houseofleft

@houseofleft@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Solar panels between railway tracks?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of the comments here are, pretty fairly, sceptical if whether this is a viable idea.

  My question is, what’s the advantage meant to be over just having an electrical railway and seperately some solar panels plugged into the grid? Especially since the article mentions the solar railway would be grid connected?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sweden switches on largest battery energy storage system in the Nordics - Energy Storage⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know specifics on this battery farm, but almost all are essentially fleets of shipping containers filled with smaller batteries, rather than some super-cool-mega-battery, so it’s probably a safe assumption that this is a landmark project in scale, rather than in technology specifics.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tripling renewables globally by 2030 is doable, says new IEA report⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Germany definitely has a tonne of renewables, but then is still like 25% coal which is why it has high energy emmisions. It has much cleaner energy than it did before adopting renewables though, so still seems like a reason to think renewables are a positive?

  It’s 100% untrue that Germany’s recent pursuing of renewables is the reason it pollutes so much per KW.

  Then France has a similar amount of renewables to the UK but with a much cleaner mix after that (basically more nuclear and less gas).

  I’m wondering if I’ve misunderstood your initial point because I’m not seeing any reason to suggest increasing renewables doesn’t reduce emissions? Only that there’s more to CO2 per KW than just categorising stuff as “renewable” vs “non-renewable”, which I don’t think anyone is doubting?

  Sorry to go so hard on this, but this stuff really matters. We don’t have a lot of time left to reduce the most extreme impacts of global warming, and nobody benefits from muddying the waters on the clear benefits of renewables.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tripling renewables globally by 2030 is doable, says new IEA report⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree with all of what you said, apart from “without storage renewables aren’t that useful”.

  UK and USA are good comparatives here, where the USA has better nuclear provision, but on average very little renewables (approx 10%). The UK obviously burns more fossil fuels when renewables aren’t used, but in spite of this still generates less than 1/3 of the co2 per KW overall as the USA (120g vs 390g).

  So storage would be drive that down much further, but even without it, more renewables equals less CO2 overall in pretty much every real world case.

  Data sources in CO2 per KW: UK: grid.iamkate.com USA: www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tripling renewables globally by 2030 is doable, says new IEA report⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I work in the UK energy sector, and that’s definitely not true! About 1/3 of our energy comes from wind which is somewhat but mostly not stored.

  Fossil fuels end up doing the work of balancing the grid during times when wind and solar are low. That’s not ideal, but a world where fossil fuels are used to balance renewable provision is much better than a world where they’re the primary energy source.

  We’re running out of time to prevent the worst effects of global warming, and any increase in renewables provides some mitigation to the impact. Very few, if any, countries are at the point where current battery tech should stop them increasing their renewables.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wind powers a record summer for renewable energy in Britain⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, but remember that data is live and it’s currently night time in the UK! (I think average solar is pretty liw in the UK though- something like 5%)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wind powers a record summer for renewable energy in Britain⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  We need to do a lot more still, but the fact that the UKs energy generation is 20% of the CO2 emmisions per MW that it was just 10 years ago, despite a very conservative government, is pretty awesome.

  (20% figure from this page which has sone cool data and visualisations on it:grid.iamkate.com data is all sourced from the UK’s National Energy Operator)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elements of Renewable Energy⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well yes, but how is that any different from putting batteries in your wind farm?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elements of Renewable Energy⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a cool diagram, but I think it makes it look like you can’t combine stuff. Obviously solar and wind in a lot of cases just plugged straight into batteries for storage.

  On the flippy floppy, hydropower can do both, but in completely different ways. If you build a dam, you can’t generate electricity, and if you build a turbine, you can’t store it.

  I don’t know what my point overall is. I guess just that energy is complicated, and there probably isn’t a “one size fits all” fix.