The Energy Transition and technologies

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Torture

Yup. And even without a carbon tax new coal plants aren't that economical compared to renewables the way the prices of wind and solar have fallen in the past several years.

Unfortunately they aren't replacements for coal. They can supplement it, but currently our only real choice is natural gas, unless we go nuclear.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Unfortunately they aren't replacements for coal. They can supplement it, but currently our only real choice is natural gas, unless we go nuclear.

That's not really true. Yes, with current technologies renewables intermittency means you can't get close to 100%. But they can easily be 30-90% depending on location with gas as the backup.

And Form Energy just announced a 1MW/150MWh aqueous iron battery to be built in Minnesota in 2023. If that actually performs at the price quoted (1/10 Li ion) them I think we have the long duration storage needed to overcome diurnal intermittency. It still doesn't solve seasonal, but again, getting 50-95% there is better than not

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

That's not really true. Yes, with current technologies renewables intermittency means you can't get close to 100%. But they can easily be 30-90% depending on location with gas as the backup.

And Form Energy just announced a 1MW/150MWh aqueous iron battery to be built in Minnesota in 2023. If that actually performs at the price quoted (1/10 Li ion) them I think we have the long duration storage needed to overcome diurnal intermittency. It still doesn't solve seasonal, but again, getting 50-95% there is better than not

I'm not saying to not build renewables, but you still require something else. You can't use batteries for a week in January when the wind is dead and solar is at near zero. You must replace coal capacity with gas in Alberta, there is no other choice. That's reality. Well, that or weeks of blackouts.

[PeteMoss]

Wouldn't the easiest solution to this to just sell electricity between provinces? BC is generating tons of hydroelectricity pretty close to your border. Seems silly to not use that instead of coal.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm not saying to not build renewables, but you still require something else. You can't use batteries for a week in January when the wind is dead and solar is at near zero. You must replace coal capacity with gas in Alberta, there is no other choice. That's reality. Well, that or weeks of blackouts.

I'm just providing context. Yes, we need gas for now as I posted. But my point of there's still plenty of coal that can be replaced with renewables.

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[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

Wouldn't the easiest solution to this to just sell electricity between provinces? BC is generating tons of hydroelectricity pretty close to your border. Seems silly to not use that instead of coal.

Agreed. Currently BC plans on using that power, but if Alberta sells cheap wind/solar that aren't as cheap here you've got a deal that benefits both sides. DoubleK has already mentioned the current issues with transmission though

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

I'm just providing context. Yes, we need gas for now as I posted. But my point of there's still plenty of coal that can be replaced with renewables.

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Not really. Alberta has 3700MW in coal capacity, currently generating 1600MW. If you build 1600MW of wind and solar, you also need to build ~1600MW of gas to back it up. You can't have the grid depending on unreliable generation. So you can build as much renewable power as you want, but you also need to near match that in reliable generation. Until we find a way to store that generation capacity for a week or more(or import from elsewhere), that's just the reality of it. Batteries are nowhere near capable of that.

[Fuzz]

The key to this breakthrough came through a method of creating electrically conductive paths through a thick silicon dioxide layer that can be performed at low cost and scaled to high manufacturing volumes. To get there, Yu and his team used a technique first deployed in the manufacturing of semiconductor electronic chips. By coating the silicon dioxide layer with a thin film of aluminum and then heating the entire structure, arrays of nanoscale "spikes" of aluminum that completely bridge the silicon dioxide layer are formed. These can then easily be replaced by nickel or other materials that help catalyze the water-splitting reactions.


When illuminated by sunlight, the devices can efficiently oxidize water to form oxygen molecules while also generating hydrogen at a separate electrode and exhibit outstanding stability under extended operation. Because the techniques employed to create these devices are commonly used in manufacturing of semiconductor electronics, they should be easy to scale for mass production.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_relea...-mch071921.php


Interesting development for green hydrogen production.

[Tron_fdc]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Agreed. Currently BC plans on using that power, but if Alberta sells cheap wind/solar that aren't as cheap here you've got a deal that benefits both sides. DoubleK has already mentioned the current issues with transmission though

That would have to be regulated, which in a deregulated system would not be easy.

Last time BC stuck their fingers into the Ab system, BC Hydro was buying cheap power from Alberta at night, filling their dams, then opening their dams during the day and selling power back into Ab when prices spiked. IIRC (this was in 2002) it cost Albertans almost a billion dollars.

IMO you would need a regulated system between BC and Alberta, and it's REALLY complicated trying to marry up a deregulated system with a government owned and regulated one. I don't know how (or if) it would work.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm not saying to not build renewables, but you still require something else. You can't use batteries for a week in January when the wind is dead and solar is at near zero. You must replace coal capacity with gas in Alberta, there is no other choice. That's reality. Well, that or weeks of blackouts.

Why mess around? Just build nuclear. If we were serious, that’s what we would do.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

That would have to be regulated, which in a deregulated system would not be easy.

Last time BC stuck their fingers into the Ab system, BC Hydro was buying cheap power from Alberta at night, filling their dams, then opening their dams during the day and selling power back into Ab when prices spiked. IIRC (this was in 2002) it cost Albertans almost a billion dollars.

IMO you would need a regulated system between BC and Alberta, and it's REALLY complicated trying to marry up a deregulated system with a government owned and regulated one. I don't know how (or if) it would work.

Agreed that there's financial and legal/political obstacles, but as far as power system planning, it would work imo. There'd need to be some economists and lawyers involved. Luckily for both provinces there's no shortage of qualified people to solve this

[RichieRich]

Nuclear is very possible and a great option for sure. Problem here in Canada seems to be obtaining necessary regulatory approvals in a timely manner and then the execution time to when there's real production.
Great article on this issue: https://achemistinlangley.net/2021/0...long-to-build/

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by peter12

Why mess around? Just build nuclear. If we were serious, that’s what we would do.

Reality. Gas plants can be planned and built a a few years. Nuclear in Alberta would be at least decade, if you ever got to the building phase, which I question if that is even possible these days. I know gas is not ideal, but it's not like we have a load of options.

[Tron_fdc]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Agreed that there's financial and legal/political obstacles, but as far as power system planning, it would work imo. There'd need to be some economists and lawyers involved. Luckily for both provinces there's no shortage of qualified people to solve this

I think in theory it could work, but the Ab government would get sued a la NDP/PPA agreement cancellation if they tried to do it. Electricity deregulation in Ab has been a boondoggle from day 1, so to try and undo it would be a nightmare. You would be telling Enmax/Epcor that they can't rip people off anymore, and their biggest shareholders (the city) wouldn't like that drop in revenue.

It's a shame though. With a combination of BC Hydro, Ab wind and solar with the odd nat gas turbine plant thrown in to cover peak loads, I think it would work. The bureaucracy would be a disaster to make it happen IMO.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

I think in theory it could work, but the Ab government would get sued a la NDP/PPA agreement cancellation if they tried to do it. Electricity deregulation in Ab has been a boondoggle from day 1, so to try and undo it would be a nightmare. You would be telling Enmax/Epcor that they can't rip people off anymore, and their biggest shareholders (the city) wouldn't like that drop in revenue.

It's a shame though. With a combination of BC Hydro, Ab wind and solar with the odd nat gas turbine plant thrown in to cover peak loads, I think it would work. The bureaucracy would be a disaster to make it happen IMO.

Again, this may be a naïve and silly question, but if the intertie was gov't funded or available for private low cost usage fee, wouldn't the market itself push towards that arrangement once carbon price makes gas more expensive? Of course BC would have to have some sort of pricing scheme to incentivize it's use but being open to purchase cheap surplus renewables in the summer/fall seems like it would work.

[chedder]

Why hasn't Alberta done any meaningful hydro projects in the last 70 years? Cost to build? Gas too cheap?

This is straight from government website.

http://www.history.alberta.ca/energy...rta-today.aspx

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

That's not really true. Yes, with current technologies renewables intermittency means you can't get close to 100%. But they can easily be 30-90% depending on location with gas as the backup.

And Form Energy just announced a 1MW/150MWh aqueous iron battery to be built in Minnesota in 2023. If that actually performs at the price quoted (1/10 Li ion) them I think we have the long duration storage needed to overcome diurnal intermittency. It still doesn't solve seasonal, but again, getting 50-95% there is better than not

Renewables are not as intermittent as we tend to think.

Wind for example, blows in a specific area, but it tends to be blowing *to* somewhere. IE. if it's windy in Alberta, that wind moves on to Saskatchewan, so you if you have an integrated grid you can plan for that.

Intermittent energy from solar and wind can be stored in other forms than batteries as well. Things like Hydro are increasingly being thought of as a form of storage instead of as base load. Water can be pumped up to to the top of the reservoir while energy is abundant, and then released the water to generate energy.

Solar can be stored as heat in molten salts which allows you to collect the energy and store it for the day, and distribute it during the evening when the sun isn't shining but energy demands are still there.

To successfully meet climate goals we pretty much need to electrify everything, and at the same time make sure that electricity is clean. One of the things we need to achieve that goal of clean electricity is to have storage to manage intermittency, but that isn't just batteries.
We also need to look at the grid as a whole to manage intermittency, not just individual states or provinces. And we also need storage for daily/weekly/seasonal variations, but most of those can be managed with existing technology that we have today. Batteries will make up a component to be sure, but storage in the form of heat or kinetic potential is actually a lot more technologically and economically feasible than storing in batteries at this point.


As for BC selling power to AB (and vice versa because our solar and wind would actually be cheaper when it's generating) - yes! That is something that we should consider and it's a win/win for both provinces. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be on either province's roadmap. I listened to a podcast with one of the heads of BC Hydro after their new plan and they blamed AB for not being interested in it (which is probably true), and they're more looking to the south, but I wouldn't just blame AB, it seemed to be that both provinces weren't really looking at it which is unfortunate.

The good news is we actually have the technology today to decarbonize 90% of the grid. Most of that would come from wind/solar (which are quickly becoming the most economical form of electricity generation), and existing Hydro and Nuclear. The last 10% will require more work, but we don't need to build massive new hydro dams (which as noted, do have an impacts) or nuclear plants (insanely costly), or SMRs to get 90% of the grid decarbonized. And that's good news, because frankly, we don't have the time to do that. We need to start decarbonizing *now*, not 10-20 years from now after a nuclear power plant is permitted and built or after SMR technology is developed.


P.S. Anybody interested in this thread should also read The Drawdown. Very easy read and very informative about the impactful pathways and costs to get to net zero.

[Flacker]

Originally Posted by chedder

Why hasn't Alberta done any meaningful hydro projects in the last 70 years? Cost to build? Gas too cheap?

This is straight from government website.

http://www.history.alberta.ca/energy...rta-today.aspx

Flooding massive tracts of vegetation is far from an environmentally friendly solution. The James Bay Project shows this on a large scale, they poisoned watersheds for decades. Quebec doesn't want to talk about this environmental disaster anymore, they look down there noses at Alberta, because their energy export infrastructure is already built out.

We need to look at modern reactor technology, not cheap, but in my eyes the only way to get heavy oil production to a carbon neutral state.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Torture

Renewables are not as intermittent as we tend to think.

Wind for example, blows in a specific area, but it tends to be blowing *to* somewhere. IE. if it's windy in Alberta, that wind moves on to Saskatchewan, so you if you have an integrated grid you can plan for that.

Intermittent energy from solar and wind can be stored in other forms than batteries as well. Things like Hydro are increasingly being thought of as a form of storage instead of as base load. Water can be pumped up to to the top of the reservoir while energy is abundant, and then released the water to generate energy.

Solar can be stored as heat in molten salts which allows you to collect the energy and store it for the day, and distribute it during the evening when the sun isn't shining but energy demands are still there.

To successfully meet climate goals we pretty much need to electrify everything, and generate clean energy. To do that we need to have storage to manage intermittency, but that isn't just batteries.
We also need to look at the grid as a whole to manage intermittency, not just individual states or provinces.


As for BC selling power to AB (and vice versa) - yes! That is something that we should consider. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be on either province's roadmap. I listened to a podcast with one of the heads of BC Hydro after their new plan and they blamed AB for not being interested in it, but it seemed to be like both provinces weren't really looking at it which is important.

These are all good points I agree with, but the renewables are still subject to intermittency issues, and as of yet really only pumped hydro is a reliable storage medium. There's tons of interesting storage solutions still in development from solid based gravity mediums, heat storage in various materials, pumped air, flow batteries, etc. The aqueous iron battery installation in Minnesota announced today is very promising as it's finally low cost and has high energy potential.

Im'm sure you're aware of these things but for broader education, there's really two types of intermittency to overcome: diurnal (day/night discrepancies), and seasonal (summer vs winter). The storage mediums I mentioned above can solve the diurnal problem which almost completely solves the problem in areas where seasonal changes are minimal (Texas for example), but doesn't solve the big problem in places like Alberta where winter sun/wind is much lower than summer. We don't have any scalable non hydro solutions that are commercially available yet.

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Im'm sure you're aware of these things but for broader education, there's really two types of intermittency to overcome: diurnal (day/night discrepancies), and seasonal (summer vs winter). The storage mediums I mentioned above can solve the diurnal problem which almost completely solves the problem in areas where seasonal changes are minimal (Texas for example), but doesn't solve the big problem in places like Alberta where winter sun/wind is much lower than summer. We don't have any scalable non hydro solutions that are commercially available yet.

Very good points. I'd add that the hottest hot days and the coldest cold days are very for wind output. These are days with the highest demand in Alberta.

Not having firm supply in winter is a life-threatening situation.