How Green is EV ownership

[Shock-On-T]

100% nuclear is far more difficult than 100% renewable...

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No, nuclear would be far easier for Korea.

In fact, renewable is impossible.
They don’t have the free surface area for solar or wind, don’t have the rainfall for hydro.
Picture Tasmania with 50 million people and very heavy industries (shipbuilding, cars, semiconductors). And -20C winters.

 

[nwdiver]

No, nuclear would be far easier for Korea.

In fact, renewable is impossible.
They don’t have the free surface area for solar or wind, don’t have the rainfall for hydro.
Picture Tasmania with 50 million people and very heavy industries (shipbuilding, cars, semiconductors). And -20C winters.

It would be more difficult than the US. But still cheaper and easier than nuclear. Korea announced they will no longer invest in new nuclear so the only way they'll ever get >40% clean energy is from solar and wind.

Plenty of wind. Offshore is key.



I've been to Busan... Kinda surprised that they actually have plenty of sun too...

 

[Shock-On-T]

It would be more difficult than the US. But still cheaper and easier than nuclear. Korea announced they will no longer invest in new nuclear so the only way they'll ever get >40% clean energy is from solar and wind.

Plenty of wind. Offshore is key.

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I've been to Busan... Kinda surprised that they actually have plenty of sun too...

The problem is the population density. There is plenty of sun down south during summer, but too many people and not enough roof space or un-farmed land.
And winter is bitterly cold, with lots of heating needed.
I’ve spent about a year in total in Korea over the last 15 years. Love the place, speak the language passably well.
They are doing far better than we are to go to renewable. Embarrassing considering how comparatively easy it would be for us.
But they will struggle to go 100% carbon-free unless nuclear is in the mix. Already at 23%. That might be all they ever need, or they might need a bit more.

 

[nwdiver]

The problem is the population density. There is plenty of sun down south during summer, but too many people and not enough roof space or un-farmed land.
And winter is bitterly cold, with lots of heating needed.
I’ve spent about a year in total in Korea over the last 15 years. Love the place, speak the language passably well.
They are doing far better than we are to go to renewable. Embarrassing considering how comparatively easy it would be for us.
But they will struggle to go 100% carbon-free unless nuclear is in the mix. Already at 23%. That might be all they ever need, or they might need a bit more.

I guess we'll see. Like almost everywhere else Korea has thrown in the towel on nuclear. They can get all the energy they need from off-shore wind. Turbines are breaking the 10MW mark now with predictions of ~50MW turbines by 2030. Any solar they can collect would be a bonus.

 

[Shock-On-T]

I guess we'll see. Like almost everywhere else Korea has thrown in the towel on nuclear. They can get all the energy they need from off-shore wind. Turbines are breaking the 10MW mark now with predictions of ~50MW turbines by 2030. Any solar they can collect would be a bonus.

I’d be happy to see that happen. I only support nuclear because it’s low CO2. In all other regards I’d much rather see renewables.

 

[WilburGreen]

I’d be happy to see that happen. I only support nuclear because it’s low CO2. In all other regards I’d much rather see renewables.

Coal and Nuclear have great difficulty ramping up and down each day. That’s why they are not competitive. If you are burning coal and no one wants the power at that minute, its fast way to go broke. It’s always been a problem with coal and nuclear, and up till now it’s just been accepted they would lose money in the off-peak times. Times have changed.

 

[WhiteStar]

Coal and Nuclear have great difficulty ramping up and down each day. That’s why they are not competitive. If you are burning coal and no one wants the power at that minute, its fast way to go broke. It’s always been a problem with coal and nuclear, and up till now it’s just been accepted they would lose money in the off-peak times. Times have changed.

Exactly yet most people continue to believe the myth that you cannot power industry with renewables. Sanjeev & other visionaries will prove them wrong.

 

[Dborn]

Please explain how, when the sun is not shining, the wind not blowing and batteries depleted after a couple of overcast days?
Yes, geothermal and wave/current would be more reliable and consistent, but even in Iceland geothermal is not the dominant energy source. Hydro, is. Both wave and geothermal in Australia still have major issues. Not saying they won’t be overcome someday, but to date, nope.

 

[WilburGreen]

Please explain how, when the sun is not shining, the wind not blowing and batteries depleted after a couple of overcast days?
Yes, geothermal and wave/current would be more reliable and consistent, but even in Iceland geothermal is not the dominant energy source. Hydro, is. Both wave and geothermal in Australia still have major issues. Not saying they won’t be overcome someday, but to date, nope.

You still keep thinking of constant power requirements. Daily power requirements changes massively during every day often by multiples. Australias grid is many thousands of km long so the cheapest available power is fed in from all over the place.

 

[EcoCloudIT]

How often is the sun not shinning and the wind not blowing at the same time and for extended periods of time whereby no charge occurs back to battery storage? It's more a case of calculating the battery storage to last whatever time, be it hours or days, to cover freak no wind and no solar generation for days in a row events.

Major grid battery storage could, will hopefully one day, be backed up my local house storage in a grid-share system...things like Reposit Power and the like....it is possible...just changes in mind set and working towards the right model.

 

[WhiteStar]

How often is the sun not shinning and the wind not blowing at the same time and for extended periods of time whereby no charge occurs back to battery storage? It's more a case of calculating the battery storage to last whatever time, be it hours or days, to cover freak no wind and no solar generation for days in a row events.

Major grid battery storage could, will hopefully one day, be backed up my local house storage in a grid-share system...things like Reposit Power and the like....it is possible...just changes in mind set and working towards the right model.

That really does reflect the reality of it. Decentralised energy generation via linked micro-grids will certainly challenge traditional corporate income streams but this is next huge disruption that if governments & the old world won’t embrace, their descendants will suffer the results of the sovereign risk they created by building massively expensive already antiquated behemoth power plants.

We all need occasional mind set adjustment. Mind set changes should be seen as a sign of strong & healthy deep thought not an admission of long held wrongheadedness.

 

[Shock-On-T]

The point I’m trying to make is that renewables become progressively harder to deploy once storage is required.

Right now solar is a no-brainer. It is cheaper and easier to deploy that coal or anything else.

But this stops being true when you try to go off conventional power completely.

When a solar panel lets you throw in one less shovel of coal then it’s a no-brainer. It’s worth doing.

But when you try to turn off the coal completely, and go until dawn on stored solar during winter you find that it becomes orders of magnitude more expensive.

Luckily this is a problem that is a few years away, we have a lot of solar to install before hitting this wall. Hopefully storage will be cheaper by then.

 

[Shock-On-T]

So to make the final 20-40% emission free it must either be storage (expensive) or nuclear (expensive, politically difficult).

It just depends which is more palatable.

 

[Shock-On-T]

You still keep thinking of constant power requirements. Daily power requirements changes massively during every day often by multiples. Australias grid is many thousands of km long so the cheapest available power is fed in from all over the place.

There are days (and nights) where the air is pleasantly still right across our great land.
And sadly we don't have 24 time zones, so even stretching our grid coast to coast gives us around 8 hours peak solar per day.

You can't have a situation where a windless night causes a blackout.

You have to have either storage or base-load.

Storage (for the entire country) is currently far too expensive, so base-load is the more likely solution.

Currently for base-load currently we are using coal, gas and hydro. If we want make base-load CO2 free we need to shut down coal and gas, leaving just hydro. There's probably not enough hydro sites to power our flat, dry country (Tassie excepted).

The only non-CO2 producing base-load is nuclear.

So we are stuck with the choice of nuclear or batteries.

It's a choice we don't need to make until we have enough renewable generation to overtaking coal, probably 5 to 10 years away.

 

[WilburGreen]

Your terminolgy is wrong. If a extra power is needed on the grid you need power from a peaker unit. Which is normally either gas, diesel, hydro or storage. Nuclear is not a peaker unit. AEMO expect new fast start gas as well as lots of differant storage to come online in the next 20 years. With the size of the grid there is alway either some sun or wind somewhere. And if its absolute middle of the night its low demand anyhow. All thats needed is a topup. Storage cost in a few years will be a fraction of the price now.

 

[WilburGreen]

With old fossil fuel technology we know the price will continue to rise in the future. With new technology you have to look forward with pricing. We already know PV and battery storage price will continue to drop. So expect people to want to charge their EV cheaply - The cheapest will be from their own or work PV - so it will be green. Once battery storage more than halves again it will be an interesting time on the grid. Its just a question of when that will happen.

 

[WhiteStar]

Storage cost in a few years will be a fraction of the price now.

That is the most important consideration and there is no doubt that fraction will reveal the depths of wrongness of building nuclear power.

The cost of building, maintaining & decommissioning nuclear power will bewilder future generations when they count the costs that spiralled vs the exponential drop in the cost of new storage chemistries.

 

[WhiteStar]

There are currently no less than 6, probably several more large scale battery storage facilities being built around the country.

This is an excellent article that details them and is based in reality as in factual not spin.

Tesla big battery defies skeptics, sends industry bananas over performance

 

[wdolson]

Please explain how, when the sun is not shining, the wind not blowing and batteries depleted after a couple of overcast days?
Yes, geothermal and wave/current would be more reliable and consistent, but even in Iceland geothermal is not the dominant energy source. Hydro, is. Both wave and geothermal in Australia still have major issues. Not saying they won’t be overcome someday, but to date, nope.

Professor David MacKay was a Physicist who ran the numbers on renewables and found that scaling up to 100% renewables did not work for everyone. There were some places it was possible. He cited North Africa as having enough sun and a low enough population, but he made the point that it was not possible in the UK and many other densely populated areas of the world.

I didn't see where he ever mentioned Australia in any of his talks, but I would assume Australia does have a shot at becoming 100% renewable energy dependent with the right level of grid storage and large solar farms in the Outback. It is true that with solar you can be in trouble, even with storage if it's cloudy for many days in a row, but there are parts of the Outback where cloudy days are uncommon. As I understand it, building large solar arrays right around Melbourne probably isn't a great idea, but even just a bit inland from there the climate is a lot less cloudy.

Some talks by Professor MacKay:

A long one:

His last interview before he died:
Idea of renewables powering UK is an 'appalling delusion' – David MacKay

I think it was MacKay in one of his talks who talked about the time frame to build new power plants. The turnover rate on power plants is slow and even a concerted effort to replace fossil fuel power plants is going to take decades in most parts of the world.

 

[Shock-On-T]

The main problem in Australia is that we don't have any fiscal incentive towards renewables.
In the real world, things don't happen because it's the right thing to do. Things happen because they are the cheapest and easiest thing to do.

This is even more true when the decisions are being made my publicly listed companies, rather than governments.

Coal power and petrol transport do not have to pay for their negative externalities. The cost of dumping exhaust gases in cities and tunnels is deemed to be zero. The cost of pumping megatons of CO2 out the chimney is deemed to be zero.

The simplest way to price these externalities correctly would have been a carbon tax. Much simpler than trying to micro-regulate all emitting industries. Sadly our country has too many people susceptible to carbon industry propaganda, and our political system is too weak to enforce an unpopular action.

The slogan for the carbon tax should have been "Tax emissions not incomes!".