The INSANE challenge of a carbon free grid - Possible?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ย. 2024
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Let’s dive into the big question: What would it take to reach 100% fossil fuel-free energy, and is it even possible? With renewable energy costs dropping, we explore the challenges, future growth, and what a fully green grid might cost. Coal use in U.S. power plants peaked in 2005 and has since been on a steep decline, while wind and solar are steadily rising. Yet, non-fossil fuel sources like wind, solar, and nuclear still make up only 39% of electricity production.
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Ricky is a dynamic individual whose journey from mechanical engineering to software development reflects his passion for learning and resilience. A proud Berkeley graduate, Ricky spent years working on advanced aircraft for the Navy, sharpening his technical skills. Driven by curiosity, he taught himself software engineering, expanding his expertise into the digital world.
His love for knowledge and teaching inspired him to create a TH-cam channel, where he shares well-researched, engaging content. Beyond his professional achievements, Ricky is a devoted father and husband, admired for his ability to balance career, family, and his passion for inspiring others.
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It isn’t domestic heating making icelands consumption high. It is cheap geothermal power leading to industrial companies needing huge amounts of power relocating there. Eg Aluminium.
Correct. And datacenters.
And they could overheat themselves because they have so much.
Iceland is a great country full of potential but its tiny population skews the numbers. They have awesome geothermal capabilities.
Don't forget about wave power, underwater turbines (like in the East river in Manhattan), piezo electric, and thermo ways to generate clean energy.
Great rundown on costs and feasibility!
I believe underwater turbines fall under the hydro category.
wave power and underwater turbines are stories that I hear for 20 years now. Still did not make it to the market. It is more like scifi.
While wave and tidal power systems are feasible, ongoing maintenance costs tend to be much greater than solar or wind, and they will still need batteries to some extent.
You also have to subtract out what we would have to spend on power generation for the next 15 years if wind and solar didn't exist. Surely this is a very large number. And while your at it, you could also subtract out the lower cost of hospital visits for kids with asthma, or lung cancer treatments, etc., etc. Not to mention the lower cost of having to deal with global warming, the biggest number of them all. And of course when you do all that, going all renewable is actually way, way, WAY cheaper than continuing to burn dinosaurs.
A few other things to consider:
We will need to add generation no matter what, as demand increases. The addition of renewable sources will be cheaper than adding coal or gas, and is cheaper than replacing or even maintaining and fueling those emitting sources. The numbers do look daunting, but are big no matter which direction we take. Renewables will however be cheaper in the long run, so this is more of an investment than a cost.
Storage can be offset significantly by mass deployment of V2G technology and smart grid technology. This can help reduce curtailment, meaning we'll have a place to put the energy produced on those sunny or windy days, and have energy available when and where it is needed. This can also help offset the cost of EV ownership as drivers can sell their cheap electrons at higher rates when demand is high.
People might think this is all going to be government spending, and I get why its helpful to look at it that way to envision the cost. Much of the cost will be paid in the private sector, like people buying EVs and private producers installing renewables. And don't forget, we create massive deficits for much less public good, such as the 2017 giveaway that went to stock buy-backs and executive bonuses, creating the biggest deficits in history.
Great comment 👍🏻
The energy use in the USA has plateaued, his graph showed that. This is because of ever increasing efficiency. Much harder for developing countries but not the USA
Compare it to the money we already spent on building and/or repairing and maintaining all existing power plants in the last 40-50 years.
It would be interesting to see the cost of continuing status quo as a comparison.
@@danesummerfield4223 I think coal is still really cheap, but if you factor in pollution, that cost is cumulative as it stays in the sky for a long time. So do we include cost to health care & damage from extreme weather etc?
That's difficult to determine becuase of the hidden costs in pollution, spills, leaks, and environmental damage, plus health care costs related to particulate matter in the air and benzene in water supplies, increased risk of respiratory disease and cancers, plus the damage and displacement of people due to accelerating climate change.
People are starting to understand that you need 2x or 3x Solar PV or Wind capacity, as compared to Coal or Gas to meet the same demand because the wind doesn't always blow nor the sun shine so, when it does, you need to charge your battery storage.
Still cheaper than coal and soon cheaper than gas, especially with sodium ion and flow batteries.
One industry planner I listened to estimated an overbuild of 4x. 👍
Not exactly. You need basically the same capacity for solar/wind capacity compared to coal/gas (maybe less) because all energy calculations use "raw" consumption (the energy of the coal/gas burned), not electrical consumption. This means for coal and natural gas you need to calculate out the electrical power actually delivered which would be something like 30% (even less for coal) once you factor in everything. For Solar/Wind, this is something like 80% of the power generated. Once you calculate everything, installing 100MW of gas/coal would basically be the same as 100MW of solar.
@@carrdoug99 Uhh no. When a traditional powerplant is built, it's power number is based off of the raw amount of energy it can produce, not the electrical energy. For example,
a 100MW natural gas powerplant will be able to burn 100MW of natural gas, but will only produce something like 36MW of electricity at it's peak because gas turbines pretty much max out at around 36% efficiency. It just does it consistently. In terms of power consumption, peak consumption is normally during the periods of peak consumption for solar. Evening and night time usage is typically much lower. Some power needs to be stored of course, but it doesn't need to be crazy like 4x. This industry planner either has an agenda or should be fired.
For a 100% replacement, yes. For a 95% replacement though you don't need even close to that. And a 95% replacement is still far better for the environment.
I think your researchers got hood-winked on this.
That $2 trillion over ~20 years isn't a new cost... it's a replacement cost. If we weren't building solar farms we'd be building replacement fossil fuel plants as the old ones wear out. That is it's not "new" money we need to find somewhere. It's money we're already paying out that is just being moved from fossil fuel companies to renewable companies. As the costs are less then what we're doing now it actually saves us money.... that is it doesn't cost us anything more than what we were doing - we essentially solve the problem for free, but from your video it makes it sound like the price tag is an additional $2T. People look at that narrative and get scared about the economy so don't want to switch when the reality is if they knew how much less it costs them they'd want to switch faster. Two other thoughts: first climate change already costs us ($600 billion in 2023 from weather disasters alone) and mitigating the problem is a part of the savings. Secondly, private industry pays for it as government hasn't privatized energy generation - that is the average person just keeps paying their utility bill and with renewable costs coming down will pay less than they are now...no new taxes needed.
Yes and no. Due to regulatory deadlines, some existing plants are being replaced sooner than expected. Also, let’s be real here. Even if all of Europe and the US switched to 100% renewable energy, there would be very minimal impact on climate change. Developing countries contribute way more to climate change than we do. It’ll take a lot more than just us shifting to renewable energy to make a significant difference in climate change.
@@SvetzBowman the USA energy use has plateaued as he shows in the image this is because of increasing efficiency.
It is more complicated for developing countries which are still growing and aren't so interested in energy efficiency.
@@yelnatsch517 If the world stopped burning fossil fuels today it won't immediately improve things, but it would buy time to zero out the remaining GHGs. Your point about the U.S. versus the rest of the world is a good one, but its a race to avoid tipping points. Every "significant" country signed up for Net-Zero via the Paris Agreement, and even if they didn't actually mean it; in COP 26 countries and financial institutions vowed to not provide fossil fuel loans to developing countries. That is they have no choice but to go the renewable route. China and India are not dependent on foreign loans. Every day China imports, just from the U.S., 1.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.3 million tons of coal. It's no wonder they deployed more renewables than the rest of the world combined in 2023 (and look to do it again in 2024). You'd think all was well from that given LCOEs, but the U.S. elections later this year will decide for the next four years if politically climate change is a hoax or not. If we say it's a hoax it opens the door to economical wealth by selling fossil fuels in other countries (e.g., hook India with sweet heart deals like a free power plant in exchange for a 20 year natural gas contract). You can bet if we're making $ from it, other countries will say it's a hoax too so they can make money.
@@yelnatsch517 If the world stopped burning fossil fuels today it won't immediately improve things, but it would buy time to zero out the remaining GHGs before we pass by tipping points. Your point about the U.S. versus the rest of the world is a good one, but every "significant" country signed up for Net-Zero via the Paris Agreement. Even if they didn't actually mean it; in COP 26 countries and financial institutions vowed to not provide fossil fuel loans to developing countries. That is they have no choice but to go the renewable route. China and India are not dependent on foreign loans. Every day China imports, just from the U.S., 1.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.3 million tons of coal. It's no wonder they deployed more renewables than the rest of the world combined in 2023 (and look to do it again in 2024). You'd think all was well from that given LCOEs, but the U.S. elections later this year will decide for the next four years if politically climate change is a hoax or not. If we say it's a hoax it opens the door to economical wealth by selling fossil fuels in other countries (e.g., hook India with sweet heart deals like a free power plant in exchange for a 20 year natural gas contract). You can bet if we're making $ from it, other countries will say it's a hoax too so they can make money.
@@narvuntien Actually it is even less complicated for developing nations.
If you build SWB in developing nations, and give them low-energy durable lightbulbs instead of the crap we used in the 80s¹, you get cheaper power AND better electricity.
So for developing nations SWB is already here and ready to build reliable grids on.
¹ No, seriously, lightbulb reliability was CRAP, I can't remember the last time I had to switch an LED bulb but in the 80s they burned out twice a month
The variable you call the "efficiency factor" for solar and wind is actually called "capacity factor". This is an important variable for all sources of electricity that is well measured and reported.
Trillions of dollars of investment sounds like a lot, but this will not be a position in the budget like healthcare or military spending. Most of it will be private enterprise investing in the cheapest source of energy available. Why not include the cash generated in subsequent years as compared to the cost of oil, gas, land degradation and air position. The energy transformation is not a cost, it is a benefit.
Coincidentally, standard 4' x 8' solar panels fit end-to-end between North American railroad rails.
Also they would go nicely under those huge scar like electrical transmission line runs.
It's fair to say that wind and solar energy are likely to grow significantly. However, I'm not entirely convinced that energy consumption will continue to increase at the same pace. Experts working with AI and large data centers have already pointed out that the world currently lacks sufficient power to meet future demands, especially with the rapid expansion of data centers, which reportedly consume an enormous amount of energy. I've heard of instances where the heat generated by data centers is put to good use, but I'm not sure if this is something they take into account when designing new centers today.
And don't forget EVs. For us to get EVs to the percentages the government wants us to get to, it would require a minimum of doubling energy production.
yeah, think about it. a computer pretty much turns all the power it uses into heat. in server farms they literally just dump that heat out of the building as quickly as possible.
all that energy could be heating peoples homes.
@@davidbrenchleyWhere did you get that number from? It sounds way too high to me. I drive a fairly average amount daily, and my EV uses a fraction of the power of my house. You can probably get similar results if you compare EV truck energy use and that of factories and warehouses.
The other thing is that EV technology may drive the energy required for transportation down through smaller e-mobility solutions. Thanks to an electric bike I can actually bike to work instead of driving, which uses a fraction of the power.
If you need a car for commute into, something like Apterea is super efficient.
You might want to look up recent info on the development of graphene based computer chips which are expected to reduce energy consumption by 99%
@@markdurham6282 Graphene-based computer chips sound incredibly promising, and I really hope they become a reality. It's well-established that graphene offers superior heat dissipation, lower power consumption, faster performance, and the potential for smaller transistors compared to silicon. However, the latest information confirms that there's a problem with the lack of a natural bandgap-something essential for switching transistors on and off. While it’s possible to produce graphene in labs, it's widely recognized that creating high-quality graphene at scale remains a significant challenge.
On top of that, transitioning from silicon to graphene would likely require major changes to current manufacturing setups, which would be costly and complicated. Still, I can see this becoming a reality in the future. And if it’s not graphene, then perhaps another material will take its place. My biggest question is: when? Like most breakthroughs, sooner would be better, but I hope this doesn’t turn into another “fusion energy” situation, where it’s always just out of reach.
This doesn’t consider seasonality of generation by wind and solar. Also, solar power must be transmitted from the southwest to the northeast. I expect that we are looking at a factor ranging from 2 to 4 taking these factors into account. That is we would need 2 to 4 times as many renewable sources as these calculations would show. Kudos for a terrific presentation! Your work is outstanding!
"solar power must be transmitted from the southwest to the northeast"
It doesn't if the northeast can produce its own energy and store it properly
@@texanplayer7651 The northeast can't turn winter off with a switch.
Good point, but the estimate is very conservative in many regards so I think the lack of details like this is outweighed by factors that make the transition easier.
Geothermal and trash burning with district heating is a big unknown factor. The future of these are still uncertain so we can’t account for it. But given the development we’ve seen recently Id be very surprised if advanced geothermal doesn’t take off like a rocket in the north within a decade. The oil and gas sector will jump at a chance to exploit their expertise as the production of oil and gas winds down.
For those who didn’t make it past 0:23 like me, here’s the answer to the “possible?” question in the title: Yes. Getting our energy grid off fossil fuels is totally possible, we just have to do it.
I always look back at the US military build up just before and during WWII, and the space race. When everyone gets on board with the idea that something really important needs to get done right the hell now, then it gets done. It all comes down to motivation; cost and technology are very rarely the limiting factors.
@@rayopeongo Correct, but even more so now. We’ve had the tech ready to deploy for decades
@@MrStreaty122 We are way beyond the ‘bleeding edge’. The prices have dropped significantly, and efficiency, ease of use and utility have gotten better and better. Hopefully we have reached the tipping point with more and more people jumping on board.
Kudos to Mr. Roy! Awesome presentation!
Bandwagons, I stopped jumping on them years ago.
And you went........ Nowhere.
I prefer floating or flying bandwagons between NY and London. You are all wet without the bandwagons.
First of all, let me say that I love your program and am a subscriber. I think we have to keep in mind that heavy-duty pickup trucks and trucks in general are necessary. We have not developed a pickup truck that will do the job of my two trucks, and I understand that we're on our way to that. But we are not there yet, and we also are not yet in a position where our grid would support an all-electric vehicle system.
The next item I'd like to address is that for those of us who live in rural areas, the cost of transportation and trucking is way higher than for those who live in cities. As for myself, I always want to have the right to live where I am comfortable. Your numbers are good, and the possibilities are fantastic, but we are not there yet, and the investment is enormous. As a side note, I own a totally off-grid home. I clearly understand the cost of that; when you are your own water company, power company, and gas company, it becomes a whole different way of life. And it is everything but free. Thank you for letting me ramble Mike
I'd be interested to hear what an EV pickup truck like the 440 mile range Chevy Silverado can't do to meet your needs. If you regularly haul large trailers more than 200 miles without stopping then I could understand but most people don't do that.
As an American living in Europe for many years you see very few pickup trucks compared to the US yet the same type of situations exist here. Obviously they have other forms of transportation that because of the high cost for fuel are used. instead of large inefficient pickups. I have a daughter living in Texas where her husband has a large Silverado yet he usually travels in it alone, other times with many daughter and son, yet absolutely does not need such a large vehicle for his type of work. In Europe electricians, plummers, mechanics and many other professions use small vans which are far more efficient. I accept some type of jobs are better suited for a pickup but many is just unnecessary and costly. I was used to my 7 series BMW's and now have a Smart EV, the new ones which are much larger than the originals, as I was mostly travelling alone and if I need more space I have my old trusty minivan. Plus coupled with my solar I have 0 fuel costs on my Smart.
@@JRP3
I drive an F350 turbodiesel truck for my business. It has the utility box full of tools, the air compressor, welder and crane built into it and weighs in at about 13500 pounds without a trailer, or any additional load. My truck has to be capable of as much as a 300 mile round trip and also have the ability to maintain the climate inside of the cab all day long, as well as running all of the previously mentioned accessories on the job site. There is no EV capable of doing that right now, although I will be among the first to pre order if it ever becomes available.
@@paulfay357 Yes you are one of the few people who might not be able to use an EV truck, though the 440 mile range Silverado EV might be able to do it. It has a built in inverter that should be able to run the welder, compressor, and crane, though not all at once, but I doubt you are welding and running the crane at the same time.
@@JRP3
I'll have to research the Silverado, because I don't know anything about it, but my guess is that it is probably a half ton truck that won't be engineered to carry much more than 1900 pounds of tools and accessories, which is less than half of the capacity I need. I'd also guess that 440 mile range would be severely reduced when the truck is pulling the same load as my turbodiesel.
What we really need is a medium duty truck chassis that borrows from the Tesla semi truck. That would replace my truck, every ambulance, small bus, certain fire trucks, delivery truck and every moving van in the country.
I suspect there's going to be a 'law of diminishing returns'. Whilst (obviously) 100% renewable energy is desirable, it makes sense to focus on the low hanging fruit - that is to say, decarbonising the things that can be quickly/easily decarbonised first.
Personal transport (cars), light commercial, home/business heating and cooling, and electricity generation are a lot easier to decarbonise than aviation or global shipping, for example.
We might also have to consider, at least until we can install energy storage at grid scale (which probably means something not lithium), keeping some gas fired stations online, but not producing electricity in large quantities, just to have the surge capacity to maintain grid stability and make up the shortfall when wind/PV is unable to meet demand.
Yes, I see the large gas fuelled power stations clsing first whilt thae agile'peaker plants' will linger on but their utilisation will diminish.
The grid is designed to meet peak power demand requirements. Storage in any form can reduce the peaks and make better utilisation of generation capacity which most of the time is just 'ticking over' or being curtailed.
where is maintenance cost !!! the systems wear out,
The maintenance/replacement cost is passed to consumers . He is focused on the capital cost to replace current generation with something better, perhaps earlier than would make sense financially for those power producers (eg government incentives).
The assumptions in the model are very suspect, but it does have some benefits as a model. Suppose that $2 Trillion were put into a wartime-effort level transition, and the US hit 100% renewable by 2030. The grid would be benefitting from FCAS, Automated Impedance Matching, time of day arbitrage, and 40% lower costs per MWh. Battery storage earns its own cost (about half the transition expense) from such grid services within 30 months, so pays for itself eight times over in the first 25 years. That's $8 Trillion USD pumped into the energy economy for a mere $2 Trillion investment.
Healthcare savings from smog elimination would be some ten times that, including days lost from work, hospitalization costs, disability and premature death.
The boost to the economy of cheaper power, jobs closer to community, home and family, and more employment, another 6% compounded annually, for a return of $6.6 Trillion over 25 years.
Plus, an effort at that magnitude would likely drop the overall costs per unit more rapidly than the current rate (unless a rate limiting factor, like material supply) was hit.
This analysis is great, but it's missing the addition of SMRs and micro reactors. Solar and wind have a huge manufacturing cost and hidden costs associated with material sourcing--mining, environmental damage, transportation, etc. Add in the human costs of miner's health and geopolitical restructuring around resource extraction, and it costs a lot more than we think it does. And then there will be a huge recycling problem. Small nuclear is still in development, but costs will drop rapidly as SMRs and micro reactor factories come on line. It's a much bigger bang for your buck and they can revolutionize and decentralize the grid. They have their own waste challenges, but this is already part of the development. Many people think small nuclear is the best path forward.
so once you calculate how much something will cost, once you get the government to implement it, multiply that budget by 10. and expect it to take 10 times longer.
The energy transition is a hugely complex topic. With that in mind, here a few other things to consider:
• Ricky, you're spot on regarding EV efficiency. You cited ~80% and the USDoT data shows current EV fleet "tank-to-wheel" efficiency of 77%. With advances over the next 25 years, we can expect improvements here due to things like increased energy density of batteries (i.e. less weight, more range), aerodynamic improvements (e.g. Aptera), rightsizing of vehicles (i.e. regulations catching up with technology supporting low-speed, urban commuters, and vehicles such those from as Lit Motors, Arcimoto and others).
• I think the video touched on it, but in order to replace X amount of energy produced by burning fossil fuels, only about 30% of that needs to be generated via zero emission electricity generation. So, the real number actually becomes very, very manageable.
• Battery storage. Much less expensive alternatives to lithium-based batteries are coming online. Additionally, while lithium supports durations of 4 to 6 hours, technologies such as flow batteries, thermal storage systems, pumped hydro, etc. all support much longer duration storage. So, the total cost of battery (energy) storage will be much, much lower.
• "Private" energy generation continues to increase, further reducing the total amount of energy that utilities must replace.
• Technologies such as energy monitoring and control for the built environment, virtual power plants, etc. will also reduce the total amount of energy that utilities must replace, as well as energy storage capacity they must install.
• Lastly, my favorite topic, nuclear. The rate of progress in small modular reactors and micro-reactors is increasing at an increasing rate. TerraPower has begun construction in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Kairos Power has begun construction of their Hermes plant at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, NuScale has secured contracts with several countries outside the US, and Oracle has announced a 1GW AI datacenter to be powered by a small modular reactor cluster (3 units). Others will follow, in the AI space, as well as heavy industry, such as iron/steel, concrete, aluminum and others. This kind of onsite energy generation capacity further reduces that which utilities must replace, and the cost for these will be borne by industry, not the public. The ROI is substantial, so the private sector will absolutely absorb these costs.
The thing which you don't mention (which I think is really important for this topic) is diversification of the energy grid with regards to generation method.
If you want to go green solely on solar power the costs will be huge. If you add in wind and hydro the costs drop significantly. Add nuclear and the costs drop even more.
That's because you need waaaay more backup if you (over)rely on one single source of electricity generation. Take for example the winters (especially up north). Would you only use solar power you would need way more generation capacity and ways to store huge amounts of (potential) power.
That's why diversification is so important. Especially nuclear is a great addition, because stable 365/24 energy generation is worth more than intermittend generation.
I read an article somewhere this week about a wind power system that had like 100 small wind turbines put in like a large wall type grid. The article said it was more efficient than the large wind turbines and most of the system was recyclable.
Actually, gas plants can switch to biogas, since it's the same gas (methane) as natural gas, but renewable. Biogas is produced naturally by bacteria when they decompose biological waste so we might as well capture the gas anyway. It's also a temporary carbon capture since we store the gas for awhile instead of letting it rise to the atmosphere. By capturing biogas and only using it for emergencies, we lower the emissions and we finally use it as fuel it's still, at worst, carbon neatrual.
Good video overall, though what about costs to improve the actual grid which would presumably undergo far greater demand with faster EV charging and increase in EV use? What does that look like in cost?
It seems odd that geo thermal isn't growing as fast. We're talking at a theoretical endless power source. What's up with that?
That’s in the US… I do think geothermal is going to have a moment in the next decade
Hey Ricky
Just remember…a lot of people still don’t understand that Batteries don’t generate power…they can only store power that is generated somewhere else and the turn around efficiency is not 100%
One thing that would really help with reducing the amount of energy storage we need would be running more heavy power use companies that don't already run 24 hours to switch to using their energy overnight. Tying any industry that can use power at excess production times of wind and solar over battery capacity would also be helpful, things like desalination especially operations that can use specific wavelength light to break apart the water into mist.
Often times these large energy consumers will migrate that way just due to wholesale energy costs. When we are largely wind and solar, wholesale electricity will be EXTREMELY cheap (if not free) during high production periods, and far more expensive during non/low-production periods. Large consumers will utilize things like sand batteries for thermal storage, or vary their work loads (such as AI training) such that they do more when the energy is cheap.
I love the calculations. There are some assumptions that won't hold like Coal and specially gas effectively dropping down to 0 unless it's a regulatory issue. Perhaps we could extend that by a few years
Why does everyone forget about nuclear energy? It is very compact, very efficient, clean. France has been living on nuclear energy for many years. And everything is fine. Instead of breeding an insane number of batteries, huge fields of wind turbines and solar panels, it is easier to build several small nuclear power plants. It will be much cheaper than relying on the sun and wind.
Here's the problem with this: when I switched my home to a heat pump and an EV (so an all-electric house) my electricity usage tripled. The bulk being the heat pump. So I think the 1% growth rate for usage is too small. Note: my *energy* usage dropped by 2/3rds. But electricity tripled.
Also, it's seems plausible this might drive energy costs down. Especially on solar since around half of solar is residential and on commercial premises. To a limited degree, also true for battery storage.
No It's ur "expertise" that caused problems😂
I think the 1% growth rate still makes sense as long as only 1 in 300 households in your community do the same thing that you did each year.
The problem with self powering of homes and industry is that the rest of us will have to pick up the slack, cost wise, of providing profits to the power companies. Especially the ones that don't change with the times.
@@Wasaga1951 It's precisely the opposite. Someone who pays $30-$40k to install their own power doesn't cost anyone else anything, and they still pay taxes and fees that subsidize public utilities. Private solar has increased 40-fold over the last 15 years, but electric prices have been on par with inflation.
@@martman123456 Residential solar is still a small share of the total pie and the total impact on the financing of the grid depends on the exact rules in place. Someone using private solar in the summer while expecting to pay normal electricity rates in the winter can very well be leeching on the system.
My goodness, this is one of the "most information packed" videos that Two Bit da Vinci has created. I think the key take-away is that the world is on the right path, whether it takes 5, 10, or 20 years. There will be lots of back-pressures trying to slow such progression, maintain the present, or return to the past, but this always seems to be the case and, in any event, is already reflected in the longitudinal charts and graphs of changes over time.
I would say your assumptions related to storage are incorrect and your use of the total energy required is incorrect. First if you only get 5 hours of usable sunlight you’re going to need 19 hours of storage. Basically if you want one megawatt of continuous power you will need 5 megawatts of solar and 19 megawatts hours of storage. In that five hours you must generate one megawatt base load and four additional to charge the batteries.
You can’t look at the total energy consumed and assume that it is consumed evenly. Summer usage can be twice as high as spring usage. Because of this you actually need more generation capacity which would make your cost calculations inaccurate.
All of the measurements in the video are terra watt hours. A terra watt hour represents a single amount of energy. It doesn't matter if you have a terra watt hour of coal or a terra watt hour of solar, you get the same amount of punch.
So if a battery is storing one megawatt hour., it doesn't matter how it was created or how long it took to make it.
@@marlinmixon3004 I think you missed the point. He was assuming a very low battery storage percentage as compared to solar capacity. I believe he said a 50% rate. You need a rate of 500%. That would mean his costs are way off by a factor of four.
Would love to know ongoing costs…. Maintenance and replacement of wind and solar farms.
It’s a nuclear future in my eyes.
I think the calculation should include transitioning fossil fuel space heating to electrical. This will change the picture significantly.
Ricky
Calling these numbers “daunting” is nonsense. These costs are closer to trivial. The LCOE of coal is higher than oil, which is higher than gas, which is higher than wind, which is higher than solar so cost savings is where the preponderance of the funding for base line transition comes from. Old junk wears out so none of the cost of replacement with something cheaper is part of the cost of transition. That part is an AS IF free part. But base line is not enough. Overproduction is required to prevent underproduction. And nuclear winters must also be planned for (hint, solar panels are covered world wide with mildly radioactive dust while it gets very cold for 10 - 20 years). Next gen nukes are not available but thermal spectrum Molten Salt Reactors are expected to cost about the same as a car (Lamborghini) and work well during a nuclear winter when no liquid water is available. So you did much better than a restaurant napkin but...... I’m still hungry. More. Everybody chant MORE.
Yah it’s a tough calc to do… but this definitely shows it’s possible and why the world is already headed in this direction. Question is how quickly?
I grew up with a nuclear power plant in my back yard Diablo canyon and I'm still alive
Congrats. Nuclear is still a power source that is finite. Sun, wind and tidal will still be here when we are gone.
The Sun doesn't shine at night and the wind doesn't blow all the time Nuclear is a constant source of energy
It's more indirect to compute, but having cleaner air saves enormous amounts in health care. The tricky bit is that the people installing the solar panels aren't the same ones saving on health costs, so this has to be a government initiative. The Clean Air Act is estimated to save $1T/year.
“Electricity is only what power plants consume to produce electricity for the grid.”
I probably missed something, but this sounds wrong.
I've always been a proponent of distributed power sources. Localized hydrogen production from solar and wind, stored locally in low pressure tanks. This is then fed into local fuel cells to provide power. You could potentially power up to 10 homes with a system like this.
Ricky, great analysis. One suggestion is that the estimate for capacity installation for wind and solar be made using a fixed amount rather than a percent as probably unrealistic to expect such a high number ongoing. In fact if you look at the further years expect a reduction, real life, as you may be using some of the installations used to replace existing equipment with more efficient ones.
Something usually not considered: how vehicles are powered. Making the whole grid would definitely improve things, what I miss is seeing how to un-gas the vehicles fleet
Hi Ricky, just met and spoke with you at the Everything Electric In Vancouver... What I like about these estimates and projections are that they are quite conservative, which it should be. I believe a hidden but substantial contributor that will mature, is clean geothermal in closed loop systems which will be constant and consistent into our bright future. This will also get us to fully sustainable targets on time and on budget. There is huge potential for private interests to make profits in clean energy moving forward...
I support a sensible transition from fossil fuels to alternate energy sources. I also basically agree with your calculation concepts although I am always skeptical seeing hocky-stick growth curves. It may be capable of 10% growth now but is that sustainable. I can think of few situations in which that has been proven feasible. What is not identified is the cost to sustain the activity. Both Wind and Solar seem to have around a 20 year lifetime. You have addressed the initial procurement costs but not the maintenance/replacement costs. I personally am much more of a multi-technology supporter. Yes solar probably has a long future but we need to figure out the recycling side. Wind bothers me more. Our current approach for wind is very poor on the sustainable/replacement side. Finally, Nuclear must become a much bigger part of our energy source. We need to stop evaluating Nuclear based on designs from the 1950s and look an newer, fail-safe designs.
I think it's very much possible for zero-emission sources to handily and affordably power commercial and residential buildings. With increasingly efficient machines and buildings, the average individual isn't really demanding that much from the grid. Furthermore, more people are using solar at home, and with the rise of EVs, parking lots could be covered in solar panels to offset the demand on the grid.
Not to mention, battery technology is noticeably improving in the past few years. With higher energy density, there will be less demand on production and less weight in EVs, further reducing inefficiencies.
The problem really comes down to industrial and large-scale transportation, where I don't feel renewable energy sources can reliably keep up.
I still remember the Jacobson vs. Klack debate a few years ago. Jacobson proposed 100% WWS (wind, water, sun). Klack thinks up 80% renewables should be doable. But the last 20% will be really hard (to deal with more extreme intermittency cases). He believes we'll need nuclear. Also, some of Jacobson's assumptions are a bit idealized (such as having the transmission lines, and hydro playing a prominent role).
The other issue (which I have with people like Tony Seba), is relying too much on LCOE. Sure this is a major factor. But the quality of service, such as dis-patchability, "clean firm power", should also be factored in. It's not enough to just look at some gross number. You need certain of quality of service, in one's portfolio. Reliability, in various conditions (heat waves, snow storms, ...), matters. Each have their own characteristics, profiles. As in any portfolio, you try to balance strengths and weaknesses.
Having said this, I do think we maybe in for some pleasant surprises in the 2020's. Grid scale storage, be it LFP for frequency regulation, time shifting (say 4 hours), possibly sodium ion to supplement, and a whole host options for "long duration" (10+ hours), such as iron air, thermal, ... may also come down in cost. Even if it doesn't completely solve the bulk storage problem, ... batteries offer a buffering and grid stabilization service, that allows one to plug in a more diverse resources, to help with the grid. This could be fossil fuels (gas peakers, micro nuclear, diesel gen sets, ... and perhaps someday e-fuels) for the dis-patchable part of the porfolio. Batteries are a huge integrating resource. With an integrated system, one has a incremental pathway for increasing the share of renewables (and other low carbon resources).
In addition there is demand-response. E.g. water heater loads. There is discussion of rate design, e.g.. TOU rates to incentivize batteries, VPP's, to allow for a more efficient and flexible (responsive) grid.
The other consideration, is solar can become so cheap, that one can overbuild 2x, 3x, to partially cover for more intermittencies. And a new economic model will need to be discovered to soak up all the excess, free energy, at certain times during the day. (Some productive load, that is low capital cost, is not highly time dependent, and can tolerate low capacity factor.)
All of the measurements in the video are terra watt hours. A terra watt hour represents a single amount of energy. It doesn't matter if you have a terra watt hour of coal or a terra watt hour of solar, you get the same amount of punch.
I thonk it would be great to come back to this video at the end of each year. And see how the grid is doing according to your predictions
EV’s are more than 2x the efficiency of ICE cars.
The 40% average get pulled way up by gas heaters. Gas heaters can be over 95% efficient.
Will we still need to refine oil for other products such as lubricating products? If so, what do we do with all the gasoline, diesel, kerosene etc that gets produced as a by-product ?
Flare it.
It would probably be more efficient to use this in local power plants and generate electricity with that. Would have multiple advantages. You wouldn't need to transport it through countries into the last corner of each place and it's way easier to control a local power plants emission standards instead of millions of cars driving around.
You forgot to include the massive expansions needed for additional transmission lines to accommodate for renewable energy resources. $2T is a wildly conservative number. You’d probably need to 2x or 3x that to be realistic.
People complain about increasing cost of electricity. Now you know why.
It must be skewed by people generating and storing their own electricity, with PV systems on the roof like you have. Most of the year I make more than I use and sell it to the grid. Including running the car.
Fill the batteries over night at £0.07 a unit and sell at £0.15 a unit. Not to mention it is much less sunny here. If half the businesses and people did it, much less grid scale plants needed.
Better start building a bunch of " pumped hydro " for energy storage..
Good work, I like the transparency of your calculations. One key point missed is that one reason for recorded electricity consumption to have stabilised is domestic and local business alrrady installing solar panels and batteries themselves - so the central investment will be much less than $2Tn.
Has anyone analysed the cost of a fully off grid solar farm, that uses battery to provide a constant flow of power for 24 hours. Also consider additional buildup for the months when increase in demand is higher than production at that time.
Once installed you have continuous energy production with no need to refuel. Only maintenance or replacement from incidental damage or material aging after decades of use. The price of electricity will become negligible.
The usage in Iceland is high specifically because electricity there is cheap. They are blessed with easy and abundant geothermal energy opportunities, which they exploit to the fullest. As a result, the country attracts businesses that use a lot of power like aluminum smelting and crypto mining.
We need to use all that energy that is wasted as heat
I also think that we are moving towards a distributed power network. Where individual residents and small businesses generate their own electricity with solar panels, roof-edge bladeless wind turbines and micro-hydro plants. Think about all the farms and ranches that use wind turbines to power water wells and irrigation systems. Yes, we will still need a grid, but look at universities and hospitals; many of which have their own power supplies.I think that is a growing trend and will relieve some of the pressure on grid-supplied power. I would be very interested in seeing your take on distributed power generation.
he biggest obstacle to widespread adoption of low cost wind and solar is the bureaucracy that controls transmission lines. It takes a decade or more to get permission for only a few hundred mile project. Only a tiny portion of southwest US deserts can supply the entire US with solar 24/7 with batteries at a lower cost than current. But getting permission for power lines takes too long. Projects to date are located near existing power lines. It's not even a cost issue; the projects can pay for the power lines. If this problem gets fixed, there will be a huge economic incentive for renewables. And electric cars, heat pumps and industrial conversion to electricity will be even more attractive.
Some studies show that transmission line costs are significant. Like a 1/3 of the cost, so that would be on the order of 100s of billions of dollars. Do you have any studies that show this is wrong or that solar/wind projects can easily pay for this?
@@1KentKent It is expensive. A Princeton study puts it at $3.5 trillion to upgrade the entire system and add sufficient capacity for 100% renewables. But the lines last decades. Amortizing this cost over just 15 years comes to about 2 cents per kWh assuming triple the current 4 TWh usage (as we replace transportation, fossil fuel heating and industrial usage with electricity). A new solar site in Nevada (Gemini) sells power to the utility at $.04/kWh before subsides. Add another $.04/kWh for battery storage and I get $.10/kWh total There are line losses and some other costs but these are fractions of a cent per kWh. US current average power price is $.16/kWh. These numbers are favorable and don't increase with inflation every year.
@@joenocera6347 Agreed. When you hear billions of dollars in costs, it can cause people to be skeptical but we are upgrading a system that produces revenue (electricity bills). So, any estimates of costs should include any increase in $/kwh as well as the increased overall revenue. The oil industry will not be getting the money from this shift to electrification, but US wind/solar/hydro/ geothermal/nuclear industries will. The US will also sell excess oil to foreign countries until the demand diminishes. Win-Win for the USA.
@@1KentKent Wonderful. But this all presupposes that the bureaucracy that controls transmission line construction approvals gets reorganized or at least supportive of this effort. To date it is a huge impediment. And this issue is not well known.
You didn't really discuss the costs of "the grid". There are a few things to consider, and I don't know which way things will go.
One, the grid will have to be massively upgraded as EVERYTHING switches from fossil fuel to electricity: electric vehicles, home heating, home water heating, industrial heating, rail transportation, etc., etc., etc. The grid will have to be completely rebuilt to handle a lot more power going to a lot more places.
Or two, the grid will be fine. As more and more solar panels and batteries are rolled out to more and more locations, those locations will actually draw less power from the grid. Every watt of electricity that is generated by a roof top solar panel and used in the building (either immediately or stored in a battery for later use) is one less watt of electricity that the grid needs to handle. And both the grid and the electrical devices connected to it will get smarter. The 'optional' loads, like charging EVs and home batteries, can be automatically shifted to times when the generation capacity is high and the load is low. The EV and home batteries can also be set up to automatically support the grid when it is being stressed.
Three, the total demand on the system might not rise as much as feared, as older, less efficient technology is replaced with newer more efficient technology. I just replaced my air conditioner with a heat pump. It uses less power than the 20 year old A/C unit, performing the same function more efficiently, and will also take over 80% of the heating costs for my home (we still have the gas furnace for those really cold days), reducing my carbon footprint. My home is not really suitable for a large solar array, but I am looking at switching both my gas hot water heater and electric clothes dryer to heat pump models, and maybe upgrading my electrical panel and installing some sort of battery storage as both a backup system and to reduce my electrical costs by playing the 'time of use' game.
There is a lot to think about, and much learning to be done.
I think the distribution of demand will change radically. Historically connection to the grid was expensive for remote locations. Now the investment can be centralized in roof solar even for a single house. If that house is the farmstead for broad acres export of energy becomes feasible or just running machinery and vehicles. Historically it wasn’t feasible. What was a liability for a continent like Australia is now an advantage
It won't necessarily be taxes paying for this. I paid for my own panels, which are due to be replaced by 2040. I pay $5 / month for electric now, just to keep connected to the grid, and most panel installations will pay themselves off after 5-10 years.
The reason why Iceland and Norway use most of energy per capita is cold enviroment they live in. No one counts in the temperatures of the climate when trying to emphasize inequality of power consumption.
Regarding solar, are you assuming that this is from solar power plants or from more people putting solar panels on their houses? If on their houses, I think the market might already be saturated just like electric cars. I’ve considered solar on my house a couple of times but the ROI is just far too out there. Also since an even smaller fraction of people will ever even be able to buy a house, would the landlords really want to deal with expensive, fragile, solar systems on their properties, especially when they have tenants that might not treat the property well?
I don't see the cost of land factored into the equation. The land required for large solar farms is huge and some rural communities are starting to object. You can't grow crops under solar panels.
Energy used per capita: I find it interesting that 9 of the top 10 countries are either in the middle east (oil producing countries) or Northern countries.
If we just look at Iceland, Norway, Canada and Sweden - is it just our long cold DARK winters that cause us to use so much electricity?
It's possible to get to a carbon free grid fairly quickly if we don't aim for 100% electrification of the vehicle fleet immediately. If we want to go to 100% electrification, including electrification of all the mining vehicles and machines used for lithium mining, and building the grid out to support everyone plugging in an EV every night, that's going to take a lot longer
When it comes to energy for heating, why does nobody talk enough about thermal solar connected to a BTES (Borehole Thermal Energy Storage)? This also saves up a lot on expensive converters and rare metals like silver compared to photovoltaïc, and gives our electric grid more breathing room.
you do realize that people living in cold winter regions would be in serious trouble during power outages. this is why gas is a life saver in such situations.
While this is interesting, there is a high expectation that we'll likely have the first prototype Fusion power plant by the mid 2030's. If that actually happens then the whole landscape will change rapidly, because we will be able to produce exponentially more energy in a tiny footprint and hopefully at a fraction of the costs of many of these other options. If that happens almost everyone will shift to fusion at that point; however, it is still a massive grey unknown if we will truly succeed at it, and if there will be any major negatives.
all renewable are worthless without battery-storage. You have to compensate the spikes in production and the times of high demand. In Germany/europe the price is sometimes negativ on the energy-stockmarket, because of missing storage capabilities. And the power landlines are although not growing the needed speed. So you did not speak of any storage or buffering, so the discussion is only half the truth.
There was a LOT of data to take in consideration, however, this is not done, one more video coming soon.
Good stuff.
I would like to see a deep dive into the energy used to produce oil and gas. From exploration to final workable energy.
One thing to consider is a heap of gas burned for heat is in greenhouses and it serves three purposes, heat, boosting CO2 and Humidity and thus requiring less space for food production. Some of the yuge per capita consumers I dare say are in the group using lots for that.
This was a great and much needed video. It really brought things into perspective.
Thanks for watching
Solar panela, wind turbines and batteries all have ten to twenty year lifetimes. So replacement cost needs to be planned. Your battery capacity is woefully short. Think of a week long winter storm that covers most of the midwest and east coast. 0 degree temps and the batteries run out means millions will die. Your cumulative estimate is off by 10x, at least
Did this take into account power demand growth? Especially with the rise in AI compute and Data Center demand.
Good question!
He does touch on it, but this is not the endepth version. Also, the AI want be getting power from your house, so it will still be small compared to the overall need. The company that is using it will design something to work off the grid you and I use so if that grid fails it will still be up. When looking at a manufacturing company like micron they have an on-site power plant because there demand is alot higher than what the city can provide.
The bit of AI that is currently expensive is the learning process. It has been suggested that it could be run only when electricity is cheap (ie supply outstrips demand), which would overall increase the solar and wind needed but reduce the batteries needed. Would only make sense if the running costs significantly outstrip the hardware costs.
@chriswheeler8143 Since we are competing with country's like China to be the first to AGI time is the issue. Only running at low cost times while china is running 24/7 365 is a huge disadvantage
@@joshuanine7690thought he is talking about total energy used I don't think it matters if you have a your own power plant it is still contributing to the total.
whenever I see a channel that produces content like this , i gained motivation to pursue my dream in renewable sector
....you also need to take into consideration the maintaninability costs over the lifetime of the plant. Also, add costs for equipment braking and having to be replaced. Then we have the risk factors that also corrapond to costs. With technology that we are familiar with a lot of these costs are well known and are at a minimum or zero.
The problem is you literally cannot have wind and solar as a base energy source without batteries, which increases the cost exponentially.
Nuclear as the base with solar and wind as supplemental is the only logical answer.
Great video. This also doesn't even touch on how much money we would save from ditching fossil fuel subsidies. We would obviously still require gasoline and diesel, but we would likely not need to subsidize the big oil corporations as much thus saving some in that regard.
Actually, the price for storage will be dropping also.
CATL is ramping up production of Sodium ion batteries which should be about ½ the cost of LFP.
ESS is building a 2GWh facility with their iron flow batteries with their technology licensed to Australian & German companies.
Form Energy is building a 1.5GWh facility in Minnesota and a 8.5GWh one in Maine using their Iron Air batteries.
Those are even cheaper still on a levelized cost than Sodium ion.
Fossil just won't be able to compete.
I'm afraid your calendar has a big flaw.
You assumed an exponential curve, but real markets usually shows s-curve.
It's easy to understand if you have a second thought.
For example, assume you are a PV manufacturer. You build a plant. What happens when the exponential curve ends?
The demand plummets.
So you will expect a market with shorter life as you gets closer to the saturation of the curve.
To compensate that, manufacturers will demand higher prices or instead they will stop building plants and wait to the saturation slowly.
So, an s-curve.
On other side, there is a lot of primary energy that will need to migrate to electricity so that will help with certain growth of the electricity in total.
So, the calendar will probably extend beyond 2050 easily, but the biggest part of the emissions can be removed soon.
Instead of forcing a 100% grid has a lot more sense focusing in electrification of the rest of the consumption while the 80% to 100% takes two or three decades.
Numbers from Norway shows that you need 5% more electrictrisity to charge all vehicles if they where electric. Norway has 26% EV's on the road.
6-8% of all energy in the world are used just to refine oil. So, this is without the drilling, cracking, pumping, transporting.
It's better to just use the raw oil to make electrictrisity at the oil pump.
Than washing energy on all the other stuff.
Refining oil is actually a waste of energy. Oil are getting more and more net negative energy.
This energy are payed for by subsidies.
The oil subsidies are at $US 9.000.000.000.000, or more than $US 1.000 for every human on earth.
The forcast for 2025 are $US 11.000.000.000.000!
Keep an eye on Quaise. They're working on something for deep geothermal that could make it a viable energy source in a lot more places.
Pretty decent, Ricky. The time window really argues for your sources (2040). Long-term, geothermal will have a much bigger impact imo. The smartest total cost choice would be nuclear, but I don't think enough would be built in that time. As I said, your numbers are pretty well thought out, but there are some costs that are not figured in. Solar and wind components have a projected life of 20 years. So some replacement would be necessary by 2040. Currently, grid scale solar panels are being replaced on average every 5 years (60 minutes 2023). Wind turbine components are currently being replaced every 7 years. As recently as 2022, it was estimated that transmission line miles in the US would need to be increased by more than 30%. A massive and difficult ask. Likely, the total cost would be at least double your estimate (just a guess).
IMO, the best, most cost-effective mix would be hydro, geothermal and/or nuclear doing most of the heavy lifting with wind and solar rounding out the mix.
You should mark your "ads" AS ads in the videos.
Iceland's high consumption doesn't come from heating, they are heating with geothermal. That huge number comes from Aluminium processing. And some from the Bitcoin farms...
Its a decent prediction, but natural gas is not going to go to zero or anywhere near zero by 2040. Natural gas as a bridge fuel can certainly go to zero, but natural gas for electricity generation is callable storage and on the renewables side the only other callable source we have is battery storage. Nuclear is not a callable source (even more modern plants which have a little load-following aren't really callable).
So unless you are predicting that there will be enough battery storage to bridge around a week's worth of sub-par generation in winter, which I think is not really in the cards, there will still be quite a bit of natural gas on the grid.
My prediction is that Natural gas will approach roughly 10% of our overall generation and flat-line there. Not zero. For electricity generation . And for energy in general it will certainly take a lot longer than 2040 for the whole of the U.S. to upgrade heating systems. So not zero there either.
Grid-scale battery systems are roughly 92% efficient, not 80% efficient.
-Matt
ICELAND
50% - geothermal
29% - oil
18% - hydro
3% - coal
BAD EXAMPLE
Very interesting! I would like to get your perspective on how long it will take and cost to transition to all EVs?
20 years
Yet we still have the recycling problem with those renewable products.
I only made it to the 2:00 mark. You need to include transportation for various "Zero Emission Sources".. Such as digging up silicon, then transporting it to a refinery to be purified. Etc, etc, etc... Then, at the end of life, there's more transportation. But like many, I wouldn't know how to calculate all the emissions of those huge cargo ships, you know they'll likely never be solar powered.
Can you do a video on what it would take to upgrade the grid as it seems adding more capacity will necessitate a grid overhaul
I think sodium batteries will play a big part in energy storage for the grid. Hopefully they will be way cheaper to produce.
Just my opinion, but I think geothermal will begin to grow faster as oil drilling companies begin to switch to drilling for geothermal. There are several geothermal companies that are working on this and they are saying exactly that.
I"m not even a minute in and I'll tell you it's going to take thousands of tonnes of batteries.
I think your argument has a few flaws. Would love to see the comparison with the following points considered as well:
1. The production of batteries and solar panels have an emission output that should be factored.
2. The end-of-life
eplacement of batteries and solar panels have an emission output that should be factored into this too.
3. If all vehicles where electric, even with the 'substitution method', we would still need drastically more electricity than we are consuming today. Semi-Trucks\heavy equipment\farm equipment would drive this number far beyond the numbers we project today.
4. Since the power companies charge customers for power, the cost of this endeavor should not be placed on the tax payers of the U.S. (get rid of the subsidies!). Let the free market drive the solution.
5. finally, the carbon-free grid has a cost to nature as well. Look at what solar and wind is doing to nature. Let's factor that in too.
Should you not factor in the S curve effect or even X curve effect on one technology replacing another? What are our solar and wind maximum capacities? Can it grow exponentially all the way to 2040? When can the last gas plants be turned of? People will argue about base load very loudly.