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Solar and Wind Are Reaching for the Last 90% of the US Power Market (bloomberg.com) 253

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Three decades ago, the U.S. passed an infinitesimal milestone: solar and wind power generated one-tenth of one percent of the country's electricity. It took 18 years, until 2008, for solar and wind to reach 1% of U.S. electricity. It took 12 years for solar and wind to increase by another factor of 10. In 2020, wind and solar generated 10.5% of U.S. electricity. If this sounds a bit like a math exercise, that's because it is. Anything growing at a compounded rate of nearly 18%, as U.S. wind and solar have done for the past three decades, will double in four years, then double again four years after that, then again four years after that, and so on. It gets confusing to think in so many successive doublings, especially when they occur more than twice a decade. Better, then, to think in orders of magnitude -- 10^10.

There are a number of reasons why exponential consideration matters. The first is that U.S. power demand isn't growing, and hasn't since wind and solar reached that 1% milestone in the late 2000s. That means that the growth of wind and solar -- and that of natural gas-fired power -- have come entirely at the expense of coal-fired power. That replacement of coal with either natural gas (half the emissions of coal) or with wind and solar (zero emissions) is certainly an environmental achievement. Coupled with last year's massive drop in emissions, that power shift also makes it much easier for the U.S. to meet its Paris Agreement obligations.
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Solar and Wind Are Reaching for the Last 90% of the US Power Market More

Solar and Wind Are Reaching for the Last 90% of the US Power Market

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  • Wives (Score:3, Insightful)

    by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Thursday February 11, 2021 @11:11AM (#61051602) Journal

    Obligatory
    https://xkcd.com/605/ [xkcd.com]

    • Re:Wives (Score:4, Interesting)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday February 11, 2021 @11:17AM (#61051634)
      Yes, yes. The difference here is that 10% solar/wind isn't near any evident upper bound. The next few years should really be the most transformative. There's already enough adoption (10%) that a large percentage growth is also a large amount of growth, and yet we aren't pushing into the corner cases that are hard to meet with these sources.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 )
        From the synopsis:

        Coupled with last year's massive drop in emissions

        I hope they're taking into account that as soon as the pandemic is addressed and things go back to "normall"....those levels are going to pretty much rocket back to where they were all things being equal.

        • Here's an alternative view:

          https://www.carbonbrief.org/an... [carbonbrief.org]

          "The world has already passed "peak oil" demand, according to Carbon Brief analysis of the latest energy outlook from oil major BP.

          ...
          According to BP, the pandemic has cut the outlook for long-term energy demand in two ways. First, it cuts the prospects for economic growth and, second, it is assumed that some behavioural changes - notably, home working - will persist, even as other changes dissipate over time."

          Of course this doesn't mean

          • According to BP, the pandemic has cut the outlook for long-term energy demand in two ways. First, it cuts the prospects for economic growth and, second, it is assumed that some behavioural changes - notably, home working - will persist, even as other changes dissipate over time."

            Of course this doesn't mean oil demand wouldn't mostly rebound next year. But it might never return to quite what it was, and then much less than that.

            I agree in part, with it being down a little bit..due to many continuing to wo

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by kenh ( 9056 )

              Did the pandemic take cars off the roads, or did car manufacturers keep pumping out new cars that were snapped up by workers that suddenly found themselves flush with cash after bars, nightclubs, theaters, sporting events, vacations, etc were all cancelled for most of the past year?

              They may be driving less now, but when the economy opens up, they'll start driving those new cars everywhere, rather than fly to visit relatives.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I hope things don't go back to how they were. Don't need to be in the office 5 days a week, and the high street around here was already crap and dying anyway. Delivery improved a lot due to COVID so now online shopping is a lot more viable for a lot more stuff.

      • I'd say at about 50% of yearly electricity you're going to hit a cliff.

        As long as wind/solar is just cutting fuel costs for gas power plant and providing up to 100% of power, you can grow relatively painlessly ... but once you start hitting over-provisioned wind/solar for significant amounts of the year suddenly the profitability of wind/solar will take a nose dive without an increase in the subsidy level.

        • Re:Wives (Score:5, Insightful)

          by crunchygranola ( 1954152 ) on Thursday February 11, 2021 @12:14PM (#61052030)

          Probably more like 80% (studies have been done, this is not a WAG), when the issues of extended periods of reduced insolation and wind become an issue. Up to this point grid-scale battery deployment (the price keeps coming down) will be able to perform any leveling functions necessary at a cost well below nuclear power plants.

          That last 20% will be the most difficult, but you are looking perhaps 3 decades out at that point. We will have time to develop options and select the most preferable. One possibility (not much discussed, but my favorite) is to go to 100% with wind and solar, but keep gas-fired plans in stand-by for the rare periods when solar plus wind plus cheap battery is not enough. The actual duty cycle of gas in powering the grid over time will be quite low, maybe 1-2% (this is a WAG) and can be offset with carbon capture. The gas plants needed will have been already built, so no new capital investment required, just instead of scrapping them as they are retired from regular service they placed in a maintained standby status.

          • I'm not saying the road to 80% is impossible because of lack of cheap storage, I'm saying it's expensive for reasons which have nothing to do with storage.

            I'm talking about the cost increase as wind/solar starts competing against itself instead of mostly against gas power plants, when wind/solar starts becoming over-provisioned (during peak production) the savings from not fueling the gas power plant backups disappear for a significant amount of their operating life ... thus requiring higher subsidy levels

        • The current cold snap might be evidence of that. I have panels, it was cloudy yesterday and will be until at least tuesday. It has not been particularly windy. My panels under these conditions produce less than 10% of normal, so basically nothing from solar and about average production from west texas wind. Demand is going to rocket higher between people's southern climate heat pumps switching to resistive heating. Austin is supposed to drop to 11 one night next week. Events like these would collapse a pure

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rhipf ( 525263 )

            Demand is going to rocket higher between people's southern climate heat pumps switching to resistive heating.

            If you already have a heat pump why would you switch to resistive heating? Isn't the whole point of using a heat pump to lower your electrical use. Why would you increase your electrical use if you switch to solar/wind?
            If you are using an open air heat pump you could always convert it to a geothermal heat pump instead of adding resistive heating to your home.

            • > If you already have a heat pump why would you switch to resistive heating? Isn't the whole point of using a heat pump to lower your electrical use.

              Because heat pumps do exactly what the name implies - they pinp the heat from one place to another. In this case, taking the heat that is outside the house and moving it to inside. That doesn't work so well when there is hardly any heat outside the house, when the outdoor air temperature is below freezing.

              Heat pumps are great when it's 45 outside and you wa

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by jbengt ( 874751 )
              Air-to-air heat pumps work well down to outdoor temperatures around 20F. Newer heat pumps can work to below 0F. Efficiency drops off as the temperature difference between indoors and outdoors grows. But the main problem is that below freezing, frost has a tendency to build up on the outdoor coil, so the heat pump has to go through defrost cycles to remain effective. At some point, usually well below freezing, straight electric resistant heat is more efficient.
              Ground-source heat pump systems can actuall

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Ksevio ( 865461 )

                I have a fairly efficient heat pump, but as you mention it has to keep defrosting when it gets around freezing and the amount of electricity it requires gets pretty high. Compared to the gas boiler, it's not worth running when it's very cold out.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            I couldn't find live data for Texas but generally speaking if it is cloudy then it is probably windy, at least at the height turbines operate at. Clouds form in low pressure fronts, which also cause wind.

            Besides, you don't need a huge amount of wind, you just need plenty of turbines.

            • It seems to be an odd front wind wise. Average winds. But solar is 0. So the point is unless solar/wind is overprovisioned on a massive scale (2X worst case need), solar/wind has a problem without fossil backup.

      • It's true 10% isn't the upper bound.
        10% is what you get from using solar power in the afternoon, in sunny locations.

        Using solar electric at night is a little harder.
        Using it in Portland is a little harder.

        Once you've done the easy wins, it gets harder and harder from there. If you wanted to model it mathematically, the exponent is negative. Growth SLOWS, not accelerates, as you approach 100% because you're trying to use it in situations it's not well suited for.

        The first megawatt scale solar plants were in

        • It's been 35 years for the first 10% (easiest ones, sunniest places)
          45 years for the next-hardest 10%

          Wow I'll take that bet!

          The International Energy Agency forecast is for global wind/solar output to double in the next 5 years. Quite a difference from your prediction of 45 years.

          No point quibbling, let's just wait and see which is closer.

          https://www.statista.com/chart... [statista.com]

          • Anything is possible. I'm not betting either way. :)

            In my experience, people tend to over-estimate how much will change with society in five years, and any estimates 50 years into the future are pretty much guesses.

            I did a long paper about the energy mix about five years ago.
            Five years ago, the storage problem for powering a large city through a large storm was so great that anyone who did the numbers couldn't seriously think that would ever happen. (After looking at the numbers; if you don't know the numb

      • The next few years should really be the most transformative. There's already enough adoption (10%) that a large percentage growth is also a large amount of growth

        Bullshit - if they DOUBLE the amount of solar and wind power, it's only 20%. Any idea what's involved in literally doubling the amount of wind and solar power - take everything that's been done under Bush'43, Obama, and Trump and do it all again, and you'll get close - that's only 20 years worth of work, to achieve 20%.

        Despite the excitement in the story, we are not on the cusp of a tremendous uptick in wind/solar generation. Presidential Campaign promises aren't binding, and if examined closely typically r

        • Just a few points, manufacturing capacity in place far exceeds what was in place 30, 20 or even 10 years ago.

          As long as manufacturing capacity growth is not reduced, then the annual new installations will continue to increase.

          The real key to continued solar and wind build out is replacing outdated power delivery infrastructure to support moving energy across regions of the country will low levels of loss

    • The summary says the energy generation doubles every 4 years, so in our lifetime,say 80 years we are looking at 2^20 times increase. My question is, will that rate of growth continue after the Earth goes incandescent? This may be what started original Big Bang.

      After some thought, I found the solution. We have also been promised exponential growth in battery capacity, so we'll just store the excess energy in magical batteries that are coming.

  • Breaking news: scaling up requires time.

  • I'd think that to qualify for being "last", there should at least be less remaining than has already been done.

  • It's not exponential growth, it's logistic growth. (Score:3, Informative)

    by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Thursday February 11, 2021 @11:24AM (#61051666) Journal

    This should be blatantly obvious. There is a saturation limit, and as that limit is approached, the rate of growth will asymptotically slow down.

    As one of my professors when I was studying computer science in post secondary would say (with irony intended), "this is kindergarten math".

    • Re:It's not exponential growth, it's logistic grow (Score:5, Insightful)

      by idji ( 984038 ) on Thursday February 11, 2021 @11:55AM (#61051916)
      Not necessarily. There is no need for it to slow when getting to 100%. Solar supply can easily go over 100% of demand, because it can be used for desalination, hydrogen generation, synthetic fuels, heat storage, pumping and other purposes where cheap energy is very valuable. It wouldn't surprise me if it goes 10x over demand. Musk is going to want fuel for his 1000s of rockets - and if he can make solar+CO2 into methane and then use solar to chill Oxygen - he has "free" and "green" rocket fuel.

      • Excess solar generation can be used to power rather large batteries to provide night-time power such as the Hornsdale Power Reserve [wikipedia.org]

      • Solar supply can easily go over 100% of demand, because it can be used for desalination, hydrogen generation, synthetic fuels, heat storage, pumping and other purposes where cheap energy is very valuable. It wouldn't surprise me if it goes 10x over demand.

        I'd give that a + insightful moderation if I had mod points right now.

        It's the same issue as the famous IBM prediction that they might need to make and sell five computers. That was approximately the result of thinking about how much computing was being d

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mark-t ( 151149 )

          Where did I suggest that simply meeting 100% of the demand was the saturation limit?

          A saturation limit inherently exists for something like this if for no other reason than that there is a finite amount of solar and wind energy on the planet at any given instant to harvest in the first place.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by marklark ( 39287 )
      And on the way to 100%, we'll have to replace the generators and solar panels several times... So, that pushes out 100% to ... maybe 240% (Hey! I can pull numbers out of random orifices, too! ;^)

      Discuss the difficulty of recycling "renewables" elsewhere...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )

      This should be blatantly obvious. There is a saturation limit, and as that limit is approached, the rate of growth will asymptotically slow down.

      Yes, we'll hit a saturation point. But well before that (for a pure logistic curve, halfway between time 0 and time End), you'll hit an inflection point where the accelerating upward trend ceases, and merely becomes linear.

      Looking at the growth curves for installed wind and solar capacity, and taking into account that 2020 was kind of a weird year for any eco

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )

        I wasn't suggesting that we were... and I recognize that the first part of a logistic growth curve is all but completely indistinguishable from an exponential one.

        However, it is plainly obvious that there will exist some saturation limit, even if we are nowhere near it right now. Thus, it is, and always was, a logistic growth curve, and not an exponential one, regardless of what it might look like at the moment.

  • I see a lot of Solar and some wind where I live.
    1. It is because the technology is at a point where it is affordable, still it may be a little more expensive than traditional methods, but it isn't a burden anymore.
    2. It is accessible. Having a field with Solar Panels, or a mountain top with a Wind Turbine for the larger grid production, is much easier to get approved vs trying to build an Air pollution creating plant in or near a residential area. So communities can have their own power without relying

  • Ways you can speed this up (Score:4, Informative)

    by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Thursday February 11, 2021 @11:26AM (#61051680) Homepage
    Still not happening fast enough. There are a bunch of ways you can help speed this up directly. Aside from simply buying solar panels for your home, there are charities that are relevant here. Everybody Solar https://everybodysolar.org/ [everybodysolar.org] helps purchase solar panels for non-profits like museums and homeless shelters. The New England Wind Fund https://www.greenenergyconsumers.org/newenglandwindfund [greenenergyconsumers.org] is helping build more wind power in the North-East of the US. That's particularly helpful because right now there's very little wind in the North-East, so the issues that may show up if one has massive quantities of wind power aren't showing up. Every little donation helps.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      there's very little wind in the North-East

      And you can thank the Kennedy Clan and their ilk for that. How much donated money will we need to hire attorneys to fight them in the courts for decades?

      • Yes, the Kennedy's fighting over wind in Cape Cod was really not good. They are not the only example of NIMBYism preventing wind turbine production, but certainly one of the most prominent and effective.
  • "or with wind and solar (zero emissions)" or are their emissions just elsewhere off the grid so to speak?

  • The "wall" isn't until 30%-40% (Score:3, Informative)

    by rbrander ( 73222 ) on Thursday February 11, 2021 @11:37AM (#61051756) Homepage

    ...and it's not a "wall", it's an inflection point in one of those sigmoid ("S shaped") curves. How much intermittent power we can use will drop off. It doesn't matter how cheap something is if nobody is buying at that time.

    This has been anticipated by energy-system modelling for decades. Intermittent can contribute, but it can't take over base-load electricity, which is why every numerate green activist is pro-nuclear, the only green base-load provider other than the about-maxed-out hydro.

    An MIT study is quoted by David Roberts over at Vox, to the effect that it would take extremely cheap storage - capital costs around $20/kWh of capacity, or 1/8th of current prices - to turn intermittent into 7x24. Before you get down to $20, you can push up those 30-40% numbers a ways with Lithium cells and "green hydrogen"...you just can't get to all-intermittent save hydro without the power price going through the root, affecting the whole economy.

    There's one out that I see. Make it a requirement that all garages that can recharge eVehicles can also power the building, upon a request from the power company, just drop that house off the grid for a few hours. (You'd be able to program your car to sell back energy until it was down to just enough to get to work and back, then refuse to sell any more.) Being able to drop a lot of houses and apartments off the grid for a few hours would really help close the gap between 90% renewables and 100%. A lot of that "$20/kWh" was to buy storage that's almost never needed except the worst hour of the worst day. So "free" storage that was already purchased for car purposes might make it work.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      An MIT study is quoted by David Roberts over at Vox, to the effect that it would take extremely cheap storage - capital costs around $20/kWh of capacity, or 1/8th of current prices - to turn intermittent into 7x24.

      That study [cell.com] was written by scientists and engineers, not economists, so any price they can come up with is just a made-up number.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ameline ( 771895 )

      Hydro can be used for base load, but that's a waste. The best virtue of hydro is that it can be turned on and off very quickly -- seconds to minutes. Vs hours for coal or gas fired plants, or days for nuclear. This makes it ideal for responding to spikes in load.

      I agree that nuclear (and perhaps something a little more modern like traveling wave or something recent like that) for base load, plus solar, wind and waves (with batteries for load equalization) plus hydro for load variations will bring us to 0 em

      • Vs hours for coal or gas fired plant

        Natural gas power plants are almost instantaneous to start. They're essentially very large helicopter turbines hooked up to generators.

        They got their start as peaking plants with coal and nuclear as base load. Then gas got so cheap they started running much more often.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TheNameOfNick ( 7286618 )

      It does matter how cheap something can be made, because if something costs half as much as the next more expensive option, you can just build it to 200% capacity and not use the excess. One of the nice properties of these "intermittent" electricity sources is that they don't consume scarce resources to keep them running when they're not needed. And unlike nuclear power plants, solar and wind can almost instantly react to load swings. You can simply install ten times as many solar panels just so that you hav

      • You can simply install ten times as many solar panels just so that you have enough electricity at all times.

        Zero sun (at nighttime) X ten times as many solar panels is still zero.

        • Re:The "wall" isn't until 30%-40% (Score:4, Informative)

          by TheNameOfNick ( 7286618 ) on Thursday February 11, 2021 @02:04PM (#61052592)

          The reason for overbuilding solar is to avoid the need for long term storage (summer/winter). Day/night can be solved with short term storage or with complementary electricity sources. The wind blows at night. The ideal electricity mix isn't the same everywhere. My point is that "It doesn't matter how cheap something is if nobody is buying at that time" is not true. It is not wasteful to not use electricity from solar panels if the electricity you do use ends up being cheaper overall (total cost divided by the electricity used).

  • Solar and Wind are intermittent. Meaning they can never power our society 24/365 by themselves. Never.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Yeah, I don't see us getting past 20% marketshare for wind or solar until we have we have a cheap way to store the power for overnight usage.

      • If only there was a power storage technology that was simultaneously undergoing rapid cost decreases and capacity increases. Since no such technology exists, I guess we'll have to give up on renewables.

        Oh, wait...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      Solar and Wind are intermittent. Meaning they can never power our society 24/365 by themselves.

      That's true, we also need a small amount of energy storage to keep the grid up, plus a little extra priced at market equilibrium to prevent blackouts.

      • Small? We need a huge amount of storage. A day of electrical storage is 10.8 TWh's(times 5 for the rest of the world). We do not have the means of producing anything close to that.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ichijo ( 607641 )

          A day of electrical storage is 10.8 TWh's

          That's only what the scientists say. But how much electrical storage (supply) is needed to cover a day of electrical demand is an economics problem, not a science problem.

    • Daylight is intermittent - plants that depend on photosynthesis can never work. Never.

      • Plants have a viable method of storing the energy they absorb from the sun thru photosynthesis. Out storage methods are not viable. We would need days of storage which is not viable.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          It's too bad we don't have the means of creating and improving technology. Maybe the aliens that built the pyramids and gave us refrigerators will come back.

      • If you are willing to go dormant and not use power for long stretches like a plant, go right ahead.

  • Failed to talk about the important parts (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Thursday February 11, 2021 @12:42PM (#61052180) Homepage

    Most people have a really bad understanding of power. Here are some very important facts that the article ignored:

    1) Most power is 'wasted'. In conversion to electricity and transmission to the use point (home/car/factory), 2/3 of the potential power is wasted. Simply moving from using "solar to create electricity to power your water heater" to "solar directly heating hot water tank" will triple the efficiency.

    2) Even more wasted power applies on sight, at least during summer (during winter the 'waste' power mostly heats your home/factory/etc). Residential and Commercial waste about 1/3, industry wastes about 1/5, and gasoline cars waste about 4/5.

    3) Homes only use about 15% of power, commercial uses 11%, Industry uses about 34%, and transportation uses the rest - about 40%. If we build bicycle friendly + subway cities like Copenhagen you do more for power use than switching to renewables.

    4) Electricity storage is still our major issue, not only does it create waste but it also uses limited and environmentally dangerous resources. Batteries are the most important innovation in electric cars, the rest is merely incremental change.

             

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      In conversion to electricity and transmission to the use point (home/car/factory), 2/3 of the potential power is wasted. Simply moving from using "solar to create electricity to power your water heater" to "solar directly heating hot water tank" will triple the efficiency.

      Modern combined cycle gas plants can be 60% efficient or greater, with maybe 10% transmission loss to the use point, so greater than 50%.
      The efficiency of photovoltaic electricity generation only matters directly to the end user as far a

  • I remember one time having someone explain to me that if the growth rate of the population continued it would not be long before the people on the earth out weighted the whole planet.

    I statement that should give you pause , but didn't phase this particular person.

    This seems the same. Just because there has been expediential growth in an industry Well, past performance is no necessarily indicative of future prospects.

  • Isn't that the company that had that massive hack recently?

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