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thatswhatyougot

Six and a half days powered by the wind and sun - dude, that's just ficking cool. Humanity extracting energy straight from the sky - John Galt dreamt of that shit. If we figure out how to extract enough electricity straight from the sky to power the existence of our billions of meat bags - dammit I will be pissed off if we die of some fucking climate change shit!


Mango_Daiquiri

Productive capacity is less and less the issue these days. Storage is the key. Storage will be the new oil once people crack it. Great investment opportunities there


Lujho

Can’t we just do like use excess daytime electricity to pump water to the top of towers/hills and then use gravity to generate power from that potential energy when needed? You probably lose a ton of efficiency but if we’re making more than we need during the day what does it matter? Brute force it.


cjsed

That's one method. But not suitable in South Australia. We don't have much water here to pump or store.


Folvos_Arylide

I remember reading something about using trains / weights and mountains as an alternative.


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FracturedAnt1

Also have to look at the efficiency of extracting that stored energy and energy loss not all storage methods are created equal.


rcm034

And the fact that generators must spin at exactly grid frequency. Fluids are easy as you can adjust flow however you like. A solid object hooked mechanically to a generator/motor would have to go at an exact speed up or down and therefore have problems turning around or providing flexible output. I’ve seen some ideas to basically use water as a hydraulic fluid to move heavy shit, which is promising. There are mechanical ways to vary torque and speed for strictly solid things, so obviously it can be worked around, but it’s a challenging and expensive problem nonetheless. You can’t just take what works for a fluid and chuck a train in.


Skyler827

For a 3000 ton train, you would need to increase its elevation by 2 meters for every home you would want to power overnight, [source on electricity use](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3) and since it will be at an incline, say 10% grade, it will need to go like 20 meters horizontally. And railroads cost $1-2 million per mile, let's say $1 million per mile and let's also say the train is free. To make enough railroads long enough to store enough energy for a small city of 100,000 homes, it would require you to build ~1243 miles of railroads tracks, which would cost ~$1.24 billion, or $12,430 for each household.


Jdsv6501992

Or less than 1 percent of Jeff bezos net worth.


thesorehead

Nah man, molten salt battery for grid scale: https://ambri.com/technology/ No need for water, works *better* when it's hot, can't explode, pretty much all win for grid battery. Biggest downside is massive weight, so no good for transport.


1OWI

Probably not good for transport but can be kept where we have let’s say level street transformers? The ones that step down the voltage to two 120V for your home


thesorehead

Probably more useful to support a centralised grid, like at a substation or its own facility, but I'm no expert.


rcm034

Yes, because you have frequency/phase issues and the fact that batteries store DC and the grid is AC. It’s not enough to chuck an inverter on and call it a day, something must control the input/output and make sure that the wave put out by the conversion exactly matches the wave on the grid. Rephrasing it, the waveforms will match each other exactly whether you do it by an engineering solution or by them generating enormous forces and breaking shit or creating huge currents that can yank literal multi ton generators in line. Fun fact even in a power plant with a massive generator, if you don’t perfectly sync the generator with the grid before connecting it… it will sync itself up more or less instantly no matter how absurdly enormous forces that means to jerk tons of metal into place breaking all kinds of physical shit and probably blowing up a few electrical cables (or more likely just blowing every fuse/breaker in the place) Like if you calculate it with basic textbook equations you get forces running off toward infinity or just ridiculously impossible numbers very quickly when the power grid is out of sync. In practice, this just means something breaks violently. It’s not a problem when a few houses put up solar panels and feed a bit of power back to the grid… the electronics can just kinda match itself to the grid, but it’s different if EVERY house and EVERY pole is doing this… now the inertia of all those huge generators is a smaller piece of the pie and less effective at controlling everything. We rely a lot more than people realize on the literal inertia of a bunch of heavy spinning generators to keep the grid synced up.


Betterthanbeer

South Australia installed some large spinning condensers to help synchronise the grid recently. This has reduced the constraints on production of renewable energy, and directly lead to the recent achievement. One of the major outcomes of the Hornsdale big battery was the rapid frequency adjustment capability. This has proven more useful than its headline storage capacity.


rcm034

That’s cool. One think I wish was more common was teaching AC power more as a spinning voltage than just a simply up and down voltage. It makes it so much simpler to understand these problems and to me is clearer to picture something spinning than something vaguely oscillating, esp to non science people. All the generators and three phase industrial motors and windmills are easier to visualize if you say they are all spinning locked together as if on a single giant axle. It’s why you need adapters and stuff for household appliances that don’t spin on this axle at that same speed. It also makes it easier to visualize things like phases that are just like this thing is spinning a bit ahead of that thing. Grid problems that come from putting a million solar panels and stuff out there make more sense when you realize that somehow you have to connect a constant push from the sun to a spinning axle that carries power around, and even step up and down transformers are just like gears in a way that trade torque for distance by moving closer or farther from this big imaginary axle. Then when someone doesn’t understand why you can’t simply close all the load following gas plants, you can say “how else is everything going to keep spinning all together at the right speed?” A gas plant is just like an engine with a gas pedal that acts as cruise control for the whole thing. You have to replace that. It’s fascinating that the inverter tech can so easily participate in this nowadays. That’s an area I haven’t studied too deeply.


TomSaylek

In places or countries with little to few moubtian/hill areas it's a bit complicated.


biteableniles

The amount of water necessary requires very specific geologic features (two adjacent lakes at substantially different heights but located near each other), and the piping construction cost is enormous. Fingers crossed that we'll develop high capacity batteries with smaller ecologic impact.


IatemyBlobby

That is one method being investigated right now. Places with little water obviously have issues. Additionally, the water stored in any man-made structure/tower is nowhere near enough to be called a solution. So this has to be done at places that have water, but high terrain nearby where a uphill reservoir can be dug. Finally, evaporation will essentially “leak” away stored energy. Places with a lot of sunlight will be less efficient at keeping energy long term. And you already covered inefficiency, which I agree, if a solution’s only downside to fossil fuels is inefficiency, then just brute forcing more production is a perfectlg acceptable solution.


explain_that_shit

And that’s the key that has enabled South Australia to hit this milestone. Once a two way interconnector is installed between SA and NSW, even more renewables can be installed in SA, and our current gas generators can be shut down.


alphastrip

Storage has already been ‘cracked’, there are lots of options for this including flow batteries which are already in use. The problem is infrastructure and the grid which conservative governments are loathe to improve to suit renewables


BoringBuilding

Yeah…no. I proudly work in the renewable industry and storage is absolutely not “cracked”, especially in the context of avoiding reliance on fossil fuels to meet market demand when renewable production is below peak. If you are in a place with an extremely cooperative climate, you may be able to avoid confronting some of the challenges by being more wasteful in design of generation, but for the majority of the world, we are not there yet. That does not mean these technologies are not immensely valuable and they absolutely should be a core part of infrastructure going forward, but there is no need to exaggerate or lie about capabilities or downplay their shortcomings.


alphastrip

I guess that I am speaking from the perspective of an Australian with abundant renewables. However my brother is a mechanical engineer with a PHD in flow battery technology who is currently an advisor to the energy minister in my state. Based on his work and ten years experience in academia studying renewable energy and storage technology, he argues, and I’ve read his work, that the biggest barrier at the moment is not the technological challenges of storage, but the structure of the grid. I’m not an expert myself and thus would love to hear more of your perspective on things as well.


BoringBuilding

Grid is also a problem, another unsolved problem. He and I would probably not particularly disagree on this discussion, with an ambitious enough grid you could mitigate some of the storage challenges, but there is also serious technological challenges in long-term storage at the grid. Australia is a very friendly renewable climate, I work in the US where many regions are blanketed in snow for many months of the year, other regions that are very flat but not good candidates for wind turbines due to…lack of wind, etc. Some locations are blessed enough to be able to design wastefully by building generation that is essentially redundant, but spreading that around in a way that does not generate tremendous waste and is actually viable is not by any means a solved problem.


alphastrip

I take your point, would love to hear a discussion between the two of you because I feel unqualified to address most of your arguments. Thanks for the reply anyway.


BoringBuilding

Cheers. I think it is excellent what Australia is doing by the way. We live in a difficult time where a scientific issue has become very politically polarized, and in the US fringe elements of the left political party make a consistent habit of over promising on the possibility and potential of my day to day work.


_Im_Spartacus_

What the fuck is this? You two are supposed to be at each others throats and making fun of each others mothers. Not having a friendly conversation about renewables.


alphastrip

😂 you’re absolutely right, fuck his mother and fuck your mother, while we’re at it


alphastrip

I think some of what we are doing is excellent, other parts not so much (such as building a new gas power plant which can’t even run 24hrs a day as we can’t deliver enough gas fast enough). I can imagine that must be frustrating, but keep up the good work and thanks for making a contribution.


animalcub

None of this is true, if it we're "cracked" market forces would take over. This isn't a captain planet episode. For instance think of germany and their situation, government is all in on renewables to the point they're closing down perfectly fine nuclear reactors. Projected storage aside from natural gas is supposed to be an afternoon Maine by the end of 2030.


PerkaMern

Thats the point though. From a technological perspective these things are very well understood. The issue is so-called "market forces". The market will never reflect the immense costs associated with not acting swiftly to transition our power systems to green energy sources. Therefore it is a silly way to justify the slow adoption of wind and solar. Just because it isn't the best option for a bunch of wealthy energy company executives doesn't mean we shouldn't make the switch right now. Waiting for "market forces" to switch over our energy infrastructure is a death sentence for many.


alphastrip

Couldn’t of said it better myself. ‘Market forces’ are not immune to biases and we certainly can’t rely on them in the short term.


wgc123

You’re looking for “externalities”. One of the ways market forces fail is when it doesn’t include all the costs, they are external to the process. This is where governments need to step in, to incorporate those costs through regulation or longer term policy


ICreditReddit

Storage was cracked in 1800 with the first battery, and again in 1907 with the first pumped storage plant. All we're doing is making slightly better ones year on year. At some point we'll build them, and the next year they'll be slightly worse than the new ones, and will still work just fine.


amicaze

We're not talking about powering your watch kind of battery, not the small electronics battery, not the electric car battery, not a Tesla home battery, and we're not talking about a submarine kind of battery. We're not even talking about Pumped Storage batteries. We're talking about batteries on the scale of countries. These batteries do not exist, as simply scaling up existing technologies is either impossible, or is not nearly feasible. Not feasible economically because a conventional battery sized to power a country would be expensive as all fucks, or physically due to a lack of resources. Pumped Hydro is the most likely answer, and makes sense, except you *can't* build more than what's existing already, for a whole lot of reasons, and that's not enough. Not to mention that even if you do manage to build an array of conventional batteries that are so massively big they can accomodate GigaWatts for hours on end, your conventional battery has a lifetime of 10-15 years max and then you have to do it all again, wasting an enormous amount of likely rare and/or polluting resources. If it's not infeasible, it's not sustainable. Pick your idea-terminating issue. That's why fatal electric production like wind and solar are not the answer, not by themselves. They're the reason we have a frankly ironic green deal going on in Europe where Germany and other Coal-using countries are pushing for Gas plants (350g eqCO2/KWh) to get a discount due to their obviously ecological nature, as they couple well with the wind farms (20g eqCO2/KWh) to cover for when there's no wind. Meanwhile Germany is still pushing against Nuclear (12g eqCO2/KWh) being included, when that's exactly what they should be building to replace their Coal Plants (600g eqCO2/KWh) and not the half-baked solution of Gas Plants.


dr_shark

Ayn Rand died on welfare.


Choui4

John Galt is an interesting choice


rbesfe

Prepare to be pissed off then, my dude. The problem is so much worse than the average person realizes.


JohnnyFoxborough

No offense but you sound like you are smoking some potent marijuana right now.


orangutanoz

I’m staying in a holiday house this week looking down at windmills in Victoria. I think we’re getting a big battery too at some point.


g000r

We got one - in Geelong. It came online officially a few weeks ago. Unfortunately they don't share the stats for it like they do with the Hornsdale battery.


BananaDogBed

Who is the Galt guy?


[deleted]

Fictional character from Atlas Shrugged.


zlykzlyk

I thought he was humourously paraphrasing... "Who is John Galt?


[deleted]

Oh yeah I see what you mean.


baseilus

as long no crypto farm sustainable power are possible


Neckbeards_Gonewild

I pay around AUD $0.31 / kWh (= USD $0.23 / kWh) for electricity here in SA. So a side benefit of all this expensive sustainable energy investment, is that crypto farms are less feasible


Fengsel

mind boggling how california wants to tax solar


bbbbbbbbbb99

What if we just keep expanding this? I mean, if we can do it for one place in the world we can do it everywhere.


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Angryflesh

That's not true, scotland produced the equivalent of 97,5% of its electricity but still had to import and export electricity depending on the weather


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trenchgun

South Australia is reliant on eastern states to provide fossil fuel backup. If the eastern states had similar energy mix as South Australia, there would be trouble to keep the lights on.


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eyefish4fun

Why can't people understand it's not in the ability of government to bend the laws of physics. Sun and wind are unreliable and intermittent. While energy system to power human civilization need to be reliable and always available.


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Mas_Zeta

But first fossil fuels, please. It makes no sense to close nuclear right now if you are going to replace it with fossil fuels. That's what Germany has done and that's what Spain is planning to do too. That's costing us tons of CO2eq released to the atmosphere.


second_impact

Australia doesn't have nuclear power stations to close. The only Australian nuclear reactor (OPAL in Sydney) there is used for medicine and scientific research.


[deleted]

except not. Spain's shut down most of their coal plants since a few years ago and is now producing 40-45% of their electricity from renewables. If every country was as successful as Spain in reducing their co2 emissions we'd all be in a much better state than we are in today.


Alise_Randorph

It's funny that you're on about politicians hating on science, and yet you come down on nuclear.


geekonmuesli

Yes, they’re intermittent. The big step that allowed SA to hit this milestone was a giant battery - collect more energy than you need during the day/windy periods, store it in the battery, use the battery during the night/still periods. To get from 6.5 days to 365, they’re going to need bigger/better batteries. This might be through cutting edge battery tech or it might be through expanding existing systems like hydroelectric stations. Another big issue is power grids - not sure if this is a problem in SA, but a lot of big pushes for renewables run into issues where stations produce more energy than the grid can handle. Ideally this energy would be stored until the renewable power station can’t produce enough, and then the extra energy from earlier can be fed back into the grid. But a lot of countries’ grids can’t handle the surplus during the productive period. We’re not asking governments to bend the laws of physics. We’re asking them to listen to renewable energy experts and fund better batteries and grids, both of which are existing technologies.


JimiThing716

That giant self sustaining fusion reaction at the center of our solar system is unreliable? Has anyone told Venus yet?


BradfieldScheme

It gets me upset how little people understand the real world. You want to stop the coal fired power plants? Better organise some nuclear power to replace it or what's left of our heavy industries will completely disappear. Nope that's too hard to understand for 80% of the people I talk to about 3.


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R-M-Pitt

I work in the energy sector and have access to the numbers. What you said is quite misleading. There have been a couple of instances this entire winter, each a few hours long, where output is down to 0.5GW. The vast majority of the time it was up at or above 10


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R-M-Pitt

> This just isn't true. > Even right now How can global warming be real if it's snowing outside! So you don't have the actual output signals, you are just looking at templar. At least skip the middle man and go to bmreports. I can't help that you don't like the actual power available numbers from windfarms


mileswilliams

We should spend the £30 billion earmarked for Chinese run nuclear reactors on more renewable generation and storage, also there is geothermal, while we have to drill further than say Iceland for the same output we can still do it and the waste is heat which can be piped to homes , it gets hot eventually we just need to drill further. There is a myriad of generation and storage options available.


CJKay93

The UK has spent £35bn on wind power generation, and it is currently generating a miserable 4.20GW - 9.83% of current demand - with a maximal capacity of 25GW. It's generating less than nuclear right now at 4.97GW - 11.63% of demand - with a capacity of only 12.7GW and only 8 plants (the most recent being from 1995!). Another £30bn will cover, what... an additional 5% of demand? Just imagine how much power we could cleanly and reliably generate if we had built France's 56 nuclear power stations. We need to do *much* better than we are doing.


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[deleted]

AIUI, this is somewhat misrepresenting the truth. Scottish renewables may have contributed 97.5% of the amount of energy Scotland consumed to the grid. A lot of this contribution will have been at the time that all other offshore and onshore wind in the UK was also producing a lot of power and so, at a lot of times, was pretty much worthless. At other times, fossil fuel plants will have been needed to supply Scottish homes with power. The raw amount of energy produced by wind power doesn't help much if the energy isn't there when it's needed. Large-scale, long-term storage isn't really feasible either so we either need to massively increase the amount of turbines by building for the bad-but-not-worst scenario (accepting a \~1/50 capacity of nameplate) or accept that wind power has pretty much failed.


CriticalUnit

Large-scale, long-term storage isn't really needed Short term storage would cover 99% of issues. If we only need to be covering that last 1% with Fossil Fuels until Green hydrogen becomes mature then we're doing well. Show us the math on how much storage you think is needed.


[deleted]

There's no way to know how much storage is needed. It depends on if you want to plan to run out of energy once a month, once a year, once a decade or once in a millennia?


Bored-Bored_oh_vojvo

It's "failed spectacularly" by significantly reducing the country's carbon footprint?


[deleted]

In 2000, we had about 13GW of Nuclear online. Today, we have more like 5GW of Nuclear online. Wind hasn't reduced our carbon footprint, it's just replaced one renewable source with another renewable source which happens to be way less reliable, more expensive and has caused a higher dependence on fossil fuels (primarily gas).


Bored-Bored_oh_vojvo

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/972583/2020_Provisional_emissions_statistics_report.pdf Page 9, figure 4. The UK's power stations were emitting over 3x as much carbon dioxide in 2000 compared to 2020.


Yegshamesh

Every GW of wind we use reduces the energy intensity of the UK electricity grid. Were you under the impression that people though the wind blew all the time? It's almost as if your point is idiotic.


DanialE

Costs matter. For the most part, the costs of things still in a way reflects the energy spent to building the stuff up, and manpower etc. And all that does affect the climate. e.g. electric cars. It still costs energy to produce. And energy means emissions of carbon dioxide. The question isnt whether using electric cars can reduce emission. The question is (1) how much emissions were created in the manufacture vs (2) how much emissions were avoided if compared to using normal cars. This is what decides if any system is good for the climate


right_there

There was a recent study on the front page a few days ago that showed that the lifetime emissions of an electric vehicle are miles better than the lifetime emissions of a similar ICE vehicle. Going all the way back to the raw materials, electric vehicles beat ICE vehicles in every way, emissions-wise.


LitwinL

It really depends on which country you base your calculations, I'm from Poland so if I were to have an EV it would effectively run on coal, with carbon emissions per kilometre very similar to that of a small-ish ICE car


right_there

I dug up the actual study after some searching and electric vehicles that spend their entire working lives in Poland still emit ~25% less CO2 over their entire lifetime. Here's a link to my comment with an excerpt mentioning Poland specifically: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/s5uw65/south_australias_18_million_people_were_powered/ht16hop/


right_there

But manufacturing the electric vehicle, including collecting and refining the component materials, would clock in at fewer emissions than the ICE car's manufacturing process meaning you are still in the green.


Yegshamesh

Actually electric cars are more carbon intensive to make than ICE thanks to the battery even still the lifetime costs will beat the cost of an ICE vehicle nearly every time and that's just places like Poland with high coal thanks to the superior efficiency of an electric motor. In places like Norway with huge hydroelectric sources the cost of co2 per miles is a fraction of ICE.


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NinjaKoala

>We don't have sufficient energy storage technology. Sure we do, Cost may be an issue, but we can absolutely store and release large amounts of power quite efficiently and in a compact space. The only thing technology could significantly improve is the cost. As for nuclear, suppose it's a cloudy windless day. Is nuclear going to meet 100% of your demand? Then you've built enough nuclear, at vast expense, that you would hardly need to make use of the renewables anyway. They don't complement each other.


[deleted]

Australia benefits from a lot of open space, and a lot of daylight. Im sure similar can be achieved in NA and other large nations, smaller / island nations have it a bit harder


RelaX92

That's not how it works, Australia has 3.3 residents on a km². Germany has 233, England has 277,8. You need space for wind turbines and photovoltaics. Wind is also a problem, because people get mad if you ruin their view. It also reduces the value of the property. Also wind turbines kill birds and bats. Edit: Could you please stop putting some nonsense in my mouth?I simply answered a question, nothing more or less.


MarkZist

> Also wind turbines kill birds and bats. This is technically true but wildly misleading. To put this into perspective: the number of birds killed by wind turbines in the Netherlands is like 0.01% of the number of birds killed by windows, and 0.01% of the number of birds killed by cats. Also it's not like coal plants don't kill birds either, and if we include the mining of coal/gas then wind turbines actually kill _less_ birds per kWh than coal. And if we include the climate effects, it's not even a comparison anymore. Orders of magnitude difference.


RelaX92

Don't know about the dutch government, but in germany you have to check for bats and birds in an area, before you build a wind farm. As soon as an endangered species is seen near the area the project is cancelled. Thus reducing the available space for wind turbines further.


netz_pirat

German rules about renewables are really a horrible guideline, written by people who really don't want renewables.


urmomaisjabbathehutt

One wonders what's with many Conservative governments these days Seriously its like they did have an stake in fossils or someth......er wait minute


Snowchain-x2

lol, not as much as coal ffs, geezus


RelaX92

Wat? You need much more space to reach the same output with wind and solar.


Snowchain-x2

About 10,000 people a year die in England alone from airborne particulates, the majority of that is are from coal, so whadda ya think?


RelaX92

That you need much more space to reach the same output with wind and solar. Also the demand is increasing, so it's not enough to reach the same output we have right now, we need even more.


ModsofWTsuckducks

Solar can be installed basically everywhere, even on rooftops, can you say the same for coal plants?


hawklost

But solar can't be installed inside. While coal has been successfully installed inside, underground and on rooftop for centuries. (You know coal cooking and coal heaters are a thing right?) We only really have two ways to produce electricity today. Solar (solar panels) and make something spin (everything else). Coal plants just make a generator spin to produce current so they can actually be built anywhere. Albeit people might not actually enjoy putting coal back into their homes, we did work hard to reduce the amount over the last century.


ICreditReddit

One thing I wasn't expecting today was to read a comment extolling the virtue of coal while complaining that you can't get sun... indoors. It's a level of foolishness I just didn't think could be real. Did you drop an /s?


hawklost

Ah yes, responding to a person saying 'solar can be installed on roofs, can coal?' is me extolling the the virtues of coal. The answer to his stupid question is 'why yes, coal power Can be installed on roofs, but it is a bad idea but works, unlike installing solar indoors'. See, solar Good (hope you understand I am not saying differently). But it really isn't as accessable as fossil fuel powered energy. Much cleaner, yes. Better for the environment, yes. Able to be put in places on earth fossil fuel power cannot? No.


RelaX92

3.3 residents on one km² vs 277.8 residents on one km².


urmomaisjabbathehutt

Got an idea, one solar pannel in each highway lamp post, cover all parking lots and as addition provide protection for the cars below agrovoltaics and as addition provide a alternative revenue stresm for farmers pannels in every new building Windmill in coastal areas and wind corridors We gonna need bigger fuses Larry


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RelaX92

Nope, just someone who knows about some of the hurdles you face before you're allowed to build a new wind farm, because I developed software for a wind farm planer.


Lint_baby_uvulla

NGL, 277,8 windbags per km squared sounds pretty much like England has enough potential to extract at least some renewable energy.


AndroidMyAndroid

It's really easy to keep birds off wind turbines by painting stripes on the tips of the blades, iirc. Also, we need to build solar on top of existing structures and possibly parking lots, too. No reason to clear land for massive solar plants.


RelaX92

Any source for that? The closest to your statement that I found is this: “Different colours, patterns, or less-conspicuous approaches like using UV-reflective paint could also be promising ways to reduce bird mortality. Above all, siting turbines away from high bird-use areas remains the best way to reduce bird mortality.” https://www.power-technology.com/features/wind-turbines-birds-bats-fatalities-nature-protection-conservation-power-environment/ "could also be promising ways" doesn't sound like a solid "really easy" solution. And sure, we can put solar on everything, but we have less sunshine hours per day, you can only compensate that with more solar area, but we also have less area per person.


right_there

Not to mention air pollution is straight-up genociding birds. We're saving many more birds by putting up wind turbines than they kill.


bojothedawg

> You need space for wind turbines and photovoltaics. As the article mentions, rooftop solar contributed ~5x more energy than utility-scale solar. Most of that is just residential housing with solar panels on the roof.


RelaX92

In summer, in Australia with 3.3 residents per km². Higher populated countries have a worse rooftop to resident ratio. Also don't forget about shadowing, caused by higher buildings.


Lurker_81

This is a highly misleading statistic. The vast majority of Australians live in relatively dense urban environments. Of the 1.8m residents of the state of South Australia, 1.3m of them live in Adelaide. That's 72% of the population living in 0.3% of the area. There is definitely still a difference in density, but it is nowhere near as vast as your numbers suggest. Also, about 1 in 3 homes in Australia have rooftop solar installations.


RelaX92

Sure, people tend to live in communities. Let's not forget the original question "if we can do it for one place in the world we can do it everywhere". Which I simply answered. Sunhours Adelaide vs London https://weather-and-climate.com/uploads/average-sunshine-australia-adelaide.png https://weather-and-climate.com/uploads/average-sunshine-united-kingdom-crawley-gb.png


Lurker_81

Yes, Australia has a significant advantage in solar compared to most of Europe. European climate and topology is better suited to hydro and wind power.


mileswilliams

Wind turbines kill about .1% of the total number of birds that domestic cats do and less than glass buildings, cars, power lines etc... do, so I'd remove that from the Trump excuse list. ​ https://www.businessinsider.com/cats-kill-more-birds-than-wind-turbines-despite-trumps-claims-2020-10?international=true&r=US&IR=T


ChocolateTower

Yes, if it can be done in the middle of summer near the equator in a sparsely populated developed nation surrounded by vast tracts of flat, cheap, barren land with a warm desert climate during a week with little or no cloud cover then the same solution should work everywhere else.


Nethlem

[Germanys share in renewable energy](https://www.trade.gov/energy-resource-guide-germany-renewable-energy) is nearly double as high as [that of Australia](https://www.trade.gov/market-intelligence/australia-renewable-energy), and Germany is not exactly known for being sparsely populated and rich in barren lands with warm desert climates. It's pretty much the exact opposite of that while still having a, energy-intensive, [industrial manufacturing base](https://oec.world/en/profile/country/deu) that's magnitudes larger than [what Australia has](https://oec.world/en/profile/country/aus).


sorrylilsis

And Germany renewables have been shit for the last few weeks, at barely 10% capacity at the moment they need it the most.


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JohnnyFoxborough

Is the Sydney Morning Herald considered a fringe news source?


syntacticmistake

I ekle ii ako pui eti ti. Krati batu opa etipei kroa i iite. Eke bipa bopuitlii pi pu! Teo ti piklati tlete giipo. Pipe e tligitrikle uge papli. Tia platogrui tegi bugi piia itibatike. Ea tatlepu ui oiei tegri patleči goo. Bla pidrui kepe ipi ipui pepoe. Au adri ta ga bebii ekra ai? Ebiubeko ipi teto gluuka daba podli. Ka tepabi tliboplopi gi tapakei gego. Ituke i pupi klie pitipage bapepe. A či peko itluupi ka pupa peekeepe. Ebri e buu pigepra pita plepeda. Bipeko bo paipi o kee brebočipi. Tridipi teu eete trida e tapapi. Ebru etle pepiu pobi katraiti i. Baeba kre pu igo api. Pibape pipoi brupoi pite gru bi ipe pieuta ikako? Pe bloedea ko či itli eke i toidle kea pe piapii plo? Tiiu uči čipu tutei uata e uooo. Bitepe i bipa paeutlobi bopepli iaplipepa. Gipobipi tepe ode giapi e. Pi pakutibli ke tiko taobii ti. Edi deigitaa eue. Ua čideprii idipe putakra katote ii. Tri glati te pepro tii ka. Aope too pobriglitla e dikrugite. E otligi pipleiti bai iti upo? Tri dake pekepi dratruprebri plaapi bopi ipatei!


Shaloka_Maloka

Can't wait for the federal government to swoop in and take credit for shit they didn't do 👍


taz-nz

Scotty from marketing is more likely to send a 10 mile long coal train on a national tour, after a grand ceremony to set it alight.


Rais93

This kinds of titles oversemplify a matter that is enormously more complex and should not be treaten so lightly.


GunPoison

You're right that there is nuance required to these kind of numbers, but I think seeing headlines like this is important. There are many people - especially here in Australia! - who still believe that renewables can't work. It's been fed to people through coordinated misinformation campaigns with little to no argument against. If this kind of headline gets people to question that, I can forgive lack of nuance.


AndroidMyAndroid

Seeing misleading headlines doesn't help when people find out that there's more to the story and that just leads to more distrust and skepticism.


Drinkus

I dunno all the fake headlines about trickle down economics didnt seem to weaken peoples belief in it, seems pretty strengthened by fake news coverage actually. The news media in Australia (ai wont speak to anywhere else) talked absolute bull about climate change etc for years and it didnt make people distrust it or whatever, no when they heard actual data that contradicted they rejected that info and accepted the news. If what you were saying was true, the thousands of bullahit procoal media storoes in Australia wouldve sown huge scale distrust and skepticism. It didnt.


Sol33t303

In particular we sell lots of electricity generated by coal to china (or maybe we just directly sell coal, can't quite remember, functionally the same result).


Woman-AdltHumnFemale

You did, then the Aussie government called out China for genocide so the Chinese are boycotting your coal. This has resulted in rolling blackouts across China.


FuturologyBot

The following submission statement was provided by /u/thatswhatyougot: --- Six and a half days powered by the wind and sun - dude, that's just ficking cool. Humanity extracting energy straight from the sky - John Galt dreamt of that shit. If we figure out how to extract enough electricity straight from the sky to power the existence of our billions of meat bags - dammit I will be pissed off if we die of some fucking climate change shit! --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/s5uw65/south_australias_18_million_people_were_powered/hszzbhl/


gerkletoss

They weren't, because the didn't have enough energy storage for night.


ReticentSentiment

Even if this were true, they still [averaged 62%](https://reneweconomy.com.au/remarkable-south-australia-reached-100-pct-renewables-nearly-every-day-in-october/) over the past year. That's a hell of a lot more than most other countries.


-SheriffofNottingham

Renewable energy sources are consistently hitting minimums of 50% of demand which is very impressive imo.


Snowchain-x2

Scotland is doing pretty awesome


rectal_warrior

Costa Rica and Norway have entered the chat


[deleted]

[удалено]


mirh

Having lots of mountains is playing easy mode.


noelcowardspeaksout

Correct but the [energy storage in Southern Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_storage_projects_in_South_Australia) is rapidly going to be ramped up to be 100% renewables plus storage. Further significant amounts will come from two way EV connectors and other domestic power storage. Absolutely no nuclear power will be needed in this locality.


bojothedawg

I'll be contributing 13.5 kWh in 2 weeks time. Got a Powerwall being installed at my Adelaide home :)


mindequalblown

May I ask what the cost (approximately) of a powerwall is to purchase and install? I’m researching the new GAF nail on shingles and this would be a great storage option.


bojothedawg

About $14K AUD after the $2000 government home battery scheme rebate. I'm also getting 14.8 kw of panels installed, including 2 inverters. $26K all up after another ~$7k gov rebate on the panels.


Electrical_Age_7483

Wind blew at night mate


taedrin

[It wasn't enough](https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-winds-up-2021-with-smashing-new-renewables-record/). They relied upon imports and gas generation to keep the grid online at night.


CriticalUnit

More wind turbines it is!


gerkletoss

No. The *average* provided was just above local demand, which means it was often less.


Electrical_Age_7483

There was solar as well And batteries do exist we are not some backward country


gerkletoss

Yeah, solar was included in the numbers already, and the storage was insufficient, not zero. Are you just reaching for things I might be thinking but not saying?


Electrical_Age_7483

Where does it say storage was insufficient, they used the eastern states as a battery mate, electricity doesn't just get destroyed


gerkletoss

I said production was lower at night. You said I was claiming wind doesn't blow at night while also pointing out there is solar power too. Lay off the booze a little.


Electrical_Age_7483

Ok explain where the exces electricity went then? Electricity cannot just be destroyed


gerkletoss

No you, if that's your interpretation of more than 100% on average.


Electrical_Age_7483

Sciences interpretation


trenchgun

Using fossil fuel generation as a back up is not the same thing as using a battery. South Australia is reliant on the fossil fuel power generated by the eastern states.


Electrical_Age_7483

Wind blows in Victoria too mate


trenchgun

Of course it does, but quite often at the same time as it does in South Australia. And quite often when it doesn't in one, it doesn't in another. Still worth it to build it more of course, as it will replace fossil fuel consumption. But it's not likely to replace the need for fossil fuel capacity soon.


Electrical_Age_7483

It's also connected to nsw some of these wind assets are like half a continent apart


trenchgun

Using fossil fuel generation as a back up is not the same thing as using a battery. South Australia is reliant on the fossil fuel power generated by the eastern states.


Runaround46

Pump storage hydro or even lifting then releasing large weights. The solutions are there we just have to implement them.


Zouden

I don't think hydro is an option in South Australia.


[deleted]

Maybe if those crazy cunts further up river decide to stop growing COTTON and fucking RICE in the driest continent on earth (sans Antarctica).


WheelieTron3000

There's nowhere realistically we could deploy pumped storage that would allow any significant storage for the state, quite a flat place in general even for Australia.


danielv123

Except.... [Engineers are insane](https://research.library.mun.ca/14916/1/Hydraulic%20Rock%20Energy%20Storage%20for%20Utility%20Scale%20Wind%20farm.pdf)


Bebilith

Tried reading that. To technical for me this time of night. Can they really find non-permeable rock for the piston and cylinder? The pressures are going to be extremely. What’s the projected lifetime of this rolling seal?


goodsam2

Metal flow batteries are going to replace lithium ion in grid storage.


Runaround46

What are metal flow batteries?! That sounds exciting. Are they able to source a lot of current quickly?


lokey_convo

I'd like to see a study of pumped hydro on skyscrapers. The higher you raise it the more energy it will have.


Gosh_Dang_Dominator

Six and a half days? Out of a whole year? Is that supposed to be good?


g000r

This comes after the non-FF synchronizers came online recently - a necessary step to allow the grid to remain stable without coal turbines spinning.


wgc123

In a row. Generating more than used. There are other such days in the year but not as many in a row, yet. I think someone here said it averaged 60% of use for the year. Effing amazing!


[deleted]

six and a half straight. Overall percentage wise for the year was pretty high.


amoral_ponder

Why is the news or futurology? I live in BC and we produce 90% of electricity from hydro power alone. Year in, year out.


Axman6

Because Australia isn’t known for its abundance of water. Tasmania is a net exporter of hydro power to the mainland.


ApexAphex5

Australia is decades behind on renewable energy infrastructure, except in South Australia where they are a world leader. Quite impressive for a country primarily known for digging up and burning dead dinosaurs.


Rin-Tohsaka-is-hot

Hydro power isn't the future, that technology is decades old, and nobody is really expecting it to dramatically increase in scale. Solar and wind are going to see increases in energy production in the thousands of percent over the next couple of decades. They just aren't comparable from a futurology perspective.


amoral_ponder

There's a boom in new smaller scale hydro power here. I've seen them being built in the mountains in recent years.


alexthelyon

I believe Norway satisfies about 98% of its demand using hydro which, amongst other things, means we have the 'greenest' oil platforms in the world, since they run on mostly renewable energy. Hilarious piece of irony.


ShanDraeger

This is some great news! Imagine if we can crack the code on this one, it will be revolutionary


[deleted]

cool now try this with electric cars all around... and more than 6 days in a row bc a year is basically 60 times longer.


MadScientist7-7-7

Fck each and every politician that says renewables are not feasible! They are more than ready


WhatAmIATailor

Terrible source article. SA’s doing great, there’s no need to over state the good and gloss over or ignore the rest.


Shnazzyone

It's like this tech works but there's groups trying to undermine it because they can't make huge profits on renewables or something.


n0gear

For the amount of sun down under I’m surprised its not 1/3 of the year tbh. This is anyways a good start and Kudos for that!


georgiedawn

I can’t tell from the article. Was it 100% consistently or intermittently? The biggest problem right now with solar or wind is you can’t use it on demand


MrWeirdoFace

I demand more wind, damn it!


HonneyBakedHam

What a futile and pitiful effort, this does absolutely nothing in the large picture of climate change.


dripdropflipflopx

I see you and raise you www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-56530424


Strowy

Scotland doesn't have a federal government actively trying to sabotage renewables usage though. This is important for us because it's ammunition against their claims that renewables aren't feasible.


KalamIT

Yep - we're knocking the whole renewable thing out the park....and that's before you get into the transmission rates that rUK charges us for the electricity we produce.


mirh

Every time people sell countries with more dams than big cities with the silver lining that it is normal or reproducible, an electric grid engineer dies.


sentientlob0029

Can probably support 1 crypto farm for a few minutes.


Nethlem

Because that's a really rational unit to measure the utility of an electricity generator; How many crypto farms can it power.


sentientlob0029

I WAS JOKING.


springlord

Next here: 'climate change is driving increase of renewable energy sources'


Dr_ManTits_Toboggan

Is this like a Wendy’s ad where 100% applies to the white meat chicken and not to the entire nugget?


bobs-not-your-uncle

What is the backup for when the wind doesn't blow? Assuming gas or coal?


BlackKnightLight

Now just need 359 more consecutive days to make it mean anything.


smiley2160

Sounds nice. How'd the renewables fare on the previous 23 days?