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

Sun Jan 13 06:14:48 UTC 2013

On Sat, 12 Jan 2013, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 09:38:07PM +0100, 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
> 
> The roadblock is mostly political. It doesn't matter, as the prices are 
> speaking quite loudly, and people are quite fed up with the situation.
> 
> Expect more guerilla style photovoltaics, and advent of micro-and 
> nanogrids.

I don't know much about this stuff but one thing I really remember from 
school is that Universe plays against us (or rather, it doesn't like us to 
make changes - no, this is my wording, my teachers were a bit more 
sophisticated :-) ). I would expect a technical roadblock just because of 
this. And if there was none, I would bet we were a simulation, a rather 
linear one.

About guerilla guys - I don't want to sink your expectations, but AFAIK 
they don't scale up. There are no guerilla governments, corporations or 
other high level organisations. I am sure the micro/nano grids will 
deliver, but I'm not so sure how they will do after connecting into big 
system. Perhaps some nasty factor will grow exponentially with size. Even 
quadratic growth can stop it.

> > excess energy from green in power grid (which in this use is supposed 
> > to act as huge capacitor).
> 
> You don't need storage until some quite ridiculous fraction of total 
> contribution (Germany had 21.9% renewable of total electricity in 2012, 
> after 20.3% in 2011 and 16.4% in 2010). Ordinarily, 25% would have been 
> expected, but wind was anomalously low in December.
> 
> Total demand declined 1.4%, and net export was highest ever with 23 TWh.

Remarkable. I like the attitude but I guess the rate of renewable adoption 
is going to be limited by some of factors. For example, I can see one type 
of solar cells require cadmium telluride - tellurium is very rare, and 
cadmium is toxic. As they write here:

[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellurium#Production ]

"The principal source of tellurium is from anode sludges produced during 
the electrolytic refining of blister copper. It is a component of dusts 
from blast furnace refining of lead. Treatment of 500 tons of copper ore 
typically yields one pound (0.45 kg) of tellurium."

So, very hard to obtain, it seems. Worldwide, yearly production of 
tellurium is about 110-120 tons or so it seems.

Sure, production can be improved, etc etc. But, assuming 1g of such rare 
element is required for 1 square meter of panel, with 20% efficiency
1 sq m gives about 200W in some preferable conditions

[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency ]

so...

[6]> (defconstant +terawatt+ (expt 10 12))
+TERAWATT+
[7]> (/ +terawatt+ 200)
5000000000
[8]> (format nil "~r panels" (/ +terawatt+ 200))
"five billion panels"

and...

[11]> (format nil "~r tons of rare element" (/ +terawatt+ (* 200 1000 
1000)))
"five thousand tons of rare element"

With yearly production of 120t of such element, to make 1TW worth of 
panels requires about 40 years.

If we require some easier obtainable metal, like indium, its possible to 
have about 1100-1200 tons a year, so with above assumptions it takes only 
4 years to make a TW-worth of panels.

[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indium#Production ]

Now, it is said with current tech a panel lives for about 20 years, 35 
max. So after we make 5-7TW, whole production needs to be turned into 
replacement units.

Based on the above, I can see that we are not going to reach a goal of 
saving humanity from eating itself. At least not with (current) solar 
alone.

And there are going to be mutually exclusive demands for various elements 
coming from various sectors of industry - for example, we need indium to 
make LCDs too.

Also, I doubt very much it is possible to reach 1TW even in 10 years - 
from what I have seen it would require almost doubling panel production 
every year from current levels, about 24GW-worth of panels worldwide in 
2010:

[

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_photovoltaics_production

]

The problem is, it's rather easy to go from one manufacturing plant to 
two, even 16. But 64? With 1024-fold increase, we could grow out from 16TW 
footprint, but I guess this is impossible to do in ten years. It's not 
about just setting up plants, they will require some additional 
infrastructure and other plants to sustain their production.

Something's got to change to make this equation more plausible. I assume 
efficiency of solar cell could be doubled, but again, this will take time 
and if there are plants built, they will have to reorient themselves.

Industrial planning is a mess and I am an ignorant, so if I just 
reinvented the wheel or if my wheel is triangle, I'd like to know :-).

> > There is also the related political problem - like a possible German 
> > dependency on Russian energy and raw materials exports. This includes 
> > not
> 
> Monseigneur Sabatier would like to have a word with ???????? ?????.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction
> 
> Energy independency is quite feasible for high-density industrial 
> nations. The math does check out.

Yes, it is doable. But does the math take a safety into account? I think 
it is more like dynamic game theory, with variables changing over time and 
changing the equations in effect. This is not static. I mean, what would 
gospodin P's reaction be? In what ways applying of Sabatier reaction into 
real life can be sabotaged? Think of overall effect of antinuc sentiment. 
I hear it is clean, mostly safe, other than few mishaps. And yet lots of 
people does not want it, even go to claims that coal energy is safer (with 
possibly more radioactivity released from huge coal plant a year than from 
all nuc plants combined - and now compare treatment of ash with treatment 
of nuc waste).

[...]
> > from what I have heard once, Soviets liked to finance green parties. 
> > They
> 
> Pics, or it didn't happen.

If I had the pics, man, if I only had the pics... (well, maybe not, why 
would I want to have such pics, nothing pretty there to see). Otherwise, 
the hypothesis (or speculation, if you prefer) seems quite plausible. 
Anti-nuc demonstrations I remember from mid-80-ties were very much in 
accord with Soviet foreign policy, AFAICT. It would surprise me if I could 
verify they were not involved in instigating.

> > really liked this (but I guess if Soviets had ever won, greens would 
> > have
> 
> One evil empire down, one's still to go. And just what are we gonna do 
> after? Pax americana is drawing to an end. Things do look murky and 
> (a)murrkier.

It seems like Pax-a is going to end, but it's also quite possible we will 
not see it very fast. The big ship can go along for quite some time even 
when engines fall off. Now, US is still well ahead in terms of military at 
least. The only thing that can drown them in foreseable future, is IMHO 
the childish public pressing for some unfavorable changes. Thanks to their 
entertainment industry, childishness is taking over the world (you think 
I'm wrong? tell this to hobbit/jedi lovers).

For a moment, English should suffice. But I'd like to give a kick to my 
beginner's German and/or French. As for Chinese, no chance I get 
proficiency (no, it takes years of heavy use), unless Singularity comes 
soon. But I may learn a bit, just for the gigs. I think it will take at 
least 20 years before I could seriously need Chinese here.

> > been among the first to work in Siberia, this is how stuff works). And 
> 
> Siberia is busily eating itself. Russian Far East is pretty much now 
> Chinese, anyway.

This is what I have heard about it, too. Still, to really claim those 
areas China will have to grow sustainably with Russia unable to react. And 
AFAIK Russians are really good in such games. It may take many decades, 
assuming Chinese are able to deliver all the time, which I somehow doubt. 
I mean, it's not like low level Russian is strong and patriotic. But the 
upper level wants to hold on. Not surprising.

Or maybe they will reach some agreement. Afterall, in case of 
confrontation, the philosophy of "u nas mnogo lyudiei" (we have loads of 
people - so it doesn't matter if we loose 5, 15 or 50 million) is not 
going to favor Russians.

Or maybe they have already reached it. Few years ago.

Or maybe Russians are trading to buy themselves more time. As I wrote, 
they are good. Byzantium had fallen few times and even the last one wasn't 
certain at once.

> What do you do with a maliciously unreliable supplier? Why, you bypass 
> him.

Very optimistic.

> > typical Westerner thinks more like "I have the money, I want to pay, 
> > so I
> 
> Somebody fetch me a typical Westerner.

Gogled:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldmarch/4149571702/

Heh...

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **