This is why I got a 11.4 kWh battery attached to mine. I charge it up during the day and it covers me all night. I'm in Ireland so I'm constrained by local regulations. Technically I could attach a second system just like the one I have and pretty much never need grid power - and could even export at times. However you can only generate 6 kWh under the current rules.

My new favorite engineering educator. I work as an electrician and it reminds me of the difference between electrifying a sailboat as opposed to electrifying a conventional residence. The boat is designed to utilize intermittent charging sources with devices that can maximize times of surplus energy. We will need a smarter grid as well as better appliances.

@Kevin_Street

3 жыл бұрын

There's probably going to be a battery somewhere in there between the power source and your appliances to smooth out the supply, but I think it's still very much undecided whether that battery will be located in the neighborhood and owned and operated by the electricity company, or if it will be in your house and owned by you. There seem to be new technologies that could make both approaches possible. But yes, either way means the grid will have to be "smart" enough to manage all this variability. (Both seasonal variability and daily changes when homes are selling excess solar power back to it.)

I first found your channel looking for information about vertical turbines and now I’m hooked on everything else

New sub; hooked already. This was an exceedingly fascinating conversation.

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

For me too, Laurent and Gerard really know a lot!

Another really interesting presentation, shows how markets can be a great tool in the battle to decarbonise. Fascinating insight about European hydro, it sounds like that's a great underutilized balancing resource that could become very useful in future, at very low additional cost. One thing I'd like to add to Laurent and Gerard's comments is that the UK has been in a fortunate position recently because domestic coal mining was essentially phased out in the 1980s which caused a great deal of social upheaval at the time, but it also meant it was easy politically to phase out coal generation very rapidly just now, a large challenge that Germany, Poland, Australia and a few other countries still have to face. The UK then in the 1990s moved mostly to Gas from the North Sea which is also now running out, making (imported) gas more expensive and therefore used more sparingly. Both these factors have helped the UK become one of the fastest decarbonising nations in the world. But it is also fair to say that the way the UK energy market policy has evolved is also playing a big part and it looks set to continue, I do actually find most of the proposals for moving the UK transition to net zero forward quite sensible.

also here from JHAT, suscribed after the first vid watched, great content, put together with a smile..bravo

Thanks so much for shedding light on this different but very important aspect of power generation management. Loving your channel. Looking forward to your next video.

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

You are so welcome! Thanks for watching 😀

New subscriber, from Just Have A Think. Your discussion on the German grid was informative and points out the difficulties of oversimplification of renewables the shortfalls of present-day storage and grid management. Thank You

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks and welcome 😊

@Psi-Storm

3 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie The discussion was great and i agree the biggest problem we have is regulation of the market and price mechanisms that are still based on burning coal in a power plant that is long paid off. But the chart on production is strongly misleading people, and suggests we are even close to an overproduction in pv energy. The pv production in Germany peaks in April/May do to our roof panel orientation and the colder temperatures that increases the efficiency. Then picking out a day with exceptional solar production in April 2020 when we where in the first covid lockdown with most of the industry not using much energy is not representative of any real consumption. It's correct to show what could happen if we had a full green production without any on demand consumption like green hydrogen production or liquid salt/metal storage for the industry, but we are nowhere close to that energy goal. Every kwp of pv panels we build will reduce the still ongoing lignite coal energy production that heavily pollutes the atmosphere.

@ivanbrezina7632

2 жыл бұрын

Due to those interconnects Germany is also exporting instability of their network into neighbor countries. AFAIK the EU had not found any solution for this yet.

Just discovered you today. Rosie, in the language of this video, your content is low cost (for me) and high value -> one more sub for you. Thanks for this discussion. It illuminates one of the many difficulties we face in getting renewables to take over from fossil fuels.

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Welcome aboard!

The solution that is perfect for us here in Canada is adapting hydro stations to provide for peak demand. We are already set up for that better then any other country in the world. We just need to time our hydro releases to smooth out those curves and we have no need for pumping hydro or natural gas plants or batteries. We just need to release water from our dams at the right time. This solution is so underrated and not talked about nearly enough

Loving Laurent's bluntness :-)

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Ha ha, yes me too!

As someone was saying : To move forward you need to move backwards. We produce electricity cos we use it. So the first thing must be to lower consumption. If a house is low enough it should be certified so that the owner can get a refund on the next step. The next step is making the grid stable. Cos right now we have big consumption around dinner time. How do we make it more stable ? My idea is that every house owner checks theire meter at 5(17:00) and 7(19:00). The consumption in that time periode should be replaced with a batterypower. And the batteries should be recharged at night so that the consumption would be spread. By using batteries we can get a correct picture on how low our production can be. When talking with people they think that we should only be using one kind of energy. For me any renewable energy is good energy(solar, wind, wave, biogas generator).

Private utilities that have their own hydro resources do in fact use the facilities as peaking plants. They are encouraged to do so by regulators for all the reasons mentioned in the video. However, it does take some expertise in trading operations to take on the task, as there can be some risk associated with predicting all the market and precipitation variables. A company history that details the evolution of a trading floor is Portland General Electric (PGE). Upon closure of their Nuclear plant in 1993 they embarked on a course to learn how to trade power. This is the competency that interested Enron in their purchase of PGE. And of course, the story soured upon their involvement. Since those days, they have removed several of their dams in an effort to restore wild salmon runs.

Super duper insightful conversation !

The point at 12:00 is exactly what i have been complaining about for years now. Our energy market optimizes for base load, not flexible load. Thus Hydro will produce as a base load provider meaning 24/7. What we really need, is to rework the way our energy market works from the ground up.

Hope you could arrange a similar discussion for the North American energy market. Also what will EVs impact on the power grid? They seem to be looking only at present day consumption curves.

What a very interesting podcast on the economics of Energy! What I took away was not the cost of renewables fluctuating with weather- a legitimate problem heavily discussed everywhere- but the dilemma of how fast the cost of Solar, for example, is falling, and causing investors NOT to recoup their costs while newer installations keep driving the price per KWH down! Great for the consumer, but plays havoc with the investor who cannot get a consistent, or high enough, return over time. At some point, that steeply downward slope showing the fast, declining cost of Solar will level out, as eventually it nears materials cost and efficiency limits- but that may be another 10 to 15 years! In a perfect world, this is where government should be working , to subsidize the costs of new technologies for the future benefits of its citizens. sigh! Politics and special interest groups do make this harder than it should be... But great podcast!

Very good presentation! We need the smart grid and lots of local storage to store excess capacity and release it slowly.

Solar is so incredibly cheap but German electric costs have become the highest in Europe in the last four years. I may not be good at math but I say something does not add up.

@factnotfiction5915

3 жыл бұрын

He did state that someone (he doesn't care who) has to pay the difference! Germany has elected to make both the taxpayer and ratepayer pay that difference. Yeah, wind and solar ain't so cheap when you work out the full costs.

Interesting interview - as usual. But the problem can be distilled to one basic requirement: renewable energy will not be viable until we have cheap and plentiful energy storage. Otherwise we will not be able to use the energy when we need it, we will waste it when there is oversupply, and we won't be able to balance the grid. And it doesn't look like batteries (at current prices) are the solution. The example of Jamestown battery bank in South Australia is telling: at the cost of over $170 million it can power 50,000 homes for less than 1 hour: there are 750,000 homes in SA alone...and domestic use of electricity is less than 1/3 of total consumption. This means over $180 billion to secure energy for one small state - and this is not including the required over-capacity for the days when the Sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow...We can talk until we all are blue in the face - but the problem remains the same: we can't store (much) energy right now...

Hello Rosie. Thanks for the nice videos. I like to watch them a lot. I wondered, if printing wind-turbines in place is being researched, as I think it makes lots of sense. I'd try to put the nacelle onto the ground on top of a printer that will produce the tower in rings. It will raise the nacelle with each ring. And on the hub, you print the turbine blades out from the center. That will make installing them much easier: you do not need to transport huge blades and you do not need to wait for wind to be low to install them. which is kind of a problem in itself, eh? you want the most wind for your turbine, but if there is non-stop wind, you have the optimal place, but cannot install a turbine there. yeah. so printed. seems great. cheers!

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

People have started development on 3D printed parts of a turbine (towers, blades, some generator components), but I haven't seen do exactly what you suggest. I would love to see someone try it! What do you imagine would happen to the printer at the end, would a helicopter come and get it?

@ChrisBigBad

3 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie had not thought about that. Helicopter would be a similar problem with the wind. A heavy box would probably do better than a light blade in wind. Owning a 3d printer, I see that most of the thing is scaffolding to move the head around. It could surely be taken apart and lowered though the tower🤔 the tower printer at the base, you could just wheel it away. Although there surely will be some components on the inside of the tower which either have to stay out get out though the door... An engineering problem is, that building the blade in layers from tip to stem causes weak points on each layer. Maybe that can be overcome by putting a wire through the blade and putting it under tension as they do with bridges.

Cool, I also listen to these podcasts, and it was great to have visuals with them.

Great conversation,Thanks!

Really interesting discussion with the guys, thanks Rosie. Interesting that there was little focus on demand management, but I guess that's a whole other topic!

Interesting presentation. I tend to focus on the technical aspects of green energy but as stated we need a positive value metric encourage folks to continue to invest. Interesting to see the various mechanisms each country has come up with and the power of incumbent providers.

Love to see an interview with these guys on what's going on in Europe right now.

I remember the switch from main frame computation to PC computation working for a company that owned two main frames. The cost of the main frame didn't change if it was used or sat ready to be used. Thus those that couldn't switch to the PC were charged the cost of the main frame each month. Half the usage resulted in doubling the cost relative to the work done. This forced more computation work to the PC. I see a similar thing happening in energy. The renewable energy is taking the place of the PC. Main frame computers is replaced by the nuclear, and fossil fuel burning sources, thermal sources. The thermal source generation and storage must be their since renewables generation can not control the basic energy source of sun, wind, and wave. The cost burden of required sitting thermal energy and storage must be attached to the renewable lack of control of the it's energy source and maintenance failure not planned for.

Very interesting perspective indeed! Can't say I agree with everything your guests are saying, but very good food for thought.

There should be a regulated eletricity heating tariff across Europe of just 5 cents/KWh for heating homes This way most homes would convert to electrical heating This could be kept simple by having for example a normal rate for the first 3,000 units of electricity then just 5 cents/KWh for the next 12,000 units per year Electrifying heating can be done quickly and cheaply and would increase eletricity demand to roughly double what it currently is. Eg UK would go from 320TWh a year to around 600TWh a year Yes heating demand is higher in the winter but offshore wind output is also higher in the winter Also yes 5 cent eletricity is more expensive than 4 cent natural gas however gas boilers break down and need repairs and replacements while a connection heater will last a lot longer and even if it breaks down its just €20 for a replacement

🇨🇦 Very informative. Thanks

Just found your channel and am enjoying greatly. Your guests comments on value and regulation were most interesting. I live in British Columbia and our government owned hydro company has gotten itself into several controversial situations with selling into the US spot markets. They are able to turn on/off the taps (quite literally) so are able to buy electricity from thermal (coal, natural gas, nuclear) plants in the western states during off peak hours and sell back at peak times. Having a large regional grid to work with has worked well. I’d be interested to hear your guests comments on the recent problems in Texas. Have you done any analysis of tidal generation? Tides, while not constant, are very predictable.

this was a great video. I'm planning on building a "net zero" house. It'll be grid-connected but will also have PV and batteries to balance out my grid needs. Watching the price of PV and batteries drop year by year makes me happy. I had PV on my previous grid-tied house and recovered my costs in about 10 years. Let's hope for something close this time!

Excellent series. Grid & storage are remaining issues with solar and wind. But there are solutions like batteries and green hydrogen. I would like to know more about the best applications (apart from rocket and boat fuel).

That was incredibly interesting Rosie. Thank you so much.

@EngineeringwithRosie

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks! This was one of my favourite interviews I have done on this channel. I learned so much!

Excellent video and happy to subscribe. I would be interested in seeing a video on the types of storage and their relative maturities, since I think you'd do a good job on such. With renewing interest in hydrogen powered cars, wouldn't it make sense to use excess capacity to generate that. It can be stored for long periods, is relatively compact and can be transported. I suspect that hydrogen powered cars would be less damaging to the environment in terms of manufacturing, so if the fuel is relatively environmentally friendly, it might be a good alternative to EVs. Also, would it make sense to use carbon capture to take excess capacity during times of over production? Anyway, I look forward to your next video, whatever the topic.

Thanks for this video! It's a fascinating discussion that probably required a lot of editing and production work. Thank you, it's much appreciated. Here in Canada I can see us addressing the time component with batteries, but the space component will be a whole lot harder. Our grids tend to be connected North-South with the Americans instead of West-East across the country, so the issue of interconnectors would have to be worked out separately with each American grid we connect to.

@tomkelly8827

2 жыл бұрын

Batteries? Dude, the guy in the video mentioned the solution that is perfect for us. It is adapting hydro stations to provide for peak demand. We are already set up for that better then any other country in the world. We just need to time our hydro releases to smooth out those curves and we have no need for pumping hydro or natural gas plants or batteries. We just need to release water from our dams at the right time.

@Kevin_Street

2 жыл бұрын

That sounds like a good solution for the eastern half of the country,

Another great video Rosie! You keep knocking them out the park and thanks for finding such interesting and smart guests! Such a good reminder about the complexities of the systems we're trying to restructure here and the solutions are never as simple as they first appear to be! We're seeing people taking advantage of this already with the first all electric service station here in the UK (covered on fully charged a while back) having battery grid balancing services as a key part of their business model. I wonder how we'll be interacting with our energy grid in the future?!

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for that, I will take a look at that UK electric service station you mentioned. According to Gerard, the UK is really leading the world in setting up smart regulatory systems to deal with the energy transition. I think that is dearly needed to get the conditions right for people to find innovative solutions - like the electric service station perhaps. I also wonder what the future energy grid will look like, that makes it a really exciting time to be working in the field!

@DanSwain

3 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie Great video again, I love the economics of renewables, I'd love to understand how a smart grid of micro grids could work especially in the UK.. I see a future where my new smart washing machine selects the cheapest time of day to do the washing. Will Demand Response go beyond industrial settings into residential whereby fridges power off for 30mins at peak demand. Can we agree a v2g spec so EVs can flatten the demand in an evening and charge overnight.. or better yet leave EVs plugged in and charge off Germany's excess solar and wind.

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

@@DanSwain demand flexibility is so interesting to me too! It seems really underutilised, there should be so much potential to reduce the amount of storage needed if we can all switch our fridges/ air conditioners off for a few minutes every now and then. I am working on a video on a vehicle to grid project, and I have a guest in mind to interview about demand flexibility, so keep an eye out for those in coming months 😀

Thank you for your wonderful videos, really helps explain the mechanics behind the science. I'm having a hard time finding the answer to these questions: What is the optimal rotational speed (in RPM‘s) of a direct drive 9 to 10 Mw unit? How much force (in tons) does it take to produce that optimal speed and output? Everything I can find keeps going to back to blade tip speeds and wind speed.

@robinbennett5994

Жыл бұрын

Optimum speed is whatever it takes to keep the blade tips well below the speed of sound, so you can work backwards from there depending on the blade length. Power is force times speed, so you can work it out from the wind speed and the amount of power you're extracting (plus about 1% for drag, blades are super efficient these days).

Rosie, would you do a video on gearbox vs direct drive wind turbine designs? This was another great video. I was binge watching all of your videos. Great stuff. 👍

As far as time and place go I feel preference should be given to time, in any storage or interconnects there will be loses, so storing local to generation involves fewer loses and less vulnerabilities like the Victoria - South Australia interconnect that helped cause that state's blackout. Interconnects then create a more robust and decentralized grid with redundancy. Projects like Australia's Snowy Hydro 2.0 and battery of the nation sound great but we don't need to send power all across the continent to be stored.

One thing that was hinted at but perhaps not spelled out is that hydro is a battery whether it is pumped or not. Generation consisting solely of hydro wind and solar should not have need for a lot of batteries at all. Hydro should be rarely used as base load, but simply to fill in when solar and wind aren't available. What am I missing?

Hello Rosie, I love your channel and presentation. How can I verify the information/statistics shared by the two gentlemen in the video?

MORE OF THOSE PLEASE!!!

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Glad you enjoyed this, and I will be releasing another video interview with a smart chemical engineer talking about hydrogen this week, I hope you will like that one too!

These are the kinds of discussions we must have but please don't think this means that it is sensible to ignore nuclear. In the UK we use gas to back up wind (wind is about 20% of our electricity) for the days and weeks when the wind is to low or to high because there isn't yet a viable grid scale storage technology that you can use at large scale(I'm not talking about high frequency that's very small capacity ). So the actual system cost is the cost of wind power + the cost of the gas plants and gas consumed which is clearly not cheaper than gas by its self! "Smart grid" only goes so far if you need power you need it, you cant just turn that many things off when the wind isn't blowing. For example using electric vehicles is no good other than for high frequency (very short term tiny storage ) if you use them for longer/higher storage they need much bigger batteries than they would otherwise (very bad idea). So we need to invest like crazy in viable grid scale storage technologies and hope they will be deploy-able in the next few decades. But you would be extremely foolish to bet our future on that only. The only technology that exists now which can generate huge quantities of base load power carbon free is nuclear and we must use it at huge scale going forward. France apparently is returning to nuclear after a long pause in investment (Thank God!). They effectively de-carbonised their electricity grid back in the 80s and their electricity cost is well below the European average (even that just using gas rather than gas+ wind). Nuclear gets cheaper at scale we must relearn what we used to know in the 70s and 80s. So other than storage... The ultra long distance inter connectors don't exist yet and require huge investment also, they to are a bet that we cant rely on in isolation.

Great video! So the best solution would be to build industry scale PV installations hooked to big batteries to profit from low generation costs and still profit from the daily duck curve, right?

Wow, watching that makes me really appreciate how lucky I am to live in Tasmania with heaps of big hydro and interconnects to other states, I get AU$134 per MWH exported from my solar and only pay $160 imported for main tariff used. I know lots of people that complain about the disparity of imported VS exported, but I think I'm getting an amazing deal as what I export is not going back to the dam and filling it to the level I take for every MWH imported.

This is great.

Most energy forms need transportation. You need to transport coal, oil and gas. The advantage of fossil fuels is that transportation infrastructure is in place. The transportation distances rival any distances you need to transport green energy as electricity. Oil from Alaska to the USA main area. Oil sands in Alberta to Texas. Oil tankers from the Middle East all over the world. Coal from Australia to China and so on. To connect the high wind areas with the population centres you need quite a few big HVDC inter connectors. Compared to oil pipelines with their constant troubles like spills a very clean solution. An advantage of long distance inter connectors is, that you can get energy out of areas with different weather systems in regards to wind and energy production in different time of the day in regards to solar. In the USA you have high wind possibilities along the east and west coast and the central area. You can expect three different weather patterns. If you have excessive solar energy in California, it could be offloaded to the east, where you have the evening spike with declining solar production.

Good thoughts, and well in line with a discussion I had with both of them in March. Most of it was brilliant, but on two issues, I think both your guests were wrong. First, I first want to see the storage investors playing the 'duck curve' in a deflationary situation with constantly falling investment costs. Won't work, the first investors will be eaten up by the subsequent ones! Second, what in Earth does make them think that digitalization of small hydro would provide any benefit? I have financed a few dozens of them. Nearly none of small hydro power plants do have built-in flexibility, hence would profit from shutting on and off. At marginal costs of nil, they should produce at any positive sales price and use whatever water flow they can get. There is hence no business case for the substantial investment costs associated to digitalization. Of course, the story is totally different for hydropower plants that manage a bassin of reasonable size, but these are rare.

@danjones9589

27 күн бұрын

I think the hydroelectric dams you are speaking of are run-of-river, meaning they have no capacity to store water and release later. The case for "digitalization" of a hydro plant - which is essentially to operate them as peaking facilities, should be considered wherever storage is feasible. Yes, basin management has a multiplier effect on a series of peaking facilities. I agree with the suggestion that a private company engaged in arbitrage with multiple power sources could create greater economic and environmental value from Hydro resources.

Renewables work well in New Zealand, we have a lot of wind generation and during the lulls, we have hydroelectric power which can be used as a battery.

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

And geothermal too, right? Yes you Kiwis are lucky.

@sigmaoctantis_nz

3 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie Ah yes we also have geothermal energy as a constant energy source :)

Agreed, cheap renewables was never a problem, scaling for Industrial applications should be restudied, eg when the English Forests could not sustain both Shipbuilding and Iron Smelting for Cannon, Bessemer Converters using advanced technology boomed, in more ways than one. The war effort pays "Industrialists", not so much the Conscripts. ***** I have actual Legal Advice not to comment or object to just about anything to do with governance in Australia. It's obvious why.

Does anyone know if the hydropower management is better in Norway?

i think you guys are missing out a big point which is there will be lots of types of batteries like Flow Batteries, Green Hydrogen, Liquid Air, Nature Gas .... as a solution in this Wind/Solar intermittency issue to smoothen the duck curve and for a fast response.

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

I definitely agree that storage technologies are going to massively change things! I think Laurent especially is desperate to get into batteries and trading the opportunities in those duck curves 🦆🦆🦆 I'll be following up with more videos on storage tech through the year, starting with pumped hydro and vehicle to grid in the next couple of months. Thanks for commenting!

Hey Rosie great video, do you have any books recommendations that helped you personally with your understanding of renewables?

Gravitricity, today in Edinburgh, Scotland tested for the first time a gravity energy storage system that stores power by suspending two weights from winches on a tall tower.

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

I saw a similar system (though above ground) while I was in Switzerland last year, I mentioned it briefly in this video: kzread.info/dash/bejne/mGphycWNiLexndI.html I will be interested to see the outcome of trials for both companies. If I was involved in the development, I would be worried about reliability and maintenance costs due to the large number of moving parts. But let's see how they go!

Hello Rosie, referring back to your video on the Betz limit. I am not an engineer obviously, otherwise I would not have to ask this question. You state 50% +/- efficiency for the energy extracted from the air tube. Lets say that the area of the three typical blades make up 10-15% (and that is generous) of the turbine disc, that leaves a lot of space between the blades for the air flow to pass unhindered by interaction with those blades, and carry on its merry way, contributing nothing to the turbines power. Have I missed something?

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Great comment, and one I have had on my list for a new video topic for a while... it's tricky to explain which is the reason that video is taking me a long time. The basic explanation is that in a wind turbine with maximum efficiency, every air particle would interact with a blade. The blades are rotating, so even though only a small portion of the disc is covered at any moment, if the blades are spinning at the optimal speed, all the particles get "hit" and give some of their energy to the turbine. Note they don't need to actually physically smash into the blade to be affected, the wind starts slowing down a little upstream of the rotor. I know that is not a super clear explanation. I think I will try to illustrate with some CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulations to show what is happening to each particle. Thanks for the question 😀

Way interesting.....

Would love to know what you think about flywheel energy storage instead of batteries. They seem to be quite efficient (especially if not using mechanical bearings) and environmentally friendly, but don't get much recognition?

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Good suggestion, thanks. I will look into to it as a possible future topic.

Digitalization of grid systems is critical for understanding transparency of power economics but what I don't understand is why wind and PV are always renewable's limelight when your energy dependency is from multiple sources (not only renewables).

I would be interested in Laurent and Gerard's take on the financial feasibility of an interconnector between Australia and NZ. This would add value to NZ's hydro resources by substantially solving Australia's energy intermittency dilemma, both excess renewable generation and storage. The distance is over 4 000 km which far exceeds the existing longest underwater interconnector between Norway and the Netherlands.

@factnotfiction5915

3 жыл бұрын

Obviously not Laurent or Gerard's take but .... First, let us presume it is technically possible, and even relatively inexpensive to make, say a 1GW interconnector. Based on this data, let's round to $8B / GW. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroAsia_Interconnector (1 GW, 1200 km, $2.5 B) Ok, so we build one for $8B. Now comes the hard question - will 1 GW make a difference to Australia? Answer, no. We need at least something the size of Snowy 2 (4 GW). Can't we just add more electrons to the wire? No. (the wire is already 1GW, not a 1.0000001 GW wire or 1.1 etc or 2 GW or 3 GW etc) To make a Snowy 2-size difference we need to spend around $24 B. On the other hand, Snowy 2 is only ~0.2 B USD. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_Mountains_Scheme#Expansion_plans However, once you work out Australia's true intermittency gap, it is probably closer to 10-20 GW.

It didn't seem like anyone mention demand flexibility. That would help a lot with intermittency. Use power when it's abundant and cheap.

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

I also think demand flexibility is going to be a big part of the solution, and we need to make sure the market is set up right so there is an incentive to vary demand based on power price/ availability. I hope to do a video on the topic later in the year.

@TheAviv2011

3 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie can't wait:)

@nc3826

3 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie True, but switching to TOU rates (ie some type of a supply vs demand pricing model), is the primary issue.... It doesn't matter to the grid, if the excess supply, is used for storage or by shifting demand to something else...

@factnotfiction5915

3 жыл бұрын

Demand flexibility isn't all that flexible. (after about 20% it doesn't work) First, it is great if you are using your washing machine at high power availability, but residential electricity is about 10% of the pie. And some of that can't be shifted (like the TV below). Second, industry is the major energy user, but most industrial processes are more efficient when run flat out for long periods of time. Example: have you ever tried to make ice cream without continual cooling and stirring? It just isn't possible if you stir a bit here, cool a bit there, pause, and continue on. Third, synchronization and human society. We all pretty much wake up at dawn, eat lunch at noon, head home in the evening, socialize at night. So let's try a scenario: the TV broadcaster will not have a set time for their latest hit sitcom, but will only broadcast when the wind picks up. Worse, the viewers' local power supply may have just died down, so the broadcast is spending power for potentially no value to the viewer. Fourth, we could just have everyone install their own storage. 100's of years of figuring out that specialization is the key to a wealthier society - farmers farm; doctors doctor; grocers groce? etc. Now we all have to become our own mini power utility??? I don't call out for pizza and beer because I don't know how to make pizza or brew beer - I call out because the piemaker and the brewer can do a better job than I can. Ditto my electric utility.

One thing I wish they would quit saying is renewable energy, it's not it's alternative energy. And to be perfectly honest living offgrid is not cheaper in the long run. My setup provides 15kw average per day. But when it's needed the most it provides the least. The best thing is when others have a blackout because of a storm I still have power.

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Interesting that you say that, why do you think it's wrong to call it renewable energy? I have actually never thought there was a difference between calling it "renewable" vs. "alternative." And I guess at some point we'll have to stop calling wind and solar alternative. E.g. Denmark gets about 50% of its electricity from wind, so is "alternative" a good word to describe the largest source of electricity?

@roscoepatternworks3471

3 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie a guestion then. Would you call hydroelectric renewable? Wind changes speed and direction but the air that passed the turbine will probably never pass that turbine again. The photons that strike the solar cell will never strike that cell again. So like water that will never pass that dam again, the power is just an alternative to using fossil fuels. But looking into the construction methods of wind and solar, crude oil and rare earth metals are still required. Mining is not pretty. As I see it we are just substituting one non-renewable resource for another. I live offgrid with a 4.7 kw solar array. It's not really cheaper. Batteries are last 10 years, solar panels may last 20 years. And to maintain power to my house, in the winter I need to clean off the snow, we may get a month of fog. At that point I'll need to run a generator, fossil fuel. So we need alternative forms of energy as renewable energy doesn't exist, with the exception of wood, you can cut down a forest build a house burn it for cooking and heating and regrow that forest. Therefore the forest is renewable. But just my views.

My question (I'm still part way through, 8:37 so I might get the answer in a couple of minutes!) but if the Solar Capture Price is less than the Wholesale Power Price, doesn't it make sense to switch to use the electricity to produce something that gets more cash than electricity on to the grid (i.e. green H2)? I imagine in the future an autobidder will predict the cost of day-ahead power, and just recommend hydrolyzing H2O if the wholesale price of electricity is too cheap (NB: I'm not in the power game yet so I could be talking doo dah).

@tcroft2165

3 жыл бұрын

Solar+H production does look a very good fit.

@michaelstreeter3125

3 жыл бұрын

@@tcroft2165 If the government won't tax carbon at source, the H2 industry _could_ respond by creating a market for Green H2, (if it hasn't already). I feel many people in the H2 market just don't want grey or blue flavours at any price.

@tcroft2165

3 жыл бұрын

@@michaelstreeter3125 The price gap is so large atm thats just not viable. It will need heavy subsidy or a big carbon tax or a ban on other colours of H2.

They are forgetting to talk about "displacement." What will the value for gas be if it is displaced by electric utilities and appliances that run on electric? Both of your guests are looking at the entry of renewables from the point of view of energy traders, forgetting that energy trading exchanges are a relatively new thing. Before energy trading platforms regulators looked at energy from the point of view of need fulfilment. It was the entire reason that utilities were either run by governments or were given a special dispensation to be monopolies. As new technology and the problems with monopolies grew the idea of breaking up transmission, generation, billing, and trading platforms seemed like a great solution. Then we had the economic disasters of ENRON and the like. We needed then to scrap this scheme of breaking up the utility monopolies by adding energy trading exchanges. The guests use the word "value," but that is just energy trader speak for the wholesale price traded up on an exchange. It does not have anything to do with the real value of energy. There are two components in real value and they are how important it is to the consumer and how much is the consumer willing and able to pay for that energy. It is up to the government to regulate the price of energy to the consumer so that it doesn't have an improper effect on the consumer's ability to purchase other things that they would normally have purchased. So, back to the point of the video, the graph showing the value of gas at 125% over time while solar going down to 75% is only true if renewable electric fails to displace the use of gas. What the first graph actually shows is that wind and solar currently can and do displace gas. And now, with the advent of energy storage becoming much cheaper, combining renewables with energy storage may eliminate the continuing cost of purchasing fuels such as gas, only without the need for gyrating exchange prices. Supply is matched to demand. That would make the value proposition in the graph move gas to zero while wind and solar will maintain value since their cost is much lower and can meet consumers needs. In the end the invisible hand of economics comes in to play and people, as well as regulators, are going to choose the option that will allow them, its consumers, to keep and use more of their money for other things, which in the long run will sustain a vibrant economy.

Yeah wind and solar are not competing with gas, storage is competing with gas they are both peaker plant. Consider gas with 100% CCS, thats your target for battery cost. Batteries cost more progressively for every MWh, the last MWh is the most expensive because it hardly gets used. Daily management is probably best done with Lithium ion, as its the most efficient and vehicle can contribute to this, weekly and seasonal storage need something larger scale OR interconnects. There will be plenty of cheap renewables in the future making power practically free when the weather is good, when its not you are paying for storage and interconnects. More renewables don't put more "strain" on the system, they are cheap enough to curtail, but ideally you want to store that excess for later or incentivise consumption during peak generation with more flexible loads like vehicle charging when parked (not fast charging).

Wind and solar are good but you need storage to make them great. We will need both short term (seconds or minutes) and long term (possibly months though a few days is a good start.). And we’re going to need security to keep the hackers from holding our energy hostage

Wind turbines are great. The only thing, as the earth heat up ( poles healing up faster than at equator) the temperatures will be more uniform and the wind speed will be reduced. The power generated depends on the wind speed in 3rd degree. So not so much power.

Sharpens my older mind feelng good when I comprehend it

There are many industries which can adjust their electricity demand to suit the fluctuations within the grid.

Do solar panels and wind turbines give back more energy than what is used to create and maintain them?

Great chat, ^oo^

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks!

Since you have delved into economics, I wonder if you would be interested in covering Jevons' Paradox in a future video. Briefly, William Stanley Jevons was a nineteenth century economist who observed that new energy technologies DO NOT REPLACE the older technologies. He rather found that they ADD TO the older technologies in a way that increases the overall consumption of energy. I have difficulty seeing any other outcome with the ongoing renewable energy technology development given the massive amount of energy being used, particularly in rapidly-growing economies like China.

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Interesting point, but does recent data agree with that trend? I think plenty of countries have reduced their energy usage recently. I'll need to go look it up, maybe a topic for a future video, thanks!

@RegGuheert1

3 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie China is building massive numbers of coal-fired power plants. Here is an article which discusses the trends there: www.power-eng.com/coal/new-report-china-now-generates-54-percent-of-the-worlds-coal-fired-electricity/ From the article (concerning the period 2015 to 2020): "“The expansion of renewable generation (821 TWh) in China, though impressive, could not meet its significant electricity demand growth,” the Ember report summary reads. “In order to maintain the sufficiency of electricity supply, coal also had to rise, supplying 39 percent of China’s electricity demand growth (734 TWh out of 1,884 TWh).” In other words, China increased renewable electricity production by a massive 821 TWh between 2015 and 2020, but increased NON-renewable sources by 1063 TWh during the same period. As Jevons observed, the new energy resources are brought on together with increasing consumption of the old resources in order to meet demand growth. And that is JUST for electricity. Total energy usage is much higher than that used for electricity. Just by way of comparison, China's total electricity consumption is currently about TWICE of what the United States consumes.

@factnotfiction5915

3 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie IEA data shows that 1st world countries have reduced their growth rate of energy consumption, but none have actually reduced their absolute energy consumption. And, of course, the rest of the world is not even anywhere near a full capacity buildout.

It seems logical that electricity from water dams could be made to fluctuate. A dam could reduce or stop water flow for two to four hours, then flow during the peak in the afternoon to meet the demands of the duck curve. Fluctuations of a few hours should be manageable for the quantity of water in a dam.

Here in the USA the ownership of electricity has been centralized into investor owned utilities (IOU). A lot of renewable energy development is taking place on a small scale distributed basis. This distributed electricity actually reduces the profits of IOUs. Thus electric utilities are slow walking the conversion to renewables.

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for adding this. What I learned from Laurent and Gerard is just how many opportunities to make money there are in the new system, once we get the market set up with the right incentives. The companies that realise these new opportunities the fastest will be the ones to benefit their profits along with the environment.

@chrisconklin2981

3 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie Gretchen Bakke in her book "The Grid" talks about Thomas Edison and the early days of electrification. Edison believed in DC and worked to develop local generation. Ultimately, Tesla/Westinghouse AC won out. Interestingly today local solar/wind generation is crating a condition more inline with Edison's vision (Community Solar). On one hand you have areas of mega wind-solar generation such as deserts and offshore and they will ship their power long distances, but on the other hand you will have semi-automatous local grids. "Brave New World".

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

@@chrisconklin2981 Interesting, thanks for the tip I'll take a look at that book. I think DC is going to become more and more common in the future, but I doubt that we'll see it replace AC in a large scale. I personally like DC because it's easier to understand! I only studied a few electrical engineering subjects so I appreciate the simplicity of DC 😊

@chrisconklin2981

3 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie Thanks for the reply's. Hopefully, not to bother you too much, I would like To add and clarify two items: Fist, I mentioned Edison's Vision. I was talking about AC microgrids not DC. Which bring me to a sampling: Hitachi ABB Power Grids Sustainable power for islands through microgrid and battery energy storage technology kzread.info/dash/bejne/m6d7q5WqdKebfKg.html The B1M What are Microgrids? kzread.info/dash/bejne/e4qgq7Kohpa8kZc.html How do microgrids work? kzread.info/dash/bejne/gIxm1q2LecSoaNI.html ////////// Regarding VAWTs: Granted it is hard to find a successful VAWT application. So far I am most impressed with shielded VAWT(WS-VAWT). I live near a coastal area which has an almost constant onshore wind. Big wind turbines would be NIMBY. However instead a 1000 VAWTs well designed an placed could be possible. Sample: A vertical axis wind turbine without the wind! How do they do that? kzread.info/dash/bejne/mZeH0NmQZdmZlps.html www.newhaven.edu/_resources/documents/academics/surf/past-projects/2015/antonio-di-vita-paper.pdf www.researchgate.net/publication/260726651_A_new_type_of_VAWT_and_blade_optimization

We looked into this with a smart web grid from Home batteries to Mega pack at Street and Highview power for grid scale storage!! We also dont want any more Grid Solar and wind until AFTER every building has solar+Battery+possible VAWT soon .... Let alone scale being Tidal energy!? PLUS looking into changing building standards to lower the power needed per building via efficiency changes! im using - "FIRST PRINCIPLES + THE 5R's

@Psi-Storm

3 жыл бұрын

Li battery storage is still too expensive. Even Teslas Hornsdale storage facility was $500/kwh. With 3000 cycles on the batteries you are at almost 17 cent for the energy storage. This currently can only replace peaker plants, but not cover base grid power. Home storage is at a similar price and not economically for users with a stable grid connection. Tesla promised sub $100 prices for the packs, but the total system cost has to drop significantly too.

@DarkOkie

3 жыл бұрын

@@Psi-Storm wait what are you talking about onsite power REMOVES the need to a "Grid base load" that is just a lie power companies use to beat renewables! FACT you lose 22-34% of the energy created just in Line resistance that comes from a baseload and Scaling from Building > Node > Grid for batteries fixes any issue your talking about AND YES i do agree the Horndale batteries was stupid Vs 1 - 2 High view power stations!! Saving those costly batteries for Node and buildings... ALSO i lie of omission by other power companies they have calculation a cost vector that includes - Almost running at max capacity (which non ever do) and they calculate into cost ZERO shutdowns (maintenance or accidental) which changes their cost value massively (This includes Nuclear, Hydrogen, Gas, Coal power plants) emission scales are also i lie via omission but thats it for another day!! My company is planning a project that will change living standards for the world and allow us to invest in other projects doing the same! (P.s. All materials recycled and used again have a cost reduction of at minimum 17% up to 30% and THAT will change the industries VERY SOON!)

Excellent video. So, how do we encourage everybody to charge their cars when the sun is up? 1. Needs to be a charger there. 2. Great price.

@nc3826

3 жыл бұрын

lucky that wind power is used more... and most EVs charges at night, when the wind power would be wasted...

@fjalics

3 жыл бұрын

@@nc3826 Yes, though in California, they should charge during the day. They have a lot of solar.

@nc3826

3 жыл бұрын

@@fjalics agreed California has a higher percentage from solar than most states... but wind production is growing much faster there and in the rest of the country (it's just cheaper to produce than solar in most places).. So in general TOU (Time Of Use) rates should be adjusted based on supply and demand changes... No matter where the power come from...

It was stated that renewable generation will become less valuable because it is intermittent and gas generation will be more valuable because it can fill demand gaps - no one talked about how a future rising carbon price would effect these costs.

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

That's true, we didn't discuss that. Definitely important though so should be a topic for a future video. Thanks for the comment!

@factnotfiction5915

3 жыл бұрын

Natural gas will remain valuable. The thing is, you will pay to fill the demand gap. Texas recent cold snap in February 2021 is an example. People (when they could get juice) kept the electricity on despite the cost - and a few have bills of $1000, $10,000 ! This concept is called demand inelasticity. There are some goods that people simply will pay anything for. www.thebalance.com/inelastic-demand-definition-formula-curve-examples-3305935 You might substitute coffee for tea, but there are very few substitutes for electricity. Maybe candles for lighting, or natural gas for heat, but microwave ovens and machine tools simply don't work without electricity. Thus, no matter how cheap wind and solar make the electricity 'mode' price, the peak natural gas price won't change much. And, because natural gas will still have the same infrastructure (if you want 1 GW from natural gas, you still have to install 1 GW worth of turbines), but used over smaller time periods, the peak price of natural gas is likelier to go UP, not down.

Storage. All the major battery makers are rapidly building out production capability, Tesla alone will have 4 production facilities by the end of the year each in the top 10 largest production facilities in the world. Batteries, along with renewable generation infrastructure will be cheap as chips. Check out Tony Seba's work on the growth rate of disruptive technology which is always the same. He predicts complete takeover by renewables by 2030.

That was fantastic. A great corollary might be a political discussion as well. There are really different worldviews that prevent progress in the Green Industrial Revolution. Also, I want to see some financial experts talk about the US electricity market--my State is trying to convince me that building a new natural gas plant to handle peak demand is a better idea than investing in renewable energy. What am I missing?

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Great suggestions, thanks!

@factnotfiction5915

3 жыл бұрын

"building a new natural gas plant to handle peak demand is a better idea than investing in renewable energy. What am I missing?" The weather (i.e. wind and solar) do not correlate with peak demand (in fact, solar anti-correlates somewhat). Naturally, building a natural gas plant is a high-carbon, disappointing solution, but at least it is a solution. Wind turbines and solar PV are low-carbon, but they are not a solution to peak-demand issues. The deal is, electricity is not storable. Think flowing water in a river. You can use the water now, but once the water is past, it is past. You can't always get more water because sometimes the river dries up, and sometimes when it floods it is too dangerous to be near. You can pretend to store it, and sure a bucket will store enough for your personal use, but your city may demand water by the ton, and you can't have several million people each trek to the river with a bucket each day and still get on as a city. Electricity is the same - use it or lose it; (battery) storage is possible, but very small compared to an actual society's needs. That leaves you with pumped hydro storage (difficult if you live in a flat floodplain like Belgium) or .... fuel! Thus the allure of dirty natural gas.

@thinkinaboutpolitics

3 жыл бұрын

Interesting point. However, solar storage is growing by leaps and bounds. There are 20 MW solar batteries that can last 4 hours on the market now. I just think storage ought to be explored before new fossil fuel construction. According eia.gov solar storage capacity is growing nation wide. I understand finding a workaround may be hard - but it seems necessary given the scale of the climate crisis.

@factnotfiction5915

3 жыл бұрын

@@thinkinaboutpolitics " I just think storage ought to be explored before new fossil fuel construction." - I absolutely agree with you. However, the hard facts are that storage is inferior to generation. Another scenario - I live in Chicago, which consumes about 3000 MW at night (5000 MW during the day) or, about 4000 MW on average. To get thru 1 night we will need 3000 MW * 12 h / (20 MW * 4 h) = 450 of your 'batteries'. Except that we have 3 day blizzards in the winter. And one must build the church for Sunday, not average attendance during the week. Can we borrow electricity from Minneapolis' or St. Louis' batteries? No - blizzards can cover the _entire_ Midwest, so they are already using their batteries. Therefore we need another 5*12 (5 because 2 nights without recharge, + 3 days without recharge - remember the blizzard blocks the sunlight to the solar PV) = another 60 hours worth of storage --> now the 450 'batteries' have turned into 2,700 'batteries'. Worst of all, from the politician's viewpoint, is that most nights around 2,250 batteries are sitting idle - a lovely thing to explain to your constituents that they pay for all those idle assets! (now we can add in the extra PV to charge those batteries and transmission and maintenance and ...) And you are totally screwed if the blizzard lasts 4 days, because voters dislike freezing to death. So much simpler to build a dispatchable, low-carbon nuclear power plant than to deal with storing intermittent solar.

In my opinion, operators of hydro power plants are not so silly, but environmental regulations do not allow hydropeaking on rivers (which seems logical to me). You also have to take river traffic into account …

You could talk about UHVDC. One thing that might smooth the duck curve is a solar plant to supply a population to the west. It is a very specific situation and the ideal would be 6 hours of time difference, but current technology can already make a difference for USA, China and South America. What do you think about this?

Trade/arbitrage on the wholesale electric market is great... but the transactional friction, including grid/demand charges, is what determines if it will be profitable or not.... Which trades like Laurent, ofc want avoid paying... FWIW it's a shame my local utility only offers a fixed rate... which means many consumer are not incentivized to arbitrage their consumption... like its done on the wholesale market... "BTW, Rosie pls excuse the distraction any earlier, comments that I deleted, but still was still sent to you"

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

I absolutely agree it is a shame that retail customers aren't incentivised to use electricity in a way that makes sense. Check out the company Octopus Energy in the UK, they are doing some interesting work in that space. They were actually featured in Laurent and Gerard's most recent podcast episode: www.spreaker.com/episode/44620217?A10802082

@nc3826

3 жыл бұрын

​@@EngineeringwithRosie It's a shame since some US utilities do offer TOU types of rates, but most like mine just promised to offer it, in exchange for deregulation of their transmission line rates... and keep putting it off, which is now past the state deadline... PUC could and should force them... BTW thx but I have known about Octopus Energy in the UK and its progressive rating structures, for quite a while... It just makes me, envious of the way things should be here... FWIW I have a background in engineering and econ (but not grammar due to my dyslexia).. so my inner geek loved the post... and pls do not get offended with any critics I make to your posts... it just my nature.... keep up the good work....

I am not sure I quite understand, at 8:04 it is mentioned that the wholesale power price is decreasing as well, why is this bad? Also, I think we need to be extremely careful with the interconnector options in today's world in order to avoid energy dependency as it is the case with Russian gas. In my point of view, Europe should first focus on the European continent (excluding Russia) as the EU enhances trust between Germany and Poland for example. Relying on Russia or China is simply not worth it anymore, at least with the current governments.

There is a very easy very effective way to deploy a huge quantity more offshore wind power The UK has about 25 million gas boilers in homes and perhaps another 5 million in business consuming in the region of 500TWh of natural gas annually If these boilers were replaced with hybrid boilers which work on gas as well as electricity the boilers could use eletricity when there is excess wind and use gas when there isn't Next gen offshore wind turbines will have 60% capacity factor so you could decard boilers by at least 60% via this method. Closer to 75% in reality as the average output vast the peak would be about 75% on fleet level What's more 1 unit of eletricity used in this boiler would save about 1.2 units of natural gas so it's 'conversion efficiency' is aboit 120% much better than trying to turn the eletricity into hydrogen and burning that in the boiler with a efficiency closer to 60%

My ex’s cat was named Rosie. She was fierce and mighty!

Very interesting. I wonder how you factor in the cost of climate change when considering LCOE (or value) of fossil fuels?

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Ideally with a carbon tax I guess, but I live in Australia where that is a dirty word...

@JakubSkowron

3 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie I used to live in Poland (2nd in EU in coal production, after Germany), where 'carbon tax' is like a red rag to a bull. We need some better PR for the concept of paying for every CO2 molecule emitted to the atmosphere. Maybe more descriptive name, like 'carbon damages payment'?

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Similar situation here in Australia...

@rubidot

3 жыл бұрын

@@JakubSkowron something that reflects the fact that the purpose of the tax is to compensate for the harm done to people. "Consumer remediation fees" or something.

@seneca983

2 жыл бұрын

@@JakubSkowron But Poland is in the EU so emitters there have to buy permits in accordance with the EU emissions trading scheme. It's, at least in theory, equivalent to a carbon tax.

It's been a little over 2 years since this video. Batteries keep getting cheaper. It seems to me rules should be changed to subsidies are removed before 2030. This gives time for solar and wind generators to install batteries and sell a good chunk of their generation at peak times. Within 2 or 3 years batteries will get so cheap they will be unavoidable (to sell as much of what you generate during peak demand times). This has the environmental and economic benefit of pricing peaker and baseload fossil plants out of the market, batteries and pumped hydro become the primary peaker/load following resource of the grid.

Is anyone out there doing the math on the amount of storage required to balance the grid? It’s obviously not the size of the duck curves depending locality and not the base load level.

From my perspective, this 'market price' of electricity is a bad idea but one that has come about by the regression of the grid with renewables. If you want a cheap, reliable and stable grid, do not connect renewables to it. With conventional generation, generally, the difference between maximum demand and minimum demand is the cost of fuel. All other costs stay much the same so there would not be the ridiculous spikes in power costs per unit that we see today. What is Australia's history as far as the price the consumer pays for electricty? I don't think the consumer is impressed Due entirely to renewables which not only unsuited due to intermittency or the effect of too much solar which peaks at a specific time and steadily diminishes while the load is the same or increases, which means the dispatchable generation has to ramp up output quite quickly to keep the frequency stable. This plant is running well below capacity for some hours and then has to increase output quickly. This is uneconomic as far as efficiency goes and the extra stress increases maintence of the plant. Then there is the technical deficiencies of renewables, they are asynchronous and have no inertia, essential characteristics for a stable grid. Another Australian, Jo Nova has got it right!

@xxwookey

3 жыл бұрын

Which would be fine if there was not an overweening requirement to decarbonise. So 'just leave it as a fossil-powered demand-response grid' does not fulfill the most basic requirement of the future grid. A nuclear-power demand-response grid would work, but would appear to cost about twice as much as one with a load of variable generation despite the extra system costs for storage and demand-management.

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the comment, it would be easier to stay with the old system certainly, at least for a few years until climate change really starts to kick in. We need to change the energy system away from what suited coal power plants and towards variable renewables. And that will take a lot of hard and smart work, but in the end it will be cheaper as well as better for the envrionment (and health, incidentally). So it's worth it.

Really hope liquid metal and flow batteries take off so grid storage isn’t competing with vehicle batteries for lithium supply

What happened to your subscriber count? It's more than 5K now :D

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Vertical axis wind turbines are a verrrrry popular topic it turns out 😀 Also Dave from Just Have a Think mentioned my channel on one of his videos and sent thousands of subscribers my way. It's crazy!

@michaelstreeter3125

3 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie JHAT

@johnmheaton

3 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie As a "newly arrived Dave sub", I'm very happy he did!

@tcroft2165

3 жыл бұрын

@@johnmheaton Yes I followed from there!

@lindsayforbes7370

3 жыл бұрын

Yup I'm from Dave too Glad he told me about you Rosie. Great vid

Any improvement (low price, eco value, independence, etc.) is bad for the money system! Nice!

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

I didn't mean it to come across like that, so thanks for letting me know that's what it sounded like. I have the opinion that the fastest way to get action on climate change is to make sure that renewable technologies are cheap and reliable enough that even climate change deniers will want to use them. Politics and ethics is an important aspect of the battle, but not my skillset so I leave that up to others and keep working on the tech myself. Thanks for the comment 😊

No mention of EVs in providing the bulk of the solution to the duck curve problem? If every vehicle had ~ 75kWh battery, even charging them up at the right time would flatten out the curve significantly. V2G capability could do the rest. We need to encourage strong EV adoption in parallel with transitioning to renewable energy. They complement each other.

Here is a look at how costs vs value worked in the recent past and how dropping prices for hardware stayed ahead of the game for a bit. energypost.eu/how-to-keep-wind-and-solar-profitable-as-its-electricity-gets-cheaper/

20million vehicles and buildings in Australia 300million vehicles and buildings in USA Every building is connected to the grid. Add a few cheap pv m2 to every rooftop and the selfparking EV plugs in 23hrs every day. Forget CCS distractions. Forget central any generation, the grid expansion is stupendously expensive. Lithium batteries cost are plummeting. New battery technologies are evolving rapidly.

Please direct me to a video you have made about the output of energy per average large turbine.

Did inter connection stop Russia from invading? Doesn't always work the way you want it too

@EngineeringwithRosie

Жыл бұрын

Nope it sure doesn't.

The two problems with the theory are #1 lack of alternative power especially nuclear and #2 government involvement and interference governments are useless at supplying most things but are #1 at lack of efficiency, terrible at accountability, and awful at foresight and regulations interference!!! What we need is innervation, flexabilty, and the ability for over capacity!!

@EngineeringwithRosie

2 жыл бұрын

Innovation and flexibility are key, I think we can do without over capacity if needed (people really seem to hate the idea of "wasting" energy even though we currently waste every sun ray that doesn't hit a solar panel...), but agree with you that over capacity would likely be part of the most efficient system. I have an upcoming video on Octopus Energy in a few weeks that will cover many of those topics, so stay tuned!

@roncolwell

2 жыл бұрын

@@EngineeringwithRosie Hi Rosie, thank you for at least replying to me and I understand your reservation about my oversupply comment, but it is born from the experience of many years, engineers are just that and there not known for there looking to the future that's not their job and just like politicians who knock down current power stations before they have replacement power in place. You cannot build on today's requirements we need to look at our usage over the past twenty years to find how much it has changed and applied that math to the future, that gives us a starting point and a chance to get it right no matter what technology we use, and by the way, I am all for Green energy I have solar and will purchase an electric car when the time is right, our future is in the hands of your generation, not mine, we got us this far now it's over to you!!! GOOD LUCK!!!!!

You might have to simplify the talk in another video with some examples for mech engineers!!

@EngineeringwithRosie

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the feedback Hamza, there was so much material we covered in this interview, wasn't there? And it did move pretty quick 😁 I'll be making separate videos on some of the concepts we briefly talked about, like LCOE. If you tell me which other parts were interesting but need more explanation then I'll add them to the list too.

@frederikzinn5427

3 жыл бұрын

For me its the other way around. As someone who is really into finance i thought this was very easy to understand. When it comes to engineering i struggle much much more.

Well, there're ya problems: smart regulators and the protection of incumbents.