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Is 100 Percent Solar Energy Possible?

Adrienne SorensenOctober 8, 2018 1060 0

Is 100% Solar Energy Possible? 

The most critical political division globally of the climate shift is between people who accept the urgency of the issue and from others who don’t. Those who don’t are have significant influence on the federal government. Their energy goals are a victory of fossil fuels.
 

Solar Energy Introduction 

The hot topic over 100 percent clean energy isn’t about that specific division. It really is about a bigger concern among those who accept the idea to quickly reduce carbon emissions, just enough to reserve the rise in global average temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels. 

In order to fulfill the target that mandates “deep decarbonization”. Deep decarbonization is decreasing total carbon emissions 80 to 100 percent worldwide by mid-century. Fortunately, both sides agree that any deep decarbonization scenario is crucially involved in electrifying virtually everything. In more specific terms, it will involve doing two things at once: a) getting rid of carbon emissions from electricity and b) shifting as many other energy services as possible (transportation, heating, and industry) over to electricity.

In fulfilling these solar energy items, using electricity for transportation, heat our buildings, and run our factories will increase demand for power. Various models predict contrasting things. 

But at the high end, we’re discussing solar demand increasing by 150 percent or more through mid-century. That means the solar energy network will have to get larger, more complex, more productive, and more dependable while it’s decarbonizing. 

This is the prime challenge of deep decarbonization. So what’s the best solution to this issue? That’s where the lines are drawn. On one side, there are those who believe that should shift to an electricity system only powered by clean energy, mostly by the Solutions Project, based on the work of Stanford’s Mark Jacobson, supported by a board of high-profile greens including Van Jones, Mark Ruffalo, and Jacobson.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who say that the aim is zero carbon, not 100 percent solar energy. Also, the technologies need a large quantity of nuclear power and fossil fuel power. This is the dispute. Some oppose nuclear and CCS. Others vary from enthusiasm to weariness towards resignation. This is belief that its required for deep decarbonization. 
 

Compensating Solar Energy Variability

This argument encircles the concept that resources of carbon free power, wind and solar energy, are variable. The sun is not always available and wind is not always accessible. 

These are variable means that aren’t dispatchable, operating the network that can’t be monitored. As more of a network’s power originate from solar energy (VRE), two issues become increasing clear. One is technical. As VRE capacity grows, network operators handle big spikes in power, sometimes above 100 percent of demand. If there’s no way to absorb that surplus energy, it called curtailed. Network operators must manage big dips in VRE. It happens daily after variations in VRE supply. 

Lastly, network operators work with deal quick ramps creating almost no solar energy to create a ton, or vice versa, over a short period of time. This rapid, adaptable short-term resources that can alter the result. This is a technical and a financial issue. 

When new megawatt (MW) of VRE comes online, it slowly decreases the value to the network of the next MW of VRE. A new MW wind and solar energy capacity is creating energy. As more solar energy participate in the grid, the value of resources can given solar energy when VRE isn’t creating will rise. The marginal value of the next unit of VRE will reduce. That means the solar energy has a higher economic bar

There are plenty of tools to solve these particular technical and economic problems. This dispute drills down to whether these issues can be solved without nuclear and CCS. It is possible to gain significant decarbonization using technologies and policies. Much gets accomplished by replacing natural gas combined cycle power plants for coal plants. While that’s going on, you gain clean energy and sustain your existing nuclear and hydroelectric fleet. 

Practically speaking, the United States has decreased carbon emissions in the past few years.The strategy works short time. Natural gas plants are much adaptable than coal plants. This complement to VRE keeping variability even. As for deep decarbonization, the strategy results to a cul de sac. Natural gas is healthier than coal yet, it’s still a fossil fuel. At least without CCS, it is incompatible with decarbonization over 60 percent. If you create natural gas plants to get to 60 percent, then you’re stuck shutting them down to get past 60 percent. 

It would be very difficult to strand all those assets. There would be a lot of resistance. It’s just one example of path dependence in energy — choices, once made, tend to perpetuate themselves through inertia. Leaning too heavily into natural gas in the next 20 years will make it more difficult to pull away in the subsequent 20. Preventing that cul de sac equates to contemplating how to substitute natural gas with other balancing resources that doesn’t give off carbon.
 

Balancing Solar Energy Electricity

Think of a carbon free network as a balance of two kinds of electricity resources, dispatchable and non-dispatchable

Non-dispatchable means VRE, wind, solar energy, run-of-river hydro, anything based on weather that can’t be turned on and off. VRE can be created less variable by connecting resources over a wide area with more transmission lines. 

Over a big enough space, it’s typically sunny or windy somewhere. But in a constrained network, non-dispatchable resources need balancing out with dispatchable resources. 

Dispatchable is a broad category, anything that network operators oversee the balance of electricity supply and demand. There are three varieties:

-Dispatchable supply, i.e., power plants — in the minimal-to-no carbon family, that includes nuclear (the most common, creating 11 percent of the global’s electricity in 2012), fossil fuels with CCS, reservoir hydro, biomass, and geothermal.
-Dispatchable demand — demand for power can be supervised, either decreased or altered to various parts of the day/week.
-Solary energy storage — storage can either be as dispatchable demand or dispatchable supply. There’s a growing number of methods to store energy. The oldest and highest capacity is pumped hydro, where water is pumped uphill to contain energy and then run down turbines to release it. In addition, there’s batteries, which are increasing getting more economical. Solar power can be stored as heat, as cold, or as hydrogen. 

Among these sections, resources range from high capacity (enough power to cover demand for a certain amount of time) to low (hours or minutes) and from fast to slow. 

Each dispatchable resource will have a different value to network operators, depending on conditions and time of day. Large dispatchable supply sources can cover for VRE that’s surprisingly low for weeks to years. 

Dispatchable demand is in a quickly developing phase, and at least for now it’s relatively slow and low capacity, but that will change; it will get fast, though how big is still an open question. The biggest solar energy storage running can typically only cover a few hours of demand, but smaller storage can cover for hourly or minute-by-minute swings in VRE. 

Here’s where we come up against this argument. Is nuclear and CCS required to achieve balancing, or can we do it without them completely? The Solutions Project believe that a full cost benefit analysis takes all environmental influences into effect, balance out VRE without recourse to nuclear power or CCS. This involves several elements. One, VRE will be hugely overbuilt. 

Due to its “capacity factor” being low, to fully achieve demand, total capacity have exceed total demand by multiples.

Two, transmission lines have to be extended across the globe to connect VRE sources with demand and smooth out supply. Lastly, distribution need to be upgraded rapidly.

And foremost, remaining dispatchable resources, demand management, storage, hydro, maybe biomass must be radically scaled up. This is especially needed for storagein order to grow exponentially. On the other end of this dispute are that people don’t believe that the above scenario is viable. 

If it is viable, that the most economical to gain to zero carbon. Some experts believe nuclear and CCS should still be utilized on a mass scale. This is a tense and complex debate.I won’t presume to settle it, but in my next post I’ll get into some of the literature and the back and forth and try to draw some tentative conclusions. It’s enough to understand the shape of the issue, which is a core problem facing humanity in the 21st century. 

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