Solar and wind are fine examples of the ByProduct Theory of commodity projects. In my years in refining, we continually saw proposals to use the "free" petroleum coke that was produced as part of a process to make more gasoline out of the heaviest parts of a barrel of crude. Basically the impurities in the rest of the barrel tended to land here in a big solid coal-like chunk that was then broken up, hauled off and usually burned in cement kilns and such. A continual parade of developers offered to 'take' this stuff off our hands for use in all kinds of schemes. The response was usually, "great, you can pick it up underneath those big cylinders in the middle of the plant - no charge". After adding up the cost for trucks to move the stuff to a port and machines to keep it piled up until the ship came in plus conveyors to load it, or the railcars to keep it moving out and off to the location where it would be used, the thrill disappeared and so did the project. Solar and wind are similar - the sun's rays and wind are "free", but capturing them, converting them into usable energy and transporting it to a customer are not. A lot of the money made in the energy business is simply logistics and "swing management" - serving as the part of the supply chain that sits between a facility that needs to operate at a constant rate to be efficient and a market that consumes at a variable rate. The value of the commodity includes the value of "basis" - time and place in addition to physical properties that make the commodity suitable for the use it's being bought for.
Intermittent power is to the grid as afib is to the heart. It is an easy problem to fix. King Poo-bah commands gravity, the tides, and chaos itself ... Short of that, can you buy paddles for grid afib from Amazon? Perhaps all intermittent sources can run into a magic battery then sell power in blocks becoming dispatchable and predictable. Predictable for sure: pay me 10x, wait, 30x, and I will make all intermittent sources non-intermittent. Or fission. Sooner or later the waste bogeyman will be exposed as a hollow argument, and we can really begin to provide for humanity.
Computers (pre-reacting to chaos) and over-building capacity and are the "for sure" answer (just ask rate payers).
[From WSJ article 04 Jan 2023 on ReNew Power] Wind and solar developers are concocting elaborate plans to provide round-the-clock renewable power, the industry’s holy grail as countries around the world shift to green energy ... “by building wind and solar farms capable of producing as much as three times the amount of power it had contracted to deliver” ... That modeling helps ReNew time sales of extra electricity on the spot market for maximum profit, says Mr. Ranjan. Those sales “will give you that extra gravy,” he says.
[back to amateur comments...]
That should solve all the problems. Except, reality does not allow that often. And when it does, competition will eat into margins, and regulators will eat the rest.
Or they could just, you know, burn dung and hire witch doctors to smooth demand. Or something else with 92 or 93 protons.
Solar and wind are fine examples of the ByProduct Theory of commodity projects. In my years in refining, we continually saw proposals to use the "free" petroleum coke that was produced as part of a process to make more gasoline out of the heaviest parts of a barrel of crude. Basically the impurities in the rest of the barrel tended to land here in a big solid coal-like chunk that was then broken up, hauled off and usually burned in cement kilns and such. A continual parade of developers offered to 'take' this stuff off our hands for use in all kinds of schemes. The response was usually, "great, you can pick it up underneath those big cylinders in the middle of the plant - no charge". After adding up the cost for trucks to move the stuff to a port and machines to keep it piled up until the ship came in plus conveyors to load it, or the railcars to keep it moving out and off to the location where it would be used, the thrill disappeared and so did the project. Solar and wind are similar - the sun's rays and wind are "free", but capturing them, converting them into usable energy and transporting it to a customer are not. A lot of the money made in the energy business is simply logistics and "swing management" - serving as the part of the supply chain that sits between a facility that needs to operate at a constant rate to be efficient and a market that consumes at a variable rate. The value of the commodity includes the value of "basis" - time and place in addition to physical properties that make the commodity suitable for the use it's being bought for.
Intermittent power is to the grid as afib is to the heart. It is an easy problem to fix. King Poo-bah commands gravity, the tides, and chaos itself ... Short of that, can you buy paddles for grid afib from Amazon? Perhaps all intermittent sources can run into a magic battery then sell power in blocks becoming dispatchable and predictable. Predictable for sure: pay me 10x, wait, 30x, and I will make all intermittent sources non-intermittent. Or fission. Sooner or later the waste bogeyman will be exposed as a hollow argument, and we can really begin to provide for humanity.
Computers (pre-reacting to chaos) and over-building capacity and are the "for sure" answer (just ask rate payers).
[From WSJ article 04 Jan 2023 on ReNew Power] Wind and solar developers are concocting elaborate plans to provide round-the-clock renewable power, the industry’s holy grail as countries around the world shift to green energy ... “by building wind and solar farms capable of producing as much as three times the amount of power it had contracted to deliver” ... That modeling helps ReNew time sales of extra electricity on the spot market for maximum profit, says Mr. Ranjan. Those sales “will give you that extra gravy,” he says.
[back to amateur comments...]
That should solve all the problems. Except, reality does not allow that often. And when it does, competition will eat into margins, and regulators will eat the rest.
Or they could just, you know, burn dung and hire witch doctors to smooth demand. Or something else with 92 or 93 protons.