The Energy Transition and technologies

[Street Pharmacist]

Financial technologies and carbon capture are totally relevant here in my opinion.

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[SeeGeeWhy]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

U of C reearchers are saying the cost of replacing and disposing of solar panels will be much higher than regulators have anticipated. The efficiency of panels is improving so rapidly year over year that panels will not be in service for 30 years, but 10 years or less.

If we’re going to increasingly rely on an energy source that produces huge amounts of toxic waste that cannot be readily disposed of, I wonder why we don’t just ramp up nuclear.

Aye. when you compare the cost of landfill vs recycling panels, they are orders of magnitude apart. Renewables are a material consumption treadmill that most people do not appreciate or care about getting on. Massive impacts for very little relative output. Detailed in “Roadmap to Nowhere”, if we followed the Solutions Project plans, humankind would be replacing 1.25 million panels PER DAY, FOREVER to maintain a fully renewable system. How is this a good plan?

Nuclear has a similar problem. It’s too cheap to hold spent fuel in dry cask storage and mine new fuel instead of recycling it or building fast spectrum reactors. That said, Russia has commercialized a few fast reactors now which brings us closer to the closed fuel cycle. Gates/Buffett’s Natrium reactor is a sodium fast reactor with molten salt thermal storage. So there are interests pursuing that vision regardless.

Nuclear’s biggest problem is that a single person cannot slap a core on their roof and declare to their community how wealthy, independent and planet conscious they are. It is by its nature a centralized technology with a lifespan that ensures beyond a single human life which is very much at odds with the cultural/political “me first” mentality of the average person today, but solar lines up PERFECTLY with this.

[SeeGeeWhy]

OP:

Check out Power Hungry and Decouple podcasts as well.

[SeeGeeWhy]

The people who jerk off about how cheap renewables while declaring their inevitable domination of the planet are dangerous fools.

They almost never read the full Lazard report that their declaration is based on. It’s states directly that LCOE of renewables is NOT comparable to other dispatchable sources. Renewables are not cheap, low impact or energetically juicy and never will be.

[SeeGeeWhy]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

The intertie might be undersized, but it's absolutely not underutilized.

The biggest problem right now is that the intertie tends to get hit by lightning, a lot. The last few under frequency events have been caused by the intertie tripping requiring the system operators to dump load to restore frequency.

The article you linked is spot on. I would add that it takes about 10 years to get a significant powerline approved and built. Add in the fact that a line to Site C would be an interprovincial undertaking, you now have the NEB process to deal with.

Not to mention the geology of Site C has been revealing itself to be less than ideal during construction. Dams do fail, especially those built in locations with poor conditions to host the water.

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Canmore buried a section so it didn't spoil the view for the golfers. Then I think that golf course went bust before it opened. Money well spent. Probably right by Sliver's new place.

Just an off topic comment. Its sort of cool to walk over in that area, you can walk right past where they buried the line. And it is sort of sad to see the state of the potential golf course there.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Weitz

Just an off topic comment. Its sort of cool to walk over in that area, you can walk right past where they buried the line. And it is sort of sad to see the state of the potential golf course there.

I used to bike through there often. It took them a ridiculous amount of time to do that project.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Alberta does not have great geothermal resources. There are a few decent options in BC.

Originally Posted by Fuzz

There are probably locations you can make it work along the foothills, my point was that we aren't the greatest location for geothermal, and you aren't going to save the province and access easy energy by repurposing old well bores, as some tend to think. It may well be part of the future energy mix in some capacity, but it's far from a natural gas replacement.

Probably more useful for district energy solutions where you need to heat a building, instead of the higher temperatures needed for energy generation.

Geothermal is a pretty broad term and I think Alberta and most places actually do have decent potential. Not for electrical generation, that is pretty limited to places like Iceland, parts of BC etc. as Fuzz alludes to. But that is only a small component of what geothermal can be used for. Also as Fuzz alludes to it's things like heating/cooling of buildings, domestic water supplies etc. that there is a lot of potential for. And that can add up to some very significant differences in how we use energy.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

They almost never read the full Lazard report that their declaration is based on.

[wireframe]

What do people think about distributed power generation? We take a lot of load off the grid and reduce the need for new high-voltage lines if we generate power close to where it's used. That would obviously not work with a coal power plant because it sucks to be near them and they're more efficient when they're huge. But with renewable energy, it's a lot easier to generate power all over the place and distribute a shorter distance.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by wireframe

What do people think about distributed power generation? We take a lot of load off the grid and reduce the need for new high-voltage lines if we generate power close to where it's used. That would obviously not work with a coal power plant because it sucks to be near them and they're more efficient when they're huge. But with renewable energy, it's a lot easier to generate power all over the place and distribute a shorter distance.

I think it’s tough to justify without net metering which offloads the cost of the grid onto the larger suppliers and general consumers.

Without net metering investment return would be marginal and centralized generation likely makes more sense. I think at the margins it can play a role but not as a primary solution. Maybe in a few more halvings of cost.

[corporatejay]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/she...ment-1.6099797


Shell leveraging their Quest project into a new one called Polaris.

Shell Canada unveiled plans Tuesday for a new facility in Alberta to capture emissions from its industrial complex and store the greenhouse gases underground.

Canada is already considered a global leader in the carbon capture and storage (CCS) industry, and the latest announcement comes amid a wave of proposals for new projects in Alberta.

If approved by the company, Shell's Polaris facility would be located at its Scotford complex, northeast of Edmonton, and collect emissions from its refinery and chemical facilities.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by wireframe

What do people think about distributed power generation?

The only meaningful distributed generation at the residential level is rooftop solar, but it really doesn't reduce infrastructure requirements because its peak power generation during mid-day doesn't line up with peak daily demand in the late afternoon. As the study into the causes of the brownouts seen in California last August says:





Even more so in places like Alberta which have cold winters with peak electricity demand.

[#-3]

Residential production also creates a different infrastructure problem, because grids aren't designed to carry large amounts of power away from these communities. Not sure if still true, but one of the hosts of SGU mentioned a couple years ago when he install roof top solar that they had to analyze the number of other houses in his area with existing panels before approving the extra supply going into the grid. Probably part of the solution, but also probably a very small part.





SeeGeeWhy Tu quoque.

[PaperBagger'14]

Nm

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by #-3

Residential production also creates a different infrastructure problem, because grids aren't designed to carry large amounts of power away from these communities. Not sure if still true, but one of the hosts of SGU mentioned a couple years ago when he install roof top solar that they had to analyze the number of other houses in his area with existing panels before approving the extra supply going into the grid. Probably part of the solution, but also probably a very small part.

I have heard that this may be the case in Calgary too, something like only 5 or so houses on our block for example could go with solar before Enmax would have to say no to more at this time.

[DoubleK]

There is a major milestone on the horizon. On August 1, Whitla 2 comes online with an additional 151 MW of wind generation.

That will push the total installed capacity over 2,000 MW to 2,139 MW.

For context the all-time record peak load for the City of Calgary is 1,723 MW.

[Fuzz]

The problem is, that wind doesn't replace generating capacity, it's in addition to. You must have baseload, mostly through natural gas, to match that wind production. it's a good way to reduce CO2 as it can be used as a low emission source when the wind blows, but in the end it does increase our capital costs because you techncially haven't added any reliable generation. Same with solar. Basically these renewables mean paying for generating capacity twice. Once for when they are useful, and again when they are not. If this is the plan, expect energy costs to go way up.

[RichieRich]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

There is a major milestone on the horizon. On August 1, Whitla 2 comes online with an additional 151 MW of wind generation.

That will push the total installed capacity over 2,000 MW to 2,139 MW.

For context the all-time record peak load for the City of Calgary is 1,723 MW.

That's a theoretical number....
As of 1010am today, theoretical maximum production is 1988 MW, but current actual generation is 252 MW. This highlights the struggle of matching supply, demand, and production capacity. Other modes of energy production are also shown on the following link:

http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market...DReportServlet


Here is a link to a specific wind farm. If you scale it for "All" timeframes of production you can see the highly variable nature of energy supply. The 3-year capacity factor (ie average loading) is ~34%.
https://www.dispatcho.app/live/CRR1?r=90960900


Here's the link to the Whitla #1 farm.. with better capacity factor of ~45% over 3yrs:
https://www.dispatcho.app/live/WHT1

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by RichieRich

That's a theoretical number....

It's not theoretical. That will be the installed capacity at August 1st.