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Physical & Life Sciences
Do you support the possible use of Solar Radiation Management?
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<blockquote data-quote="eclipsenow" data-source="post: 77671668" data-attributes="member: 274355"><p>Passive aggressive tone much? Anyway, I'll ignore that and refer you to the big picture. Because I get it. I was like you. Renewables are intermittent and unreliable - so we'd have to Overbuild their capacity like crazy to even have a chance to get some kind of stability. And back when I became concerned about peak oil (20 years ago) the cost to Overbuild renewables enough was INSANE! But their cost has dropped 15 fold in that time - and now we CAN afford to Overbuild them to the point where "Geographic Smoothing" takes over.</p><p></p><p>Because renewables are now 1/4 the cost of nuclear (Unfirmed - Lazard 2023) - the grid designers talk about Overbuilding capacity across a wide area for ‘geographic smoothing’ to maximise how much LIVE renewables we can draw on at any one time. This concept is now quite old, and even entered popular culture when it hit Scientific American in 2015. By Overbuilding capacity we can reduce the most expensive part of wind and solar - the storage. </p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 40px">While at first glance it might sound like adding too much renewable energy could destabilize the delicate balance of the electric grid, it turns out that renewable energy actually becomes more predictable as the number of renewable generators connected to the grid increases thanks to the effect of geographic diversity and the Law of Large Numbers.</p> <p style="margin-left: 40px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 40px">The Law of Large Numbers is a probability theorem, which <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers" target="_blank">states</a> that the aggregate result of a large number of uncertain processes becomes more predictable as the total number of processes increases. Applied to renewable energy, the Law of Large Numbers dictates that the combined output of every wind turbine and solar panel connected to the grid is far less volatile than the output of an individual generator.</p> <p style="margin-left: 40px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 40px">Because the grid operator is only concerned with balancing the total amount of renewable generation with the rest of the grid, the Law of Large Numbers causes the amount of reserve capacity required to balance renewables with the grid on a second-by-second basis to be a lot less than intuition suggests. In a <a href="http://www.uwig.org/attchb-ercot_a-s_study_final_report.pdf" target="_blank">study</a> commissioned by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, General Electric calculated how much new reserve capacity will be required as Texas increases the amount of wind energy installed. The report found that an additional 15,000 megawatts of installed wind energy only requires an additional 18 megawatts of new flexible reserve capacity to maintain the stability of the grid. In other words, the spare capacity of one fast-ramping natural gas power plant can compensate for the variability introduced by 5,000 new average-sized wind turbines.</p> <p style="margin-left: 40px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 40px"><strong>The Power of Prediction</strong></p> <p style="margin-left: 40px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 40px">While the law of large numbers and the effect of geographic diversity causes renewable energy to smooth out its own fluctuations on a second-by-second basis, it can still be difficult to predict the expected level of renewable generation during the next hour or two of the day.</p> <p style="margin-left: 40px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 40px">Fortunately, experience has shown that it is possible to effectively model and predict the aggregate renewable power available to the grid. Both wind and solar depend on natural systems that can be modeled and forecasted with reasonable accuracy. Today, wind energy makes up over 10 percent of Texas’s annual electricity supply, thanks in part to effective wind generation <a href="http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/CURRENT_DAYSTWPF.html" target="_blank">forecasts</a>. This is especially significant because Texas has a unique isolated grid, with no way to access extra conventional electricity generation from outside the state...</p> <p style="margin-left: 40px">[URL unfurl="true"]https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/renewable-energy-intermittency-explained-challenges-solutions-and-opportunities/[/URL]</p><p></p><p>So 15 GW of wind only requires 18 MW of fast-acting storage. That’s 1.2 MW storage per GW of wind – easy and affordable with a few hours of <a href="https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/grid-batteries/" target="_blank">grid-battery</a> and few days of <a href="https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/phes/" target="_blank">Pumped Hydro</a>. And my pumped hydro link shows that the world has 100 TIMES the potential sites we need for OFF-river closed loop pumped hydro storage.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="eclipsenow, post: 77671668, member: 274355"] Passive aggressive tone much? Anyway, I'll ignore that and refer you to the big picture. Because I get it. I was like you. Renewables are intermittent and unreliable - so we'd have to Overbuild their capacity like crazy to even have a chance to get some kind of stability. And back when I became concerned about peak oil (20 years ago) the cost to Overbuild renewables enough was INSANE! But their cost has dropped 15 fold in that time - and now we CAN afford to Overbuild them to the point where "Geographic Smoothing" takes over. Because renewables are now 1/4 the cost of nuclear (Unfirmed - Lazard 2023) - the grid designers talk about Overbuilding capacity across a wide area for ‘geographic smoothing’ to maximise how much LIVE renewables we can draw on at any one time. This concept is now quite old, and even entered popular culture when it hit Scientific American in 2015. By Overbuilding capacity we can reduce the most expensive part of wind and solar - the storage. [INDENT=2]While at first glance it might sound like adding too much renewable energy could destabilize the delicate balance of the electric grid, it turns out that renewable energy actually becomes more predictable as the number of renewable generators connected to the grid increases thanks to the effect of geographic diversity and the Law of Large Numbers.[/INDENT] [INDENT=2][/INDENT] [INDENT=2]The Law of Large Numbers is a probability theorem, which [URL='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers']states[/URL] that the aggregate result of a large number of uncertain processes becomes more predictable as the total number of processes increases. Applied to renewable energy, the Law of Large Numbers dictates that the combined output of every wind turbine and solar panel connected to the grid is far less volatile than the output of an individual generator.[/INDENT] [INDENT=2][/INDENT] [INDENT=2]Because the grid operator is only concerned with balancing the total amount of renewable generation with the rest of the grid, the Law of Large Numbers causes the amount of reserve capacity required to balance renewables with the grid on a second-by-second basis to be a lot less than intuition suggests. In a [URL='http://www.uwig.org/attchb-ercot_a-s_study_final_report.pdf']study[/URL] commissioned by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, General Electric calculated how much new reserve capacity will be required as Texas increases the amount of wind energy installed. The report found that an additional 15,000 megawatts of installed wind energy only requires an additional 18 megawatts of new flexible reserve capacity to maintain the stability of the grid. In other words, the spare capacity of one fast-ramping natural gas power plant can compensate for the variability introduced by 5,000 new average-sized wind turbines.[/INDENT] [INDENT=2][/INDENT] [INDENT=2][B]The Power of Prediction[/B][/INDENT] [INDENT=2][/INDENT] [INDENT=2]While the law of large numbers and the effect of geographic diversity causes renewable energy to smooth out its own fluctuations on a second-by-second basis, it can still be difficult to predict the expected level of renewable generation during the next hour or two of the day.[/INDENT] [INDENT=2][/INDENT] [INDENT=2]Fortunately, experience has shown that it is possible to effectively model and predict the aggregate renewable power available to the grid. Both wind and solar depend on natural systems that can be modeled and forecasted with reasonable accuracy. Today, wind energy makes up over 10 percent of Texas’s annual electricity supply, thanks in part to effective wind generation [URL='http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/CURRENT_DAYSTWPF.html']forecasts[/URL]. This is especially significant because Texas has a unique isolated grid, with no way to access extra conventional electricity generation from outside the state...[/INDENT] [INDENT=2][URL unfurl="true"]https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/renewable-energy-intermittency-explained-challenges-solutions-and-opportunities/[/URL][/INDENT] So 15 GW of wind only requires 18 MW of fast-acting storage. That’s 1.2 MW storage per GW of wind – easy and affordable with a few hours of [URL='https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/grid-batteries/']grid-battery[/URL] and few days of [URL='https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/phes/']Pumped Hydro[/URL]. And my pumped hydro link shows that the world has 100 TIMES the potential sites we need for OFF-river closed loop pumped hydro storage. [/QUOTE]
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