[ExI] Solar Insights: why solar will win the energy wars

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, Jun 04, 2012 at 09:15:45AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 3:49 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> > (do check out dem purty graphs)
> >
> > http://reneweconomy.com.au/2012/solar-insights-why-solar-will-win-the-energy-wars-80365
> 
> Eugen, Interesting stuff. I'm assuming that there is more energy used
> in the day time than at night... but what happens on the days the peak

Uh, night baseline is 1/2 to 1/3rd of daytime peak (notice that we've
had almost 50% of peak from photovoltaics for two day a couple weeks 
ago -- this means >100% of peak just from PV is pretty soon). As it's largely
due to thermal inertia, and cheap daytime peak has slashed producer's
earning night power is a lot more expensive now, so it will probably
sink further. We need realtime energy markets in which the small
producers/consumers can participate.

> doesn't get so high? Does the electricity come from other countries

Well weather being rather reliable these days you fire up peak plants
well before the peak hits. This can be gas turbines or swarm power
(micro co-gen). In future, also storage.

> over the grid? I would kind of assume that from day to day the demand
> would be rather similar, so I'm just wondering how they do it.

Intermittent doesn't mean unpredictable.
 
> I would have thought some of the other power sources would go down as
> solar went up, especially hydroelectric, but I don't see too much of

Well, at total contribution of ~4% annually (and this is just electricity,
not energy) this is still a drop in the bucket.

> that. I'm just really curious how it all works out. Is some
> electricity wasted, or are there users that just pick up whatever is
> "out there"?

If the grid can't absorb it, the wind is being separated from the grid,
and, yes, in absence of build-out there will be solar overload. There are
some peaks occasionally.

This is why anticipating daytime peak of 100% or 200% or 1000% is important.
We need to load-level that over space and time, including seasons.
Right now the lowest-hanging fruit appears to be water electrolysis, and
using the natural gas infrastructure for hydrogen blending.