Solar and battery storage make up 81% of new power capacity this year

That’s why I asked the question…

 

Yes it is based on solar farms. Presumably there are a lot more economies of scale in a solar farm vs rooftop panels. Having said that even rooftop panels will eventually be cheaper, you just have to wait a decade or more in most cases.

 

12ft

One of the big barriers to green energy expansion is the grid. Turns out upgrading the grid can be done much more cheaply - simply replace existing power lines with new higher conductivity lines. A few high points:

A study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory called “Queued Up” found that at the end of 2022, there were more than 10,000 power plant and energy storage projects waiting for permission to connect to the grid — enough to double electricity production in the country. Some 95% of them were zero-carbon resources.

The paper highlights a 2016 project in southeastern Texas. Due to rapid population growth in the area, the local utility, American Electric Power, was seeing higher demand for electricity at peak times than it was prepared for, leading to blackouts. It needed to come up with a solution, fast, and decided that reconductoring 240 miles of its transmission lines would take less time than permitting new ones. The project ended up finishing ahead of schedule and under budget, at a cost of $900,000 per mile. By comparison, the 3,600 miles of new lines built under Texas’ Competitive Renewable Energy Zone program, which were built to connect wind-rich areas to population centers, cost more than double, at an average of $1.9 million per mile.

Callaway and his co-authors also plugged their findings into a power system expansion model — basically a computer program that maps out the most cost-effective mix of technologies to meet regional electric power demand. They fed the model a scenario where the only option for transmission was to build new lines at their slow, historical rate, as well as a scenario where there was also an option to reconductor along existing rights-of-way. The second scenario resulted in nearly four times as much transmission capacity by 2035, enabling the country to achieve a more than 90% clean electric grid by that date.

This all seems so ridiculously easy that it begs the question: Why aren’t utilities already rushing to do it? During the webinar last week, Chojkiewicz and her co-authors said part of the problem is just a lack of awareness and comfort with the technology. But the bigger issue is that utilities are not incentivized to look for cheaper, more efficient solutions like reconductoring because they profit off capital spending.

 

I think we need to stop building these big solar farms that are taking up valuable farm or forest land.

We need to find someway to partner with schools, shopping centers, etc. to "host" solar in a win-win way. Seems like low hanging fruit to me.

 

That “partnering” is happening already. That’s part of the reason for the federal incentives. It has the benefit of bringing the power generation to the consumer reducing the need for transmission equipment and power losses.

However, they're not a mutually exclusive like it seems you’re stating. A tower can’t create enough power to sustain itself, many industrial plants can’t either. Many homes are not exposed or have properly oriented roofs. And a lot of solar farms are cheaper to install, maintain, and setup in a way to generate maximum output. I’ve also seen quite a few in odd tracks of land that were already cleared but a farmer didn’t need like on an angled slope.

Id also not le that farmland is often not great like you imply. We’d be better turning it back over to Mother Nature in many cases. It’s why there’s vertical farming that reduces harmful pesticides and water consumption and there’s a Canadian company that’s doing like you say solar should, partnering with warehouses in metro areas to build greenhouses on the roofs to make vegetable farming local: shared land use, fewer pesticides, less transit and fresher produce.

 

Utilities with a franchise area do anything they can to increase their base costs as their profits are a max % of their capital costs. The utility rate commissions (PSC in Florida) can deny capital costs if there are more efficient ways to do it. They are the ones that can push the power companies to do this.

 

More than 80% of electricity on the Texas grid was carbon-free at one point Sunday

Over 70% of the energy Texans used Sunday came from wind and solar power — a record for the state power grid. And that's not the only record the state energy system broke: When you add nuclear power generation into the mix, about 83% of the electricity used Sunday came from non-carbon-emitting sources.

 

Im working on a vertical farm project now. Company from Finland bringing the tech to SW Fl to do proof of concept and document yield growing leafy greens, berries, and tomatoes. 1 acre of building yield 60 - 65 acres of farmland with 5% of the water. Phase 1 should be operational with first harvest by third quarter. They control everything from nutrient feed to amount of uv light to CO2 amounts to get max yield.

Goal is to create plug and play tech that can be built anywhere, run on solar/battery, produce food in hot belt around equator where many places are too hot to produce leafy greens and berries. This will allow food production anywhere they can get supplies to but most importantly in the regions where the global population is migrating to. Mostly peat which is growth medium and nutrient mix to add to irrigation system. Highly automated.

Drastically reduces carbon footprint compared to field grown lettuce getting shipped in from California. No pesticides or other chemicals required. Can allow produce to ripen more before harvesting due to reduced shipping times. This results in more vitamins etc in the final product so it is also healthier.

 

Need to get rid of ethanol and use that acreage for food production

 

I agree we shouldn't trade food land for energy. Is that happening? Don't know about other places, it only seems logical they'd be similar to here - but in Maine large scale solar is going in mostly two locations:

Farms - these are farms that are no longer profitable. I don't think we should be turning productive and profitable farms into pv arrays, but I would be surprised if that's happening

Highways: the land inside the exit ramps. That's four circlular fields of otherwise unusable land.

 

These are the Jetsons-like, utopian, well-duh, why aren't we already doing this, type solutions I feel we've been promised and have been capable of for a long time now.

Glad to hear it's starting to be implemented

 

I've seen rural solar farms built on ranches that build their solar panel racks elevated so farm animals can walk under them, and probably enjoy the shade.

I've also seen parking areas of urban business centers covered with solar panels to form covered parking. Seems like leasing these types of areas and building for dual purposes is a better way to go.

 

Don't we throw hundreds of billions a year at fossil fuel subsidies? Been doing it forever.

 

My only gasoline consumption comes from retail now. Things like the Amazon van delivering my latest unnecessary purchase.

 

The new data on mounting bi facial cells vertical on east west lines is pretty interesting. They stay as efficient because of less heat gain. This also opens space for farming.

or bike paths for you confused spandex clad middle age heathens.

 

I am quoting this again, because I find it so astounding. The amount of renewable energy waiting to be hooked up to the grid EXCEEDS our current total energy usage

Its actually worse than that

Texas has the most clean energy of any state waiting to be hooked up to the grid

A recent study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab shows the US has a clean energy backlog of around 2 terawatts of power waiting to go online. The total capacity of existing power plants currently connected to the grid is 1,250 gigawatts

 

Looks like we need demand.
EV's are failing due to lack of charging infrastructure.
Everyone agreed to tesla chargers.
$7.5B in funding for 500k chargers in 5 years
solid state batteries moving to production.
EV's gen 2 with chargers everywhere will cut gasoline demand even further maybe 3 - 5 years out. hopefully the projects waiting to come online will be online by then

they should have built the charging infrastructure before the cars were pushed to market, but at least it is coming. as is electric fleet trucking. the fleet trucking will come sooner, and that will slice into diesel demand. I can see a secondary market for energy storage to buy green and store until fleet charging stations need it.

 

The Chinese are taking advantage of battery swapping stations for their fleet trucks but still require more standardization.

China is propelling its electric truck market by embracing battery swapping - International Council on Clean Transportation

 

This is not a criticism directed at you but I’ve seen this sentiment across the media and in certain circles and I’m not sure where this narrative came from that EVs are “failing.”

EV sales were at all time highs last year and grew 46% year-over-year. They are up to 8% of all vehicle sales and that will only increase from here. If you look at the adoption curve it’s quite steep and primarily hampered by cost.