Random Renewables Thread

Sounds like an impressive figure, half a gigawatt. And a nice increase compared to what was there the year before. But it is only one single panel installed last year per 4 people living in this country, to put things into perspective. We really need to install several GW of solar per year every year. And lots more wind. And then stimulate private investors to install a massive battery capacity (by paying them well for stabilising the grid)

Read an article today saying that the world is installing 1GW of solar per day now which sounds amazing but still only amounts to 5% of world generation. When the dirtiest coal is at 35% still…

We'll be at 1600MW by the years end.

The prices are guaranteed at auction I think.

The government can adjust accordingly.

I'd be more worried in 4 or 5 years time cos I think oil prices will fall off a cliff.

It's impossible to know but lots of people predicting a crash in oil prices in 2029/2030. It could happen before then.

Apparently we've just hit peak emissions globally. China's population is dropping and their emissions have just peaked also.

We'll hit peak oil demand in a few years, then it'll crash.

If the Ukraine war ended, then prices would drop immediately.

I can sort of agree with some of the arguments like Australia not having much wind last year, but weather patterns are (generally) pretty forecastable on a macro scale. If anything it'll get windier as the world gets hotter. They might have had a bad year, but next year back to normal and the year after could be bumper for all we know. Its probably not wise to focus down to one specific year.

Thing is though, adoption of these things typically drives the cost down. The reason why batteries/solar panels/wind turbines have dropped in price over the past 10-20 years, is simply cause we're installing them. We install more, the price will come down more. Maybe not the stellar drop we've seen previously, but it's never been better to install solar at home. Geez, even 2 years ago I was paying €150 for a panel from midsummer. Now I see some up there for €50. If 1 in 2 houses got on the solar bandwagon, that'd be a "good start" in my book.

Note: I'd be a fan of nuclear as an alternative to cover base loads. (just saying)

I used to be in favour of nuclear. But that horse has bolted over a decade ago. Far too expensive now, even if building plans worked to perfection, on time and within budget and if there was no waste issue.

Indeed. The storage is far more important than the renewables themselves. This is an easy problem though, it's commercially attractive to setup a storage facility and let software automatically make money for you.

https://cruie-live-96ca64acab2247eca8a850a7e54b-5b34f62.divio-media.com/documents/Energy-Monitoring-Report.pdf

Yeah section 6.1 has the CRU using 4,200 kWh as the average electricity usage. Far as I can remember it's always been in about the 4-5K mark. Sure, people can and do use more….but still a lot of muppets out there with incandescent lights!

Panels in Ireland actually often produce more than their rated wattage 😀 This is because the rating is based on ambient temp of 25C. The colder, the better the panels perform and in Ireland it is rarely 25C or over.

On a cold, dark still winters evening, with everyone trying to cook and heat (pump) their homes, we will still need the full backup of fossil generation, or buy in from nuclear/fossil interconnectors, and this will be increasingly expensive, as it will have to pay for itself with much reduced demand, but still satusfy the full national demand at times. Fortunately, oil and gas turbines are relatively cheap to build and long lived.

I'm old enough to recall the ESB campaigns to electrify in the 60s, many homes and rural areas were barely a decade on the grid, electricity meant house light, perhaps a valve radio, and nothing else. The campaign to electrically heat water, cook. etc. was too successful, resulting in brownouts during the winter evenings, when lights would dim, cooker rings would barely glow, and those with valved b&w TVs would watch the image collapse and dim, as the voltage dropped critically low due to demand. I witnessed this night after night as a child. We will always need virtually full demand capacity in fossil, and grid capacity to support it's delivery, until such time as really effective storage of renewables is developed, and domestic storage makes financial sense. Underdeveloped grid infrastructure and generation capacity is a consequence of loss of demand due to large scale localised renewable projects, but when these go dark, we have to be able to revert, and the less often it's needed, the more expensive it's intercession will be. There really is no such thing as a free lunch.

True, but if for 80% of the year 75% of our energy usage comes from renewables then that will dramatically lower our carbon emissions

And those standby generators can be made cleaner by producing and storing fuels in summer like biogas, biomass or even hydrogen. Not perfect, but still much better than the current fossil fuels dominance

I think we'll also need to look at different ways to heat homes. I've said before that district heating could be used in places like West Dublin to reuse waste heat from factories and data centers there

I realise you won't be heating a house in Kerry from a data center in Dublin, but if you reduce the heating demands of a few thousand houses at peak hours then that will have an overall positive result on the grid

I believe there's some areas of Scandinavia planning to go fully renewable by 2030. Can't find the article now but I'll try to dig it up

If they have a plan and are facing much harsher conditions then it should be feasible for Ireland

Would you have link for this peak emissions claim? It seems complete nonsense. EV sales have stalled world wide, China is going to add 200 GW of coal fired power over the next 6 years alone.