Quote:
Originally Posted by edslunch
Ignoring 2035, what does net-zero ever look like in Alberta? If there is a necessity to stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere then costs need to be borne one way or other. What’s the end plan and how do get there, even by 2050?
|
Nuclear will replace combined cycle and coal conversion plants as base load, but it’s not ready yet and the timelines probably couldn’t even hit 2035 if it were. Where it’ll get tricky is the dispatchable generation to pace renewables and demand swings. We don’t have hydro so that’s why gas peakers are so great. The only feasible technology now would be hydrogen fired peakers because CCUS doesn’t really work on a peaker plant. But that’s a lotttttt of expensive infrastructure (ie high electricity prices or taxes) to effectively capture the CO2 on a gas peaker (many blue hydrogen plants + carbon sequestration and storage infrastructure on them + H2 distribution to the peakers).
Quote:
Originally Posted by calf
While planning for the worst conditions is prudent, what often gets overlooked is the fact that the system can still be planned and designed around when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. In fact, when you have renewables running all out, that's when pool prices can be at their lowest. I get that if Renewables are overbuilt there's concerns about overloading the grid, but other jurisdictions just shut in facilities if that's the case/compensate the generator in those case. That'll require a re-work of the system as well, but it's a complex problem requiring complex solutions.
But really, having more renewables on the grid to displace non-renewables in those high supply times isn't a bad thing - it's like mixing in a water on a night of heavy drinking - it's a sensible thing to do.
|
It cannot easily be designed around when the sun shines. What is required to keep the lights on through 1-2 week long cold fronts in the winter when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t really shine cannot be “easily designed”. You are massively underestimating this.
The concerns about overbuilding renewables isn’t overloading the grid. They’re easy to turn off. No one cares about that. There are lots of issues though.
First, if your solution is to massively overbuild them to just scrape out enough wind during the low supply high demand times, if that’s even possible, then that is a lotttttttt of money to spend to make a few MW a year. Like a ridiculously inefficient use of capital that will drive power costs to ridiculous heights (unless some benevolent god rains them down from the sky for free). There’s no free lunches here.
Second, when there’s massive oversupply the price is rock bottom. So the returns for more renewables decrease the more of them you build. That’s the paradox, the more you build the less incentive you have to build more. Correlation is a bugger. This is solved by re-regulating the grid, but that doesn’t solve the first problem. Market structure doesn’t change the cost of something, just who pays for it and how.
Now, this in theory would be plausible if we could access neighbouring hydro to use as storage. Basically when we’re massively overproducing we could export to BC/MB/QC and use the power to pump water back up hill kinda like charging a battery. Then in short times you draw back down. That’s the actual pan-Canadian solution. Problem with that is a few things…we’d probably need 20-30x or more tie line capacity than we currently have and these things are very difficult to get built (NIMBYism…remember how we couldn’t even get one HVDC line built inside this province without people whining hard), regulatorily challenging, and we don’t exactly have the best track record of building things across province lines with BC and QC. Then we’d also need to get them to build more hydro, which isn’t exactly en vogue due to the whole flooding the land of bunnies and birds thing, not to mention the methane emissions.
That’s why electricity from gas is so popular. It is cheap and reliable. And with all the bitching people do in here about power prices, I question their actual appetite to pay a boatload more for a net zero grid. So they’ll just keep hoping for a unicorn.