[ExI] Wind, solar could provide 99.9% of ALL POWER by 2030

[Anders Sandberg]

On 12/01/2013 20:38, Tomasz Rola wrote:
> The story, after some additional poking, seems far from complete - in 
> its current form, at least. It may hint that Germany had hit some kind 
> of technological roadblock, which may have something to do with 
> storing excess energy from green in power grid (which in this use is 
> supposed to act as huge capacitor). 

I mentioned this in a post on the list a while ago (search for my posts 
on superconductor storage limits): the Czech had real problems with the 
German electricity market fluctuating wildly with the weather. Negative 
electricity prices are apparently hard to handle, especially if some 
power companies want to suck up super-cheap energy for storage in Czech 
water magazines for later resale. The east European power grids (and 
probably not the western ones either) were not built for this kind of 
rapid trading.

You don't need to add politics to the mix, but it certainly can make it 
even more volatile.

Generally, energy markets seem to be a fine thing, except that demand 
and supply fluctuate separately,  and there are hard limits on transfer 
ability and how quickly production can be stepped up or down. That makes 
the efficiency a bit iffy: the price feedback mechanism is too weak. 
Planned energy markets instead run headlong into the information problem.


-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University