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Comment by _Codemonkeyism | Hacker News Reader

My guess is that energy will be so cheap, we produce much much more than we consume in the future. There will be an abundance of energy some decades down.

Also electric cars will create very large storage capcities for energy in the next decade.

On top of that we get intelligent meters, with machines like my washing machine pulling power at the best time, my battery chargers using the right time etc, so (non-industry) demand will flatten out over time with intelligent metering.

I would have feared about this issue 20y ago, but I think this is no longer of any importance for the development of solar power.

What is relevant with the ongoing centralization of solar power is power transmission.

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>Also electric cars will create very large storage capcities for energy in the next decade.

Chem engineer here, battery technology doesnt seem to be a guarantee to improve.

Batteries are limited by the physics of our universe. The chemistry between two chemicals will not change, and it feels like we have exhausted every option.

This is a non trivial problem and I am unsure if I expect a solution.

I do agree.

In 2 decades there will be hundreds of millions of electric cars in the world which currently do not exist. This is a huge increase in battery power even with battery technology not changing in the next 2 decades.

I'm curious of what your opinion of hydrogen is, I know that it's still very expensive because of energy lost during the conversions. Do you think it has a viable future when it comes to energy storage?

The actual track record of battery improvement is pretty incredible, especially the recent fall in prices.

I expect minimal (or even zero) energy density improvements.

However, I do expect cost improvements. Even if the cost to make a battery is constant when measured in joules, PV is getting cheaper and can supply more joules for less money.

Is energy density even important for grid storage? France is larger and less mobile than a car or a computer.

It is not important. As you mentioned, plenty of space.

Not at all. Even in cars, further density improvements are not needed, as the limitation to general adoption is cost rather than range or performance. In restrospect I ought to have mentioned that in my previous comment…

Density + charging speed are definitely important but I do agree that cost is without a doubt the biggest problem. For some people, gas will still be preferable until electric charging speed is close to gas AND speedy charging units are as available as gas stations AND batteries match the range of gas tanks (my new subaru gets like 500 miles on a full tank when driving on the interstate which is super convenient and good luck getting long distance rural drivers to switch without the 3 problems I cited).

It's too far out to say if electric cars/dynamic grid/renewable energy will revolunatize our planets energy usage since we are very entrenched in the current system (and anyone claiming anything beyond 5 years underestimates how fast shit changes IMO) but I am seriously excited about these changes with how much the economics have been improving for a clean energy society.

I’m a lot more pessimistic than you about the rate of change. I recently went through Eureka (California) and most of the cafes and restaurants there did not accept Apple Pay, contactless payment, or even chip and pin payment. Eventually we found a place that did accept Apple Pay so we could eat.

While Apple Pay itself is only about four years old, contactless payment has been fairly standard in the UK for about 10 years, and chip and pin is over 20 years old.

I'm no electrical engineer, but I think we can do some napkin math.

80khw battery in an average model s * 300000000 million cars / (3,911,000,000,000 kwh energy use in the in all of 2015 [2] / 365 days per year) = 2.239 times as much storage in cars on the road versus energy usage which seems pretty doable. Also, it also gets better because as car batteries age and their storage / weight goes down, you can replace them with new ones and put the old ones in grid storage locations where weight / storage does not matter and run them till they are literally dead.

[1]: about a little less than 1 per person (just rough estimating here)

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...

2 big variables I forgot about.

1. We need to eventually switch our winter gas heaters to electric which while helping balance summer vs winter electric usage, electric heating isn't as efficient and we have to increase the outside air a lot more in the winter than we have to cool it in the summer (for most people at least).

2. I forgot to add in the extra electric demand needed to power the cars which is currently powered by oil.

Electric heat pumps are quite efficient, AFAIK.

I heard that a long time ago and thinking back on it, I think it was due to the fact that most electricity comes from burning other stuff so the overall efficiency of burning something to make electricity (definitely not 100%), then transporting over lines to your house, then converting that into heat to warm your home is less efficient than just burning it at your house and using the heat directly.

For swimming pools, which are admittedly a special case, heat pumps are already cheaper to operate than gas heaters in most of the country.

(They’re special for several reasons. A big one is that they have huge thermal mass, so your heat pump can operate at whatever time of day you want. This means you can optimize for electric rates vs outdoor temperature. Heat pumps, unlike gas boilers, are considerably more efficient when it’s warm out.)

Many things in a home produce 'waste' heat (TV, people, pets, etc) which needs to be cooled in the summer but it is useful in the winter. Further, AC's end up condensing moisture from the air which takes crazy amounts of energy.

So, heat pump efficiency vs temperature only tells part of the story. With good insulation you will almost always need more cooling in the summer than heating in the winter outside of the arctic circle.

>electric heating isn't as efficient

Ground source heat pumps have a typical efficiency of about 400%. You're moving heat from the ground to your house rather than heating up the air, so you get considerably more useful energy out of the system than you put in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_heat_pump

Heating water with electricity is three times more expensive than heating it with gas in my market (The Netherlands). That turns a monthly bill of 60 EUR for gas warming into a bill of 180 EUR if you just switch like-for-like. A 3:1 ratio.

Ground heat-pumps are being championed as a cost effective replacement for keeping houses warm. They provide a 4:1 heat:electricity ratio so have lower running costs than gas. They can also be attached to sun panels and can work with storage heaters (heat the water when the sun shines, use it when it doesn't).

Unfortunately pumps are expensive and very invasive to install in existing houses - you need to dig gardens up to lay the pipes and installation for an average house is about 15-20k EUR ($17k-$23k).

> Batteries are limited by the physics of our universe

Right, but our ingenuity and understanding of the physics may well not be perfect. Didn’t Moore’s law continue on well past it’s sell-by-date?

> Right, but our ingenuity and understanding of the physics may well not be perfect.

Our understanding of gravity is pretty much the same as Newton's in how we can utilize it. We know its not perfect but that doesn't change the reality. And ironically, battery chemistry is better understood than gravity.

> Our understanding of gravity is pretty much the same as Newton's in how we can utilize it

I suspect anyone from Newton’s day would be surprised to see an A380.

Battery technology might not be a limitless path, but wouldn't super-capacitors have more potential? The ability to store large amounts of power very very quickly and for a decent amount of time could be an important addition to energy management, if such capacitors could be commercially viable and practical.

Supercapacitors are already commercially viable. I have one in my cheap dashcam because it withstands high temperatures better than a battery. The only problem is that their energy density is 1-2 orders of magnitude worse than lithium-ion batteries.

Ah yes, I actually have one in my dashcam too! Oops. As you can see this is an area I don't know much about.

I was more thinking along the lines of larger 'industrial' scale capacitors, but I'm not sure if there are fundamental barriers physical that can't be overcome to make such devices a sensible route to pursue?

One energy storage method that's relatively cheap, efficient, and scalable is pumped-storage hydroelectricity. There's a 3 GW plant in Virginia that's been in operation since the 80s[1]! There is ultimately minimal need for FF peakers, or large rare-earth batteries, if governments can execute projects like this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta...

Yeah, but like most renewable energy, you need the right place to currently make it economical.

> My guess is that energy will be so cheap, we produce much much more than we consume in the future

Nuclear power promised "too cheap to meter" and of course this never materialised, because someone does actually have to pay the capital and operating costs.

While spot prices may drift around all over the place, and renewable guaranteed price floors will continue to lower gradually, I wouldn't expect retail electricity to get much cheaper soon.

Solar power currently generates less than 1% of the energy consumed in the U.S. [1] Solar power is not currently displacing fossil fuel use — it’s merely contributing to the growth in consumption.

In order to fulfill the Paris agreement of limiting warming to 2°C (which would already be a global catastrophe), developed countries must reach zero CO2 emissions by 2035. We need to be reducing emissions about 10% per year. Instead, emissions are increasing by about 2% per year.

If you want to convert all of the ICE cars on the road to electric cars, where will the energy come from to do that? Manufacturing the cars requires fossil fuels. They have a limited lifespan, and then you have to replace them. By that time, our economy must not be running on fossil fuels, so how will those cars be replaced?

Even solar panels require fossil fuels to be manufactured and transported.

In sum, at the moment, we’re actively robbing from the future in order to appear to be heading toward sustainability.

[1] https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/images/energy/us/...

I wonder, "Even solar panels require fossil fuels" what parts in solar panels are from fossil fuels?

How is the aluminum mined and smelted? How is the tempered glass made? How are the other trace elements mined, transported, and refined? Once they’re manufactured, how do they travel to their installation location? There have been lots of studies on the carbon footprint of solar panel manufacturing. Generally, they’re considered to “pay off” in terms of energy production after about 5 years. (They have a 25year lifetime, btw)

In a world where the economy must be carbon neutral to negative, none of that manufacturing and transportation infrastructure can be run on fossil fuels.

To be fair, they usually have a warrantied lifespan of 25 years... and as solar cells start degrading, their output drops off in a gradual linear fashion.

At 25 years, solar panels still produce between 80% and 87% of their manufactured capacity. At 50 years, they should still produce between 60% and 75% of their manufactured capacity.

It's quite possible that solar panels could have much longer life spans. There isn't a lot of data yet, but there are some indications that they'll be performing well.

A 33W solar panel (Arco Solar 16-2000) actually outperformed it’s original factory specifications 30 years after it was manufactured

World`s first modern solar panel still works after 60 years

Kyocera has reported several solar power installations that continue to operate reliably and generate electricity even though they are nearly 30 years old

The big problems in longevity at the moment are batteries and inverters that typically have to be replaced every 5 to 10 years.

When I build my off-grid solar system, I'm planning to use NiFi batteries (Nickel Iron) that have lifespans in the hundreds of years with minimal maintenance. They're larger and hold less capacity, but don't damage themselves when over/under charged and use materials a lot more available than modern high-density battery storage technologies.

I haven't seen a long-life inverter yet and that's frustrating. Inverter manufacturers have thin margins and competition, so they focus on lowering costs rather than redundancy and hardening.

I used Nickel Iron batteries in an off grid system. They were already 30years old. Unfortunately, they were too difficult to work with, requiring non standard voltages and maintence. You’ll need charge controllers and inverters that understand the different chemistry. I know of two other people who used them and eventually switched to lead acid batteries.

(P.S. I wonder why my comments above were downvoted?)

>> (P.S. I wonder why my comments above were downvoted?)

I didn't downvote you but a lot of your claims come off as over the top fearmongering and/or ignorant. I'll try and counter with your 2 main points that I see:

> In order to fulfill the Paris agreement of limiting warming to 2°C (which would already be a global catastrophe)

This one I just haven't really heard about how a 2°C temperature increase would be a global catastrophe. I've read that it will improve certain countries farming and hurt others. Overall, not much out of speculation how it will affect humans in the grand scheme of things. (I agree that it will be really bad for other species like the great barrier reef which I am really sad about but most people don't care about that, they just want to improve their own life and cheap energy is massively beneficial to people which currently outweighs the cost even if it is currently costing the plant).

> If you want to convert all of the ICE cars on the road to electric cars, where will the energy come from to do that? Manufacturing the cars requires fossil fuels.

No it doesn't. We can convert 100% of our energy usage to renewable energies. We just don't do it because it is too expensive to switch all at once. However, if renewables and batteries keep improving like they do, fossil fuels get too expensive once we run out of ones to cheapy extract, we will end up that way (the latter which is guaranteed no matter what happens as fossil fuels are limited). Pretty much every government even china and the Saudis recognize this which is why everyone is subsidising/investing in renewable energy and taxing fossil fuels to get renewables cheaper.

Regarding 2° being a catastrophe — that’s how James Hanson described it. The Paris Agreement picked 2° as some kind of politically attainable goal. It’s not a safe limit for human civilization as we know it.

There’s also this recent paper which got a lot of press http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/07/31/1810141115

> No it doesn't. We can convert 100% of our energy usage to renewable energies

I said that it currently requires fossil fuels. In order to build “renewable energy” systems, you need to bootstrap it by expending fossil fuels today. Even if you could somehow mine iron ore with electric bulldozers, that’s not currently how iron is mined (and transported, refined, etc). So, you have to convert every link in the supply chain. Some people have already calculated that, in order to completely convert our electricity system to 100% renewable, we’d have to burn more fossil fuels today than would be allowable under the carbon budget outlined in the Paris agreement. Others have calculated that the transition will simply take too long (and the rate it has to happen increases all the time).

Can you outline how it’s possible to convert our industrial system to 100% renewable energy, using real numbers and timelines? Does your model also include economic growth (and therefore growth in energy consumption)?

This is why I'm pretty gloomy on climate change, I can't see politicians or even the general public accepting lower consumption even though that is what we need to fix the problem.

I wonder what will happen to the price of oil as we switch to electric vehicles. Could we end up increasing demand elsewhere in the energy economy as the price falls?

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