decreases. This does not call for more power lines or a larger grid. It just means you use more gas some days, and less on other days. Because the cost of gas generators per megawatt of capacity is modest compared to coal or nuclear, you can afford to have the equipment running at less than 100% capacity. See Table 1:

https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusionb.pdf

Quote from Zephir_AWT

In addition wind and solar fit poorly the actual demand for electricity during winter (when consumption of heat gets highest) and during morning and evening hours. They simply introduce positive feedback into instability of grid.

As said after three years of school you should be able to understand that insulation + heat pump saves you a factor of 20-30 (6 * 5) of energy.

You simply are a nonsense talker that does not understand that green technology is 1^st reduce consumption by more intelligent design.

You argument with stupid old technology because German politics just found a way to give a lot of money to house owners instead of forcing them to insulate the buildings and buying heat pumps.

Even if you run the heat pumps with dirty gas then the factor of 30 is only reduced by 0.6*0.9 (grid loss) and you still save a factor of 18!

Quote from Max Nozin

There were dozens alternative reactor designs with nice passive safety features. Good news there are few startups developing them so I a guess than economics is not as bad.

What I get form renewable energy manifestos is that it we could go 100% if we cut consumption by 30%. Really? Can you grow economy and cut consumption? That is not happening. Secondly we is going to finance baseload power facilities idling on a sunny/windy day and working full blast on a sweltering windless night once in a while.

Economics of new reactor deisgns and ideas are yet to be proven. Yes they talk about SMR as the Solution, but Small Modular Reactor will probably be more expensive, not less in my opinion. So we will see If or when they deliver.

No, we do not need to CUT consumption to go 100% renewable.

Hydro power, solar, wind and storage systems is all what is needed to supply the globe with all ITS needs.

Natural gas should be used as an intermidaiate source to remove coal before we have all the renewables in place to take over and remove also gas.

Of course I would prefer LENR would soon arrive to be part of the game...

Quote from Zephir_AWT

Of course: the country subsidizing expensive electric cars and/or expensive electricity of offshore wind plants would need high taxes for covering this cost.
But does it make "renewables" more energetically effective? This is just my point.

No, Denmark has always had high taxes, to cover Free healthcare, Free Universities, Payed maternity leave, unemployment benefits etc. Etc.

You know, all the social benefits US citizens wished they had in these days of Corona 😉

Wind power in Denmark no longer require subsidies to be profitable investments.

Quote from Zephir_AWT

California has highest portion of "renewables" in electricity production

and also highest price of electricity (33% by 2020)

Utilities in California are highly profitable. Which means high electricity price is caused by lack of competition,i.e. Monopoly, NOT by renewables.

Cheap Renewables and monopoly is a profitable combination 😉