Las Vegas just became the largest US city to run on 100% renewable energy

70 Comments on "Las Vegas just became the largest US city to run on 100% renewable energy"

Cloggie on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 10:49 am 



Sorry, Las Vegas Isn’t Close To Running Entirely On Renewable Energy

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2016/12/23/sorry-las-vegas-isnt-close-to-running-entirely-on-renewable-energy/#5d832d884bfa

So imagine my surprise when I saw a recent article in Popular Mechanics titled Las Vegas Is Now Powered Entirely by Renewable Energy. If that wasn’t clear enough, the subtitle read “Las Vegas is now the largest city in the country to run entirely on renewable energy.”

This claim was repeated in numerous mainstream media outlets, but I immediately knew this couldn’t be correct. Although it is true that Las Vegas is installing a lot of new solar power, and the state of Nevada is home to over 500 megawatts (MW) of geothermal power — the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that the 3.3 million megawatt hours (MWh) that Nevada generated in September 2016 came primarily (>70%) from natural gas.

Nice try.

eugene on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 10:49 am 



100% but excluding “commercial and residential buildings”? Guess it’s all in the perspective.

Dredd on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 10:49 am 



What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.

Good.

The grid can’t send it elsewhere without losing 2/3 or so of it (A Grid We Can Believe In, Grid and Bear It).

Plantagenet on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 11:01 am 



I’ll give you 5 to 1 odds that Los Vegas isn’t even close to being 100% powered by solar energy.

Cheers!

Dredd on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 11:02 am 



A good start is a good start.

Exit the “bullshit” or Ahnold will kick thy ass.

https://youtu.be/xo84eoAI0Ak

rockman on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 11:57 am 



Yes: no matter if the solar supplies just a small portion of the city’s entire electricity consumption: something is better then nothing. Maybe: what is the economic analysis? Just a suspicion but what is the city now paying for solar electricity? IOW is it lower or higher?

I suspect higher. Which doesn’t automatic count against the effort. As mentioned the ENTIRE city of Georgetown, Texas will be going 100% wind/solar by paying a higher initial rate on a 20 year contract with lower future rates when NG prices inevitably increase.

That’s THE important portion of the LV story not detailed. Which makes suspicious that’s it’s more of a PR stunt then a economically justifiable project.

Hubert on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 12:06 pm 



That city will be a desert in few years without water.

Cloggie on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 12:16 pm 



Forbes and all the other MSMs were lying about Popular Mechanics, or more likely, simply too daft to read properly:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a24372/las-vegas-renewable-energy/

Las Vegas’ City Government Is Now Powered Entirely by Renewable Energy

Cloggie on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 12:46 pm 



Boulder Solar 1… the plant’s acres of solar panels

Nope twice.

The site btw is called “Nevada Solar One” and is located in/near Boulder City.

Furthermore it is NOT PV but CSP.

Picture:
http://tinyurl.com/hkdddn4

Map:
http://tinyurl.com/jq9meve

Anonymous on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 1:25 pm 



Ironic isn’t it that one of the least ‘sustainable’ cities in the amerikan desert, or maybe the world even, is used to make the misleading claim it is 100% powered by renewables.

Now, that that are running 100% on renewables(RoFL), maybe they can get to work on that little water problem I heard they have……

Apneaman on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 1:26 pm 



Solar is still BAU and BAU is well on it’s way to extincting the humans via extincting a long list of species they will die without. Currently estimated at 200 a day.

Tis true solar and wind have grown and will continue to, but it will not not halt or even slow the human cancer. Solar and wind are more cancer.

Here is robertscribbler getting all worked up and excited about the whole deal in the same way clogtard and his alt-right retard crew got worked up about Trump getting elected. All of it means nothing, changes nothing. There is nothing the humans can do to un-fuck themselves at this point.

This is What The Resistance Looks Like — Cities, States and Nations Run on 100 Percent Renewable Power

https://robertscribbler.com/2016/12/22/this-is-what-the-resistance-looks-like-cities-states-and-nations-run-on-100-percent-renewable-power/

Tell yourselves.

Apneaman on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 1:29 pm 



Hey, lets put up solar farms where the forests used to stand….solar forests. Do it for the children cancer parents.

California Forests Failing to Regrow After Intense Wildfires
Huge, destructive fires are more common with climate change, and the loss of regeneration threatens to exacerbate global warming.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21122016/california-forests-wildfires-climate-change

sunweb on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 1:49 pm 



Check this out for the future of solar to run the world. Amazing data.
https://www.shipmap.org

Davy on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 2:02 pm 



The city is close to water rationing and what’s in the news? a billion $ football stadium in the works. That is the kind of insanity one scratchs their head over.

onlooker on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 2:12 pm 



That is something to behold Sin city having so much energy but so little water and food.

penury on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 3:00 pm 



I used to hear, that figure never lie, but liars figure, Lately it seems that figures only mean what the authors want them to mean. I am not certain that in LV you can include “water” generated energy as a “re-newable”

oracle on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 3:20 pm 



Funny how it’s not possible to comment at Business Insider to point out their headline is a lie. Such is propaganda.

Midnight Oil on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 3:21 pm 



BS article….without the airlines, Las Vegas, would not “run”… It happens all across the board, selected rationalization.
Worst place to sit millions of people…should be a fun show when the tap runs dry

nocar on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 4:22 pm 



Yes, very misleading saying it runs on 100 percent renewable energy. What about all the cars?

Newfie on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 4:32 pm 



Lake Powell – the reservoir that powers the turbines in Hoover Dam that power the lights in Vegas – is going dry. So it’s not renewable.

Outcast_Searcher on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 6:00 pm 



So more flagrant greenwashing.

What does this even mean? What buildings AREN’T commercial OR residential? What is this? Government buildings?

And of course, let’s not forget all the cars, the jets, etc. that are part of the Las Vegas scene.

It would be a lot more useful to get actual honest articles that point out that they are, say, installing and using a lot more MW of solar power. They could even honestly point out what percentage of the city really runs on solar power.

But no, that wouldn’t be a “spectacular” but totally bullshit title.

makati1 on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 6:28 pm 



Only a small part of Vegas runs on ‘renewable’ power. The human bodies that work thee. All the rest depends on mother nature, who is laughing as she pulls its plug.

Only human arrogance would put a city in the middle of a desert. Articles like this are sponsored by the Vegas Real Estate sellers ans the casino owners to keep the sheeple from waking up and moving.

Like Midnight Oil, I’m going to enjoy watching the cluster fuck when the water runs out and the rats and snakes take over.

Joe D on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 7:29 pm 



“the plant’s acres of solar panels will provide 100% of the city’s municipal power, excluding commercial and residential buildings.”

So street lights and auto signals?

makati1 on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 7:38 pm 



Joe D, only if they are low wattage LEDs. lol

tk on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 9:13 pm 



I guess the paper and electronic hallucinations
is all that is left.

Reminds of some shit I read couple years ago
about Stuttgart being an ecofriendly sustainable
city… one of the worst “car flooded clusterfucks”
in Europe, afaik.

Reading that headline almost made me spit my
coffee over my notebook…

Btw the Saudi “belly up”-event aka
extinction event is mere weeks away…

Wait and see when those Saudi “cuts” arrive
in “western countries”…
takes a while (3-4 weeks?)
for “upstream events” to unfold “downstream”
(“downstream”=7.x billion humans=’markets’)

Happy December to all of you here. 🙂

Greetings from the giant Autobahn patch
called “ger-money”.

Boat on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 11:12 pm 



mak,

Let’s see your numbers mak. You have a history of talking smak with no proof. What is really going on in Vegas.

JR on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 11:45 pm 



Solar panels are not renewable energy. The deliberate misinformation regarding this will become more and more evident as oil use does not go down, but up, despite more installations and facilities using “renewables”.

Nor is renewable energy “sustainable” either. Nothing mined out of the ground, processed and manufactured with oil is sustainable.

None of these solar panels were created from renewable energy either. None were built by solar, wind or even hydro power. None will be maintained or replaced by solar, wind or hydro power. Oil will remain the only energy source that will build and maintain this civilization – until it collapses.

Everything else you have read on this topic is a lie.

JR on Fri, 23rd Dec 2016 11:49 pm 



“Here is robertscribbler getting all worked up and excited about the whole deal in the same way clogtard and his alt-right retard crew got worked up about Trump getting elected. All of it means nothing, changes nothing. There is nothing the humans can do to un-fuck themselves at this point.”

Scribbler is a fucking retard, too dense and obtuse to realize that his narrative is suicide for humanity (because it’s entirely false). That what you get from a fiction writer. Make-believe.

makati1 on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 12:03 am 



Baot, no numbers required for common sense and intelligence. Stop the planes landing in Vegas and it is dead. No commercial planr I heard of runs on electric or even renewable fuel. Ditto for the heavy car and bus traffic bring money into the desert. THAT is reality, not questioning numbers because you want to feel superior.

Cloggie on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 3:21 am 



Friday accidentally posts This is What The Resistance Looks Like — Cities, States and Nations Run on 100 Percent Renewable Power, without realizing that that site actually promotes renewable energy.

@sunweb – that map showing global shipping is indeed amazing. But your suggestion that in the eyes of the alt-energy proponents like me, we are going to have a plug-and-play replacement of fossil with alt-energy and the rest remaining the same, as if you are installing a new graphics card in your computer, is plain wrong. The world of the future is going to look vastly different from ours and far less globalized than today and with greatly reduced global shipping (and flying) and likely with strongly reduced income and wealth. The beauty of alt-energy is that it is generated mostly locally, with no shipping required. What Trump announced he will be doing with the revitalization of the US economy is a step in the right direction. Protectionism is good, because it reduces global trade, in line with ever reducing fossil energy budgets. Americans should drive in American, Japanese in Japanese and Europeans in European cars. If they should drive at all in the first place.

Davy on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 3:33 am 



“Scribbler is a fucking retard”. Well, JR, I think we are all retards in the end. We are all just a bag of shit once all our support systems shut down. Nobody here on this blog is more than a canary preaching and squawking. Real genius is rare and what is even rarer is wisdom to accompany that genius. Asshole attitudes abound on internet boards that allow it. That says volumes for human nature. How many assholes realize their arrogance because of their quiet and safe anonymity? Too many.

I read every Scribbler post. I skip his naïve and immature political positions. His climate change insight is first class. This is an important point today with the net and so much information available. We have to pan for that nugget of gold amongst the waste material. I mention this because his message of climate disruption and instability is valid and vital. Soon climate scientist will have actionable information directly relevant for local survival. It is vital we know what areas will be future dead zones for life. Location is the key to survival.

Cloggie on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 3:36 am 



“Here is robertscribbler getting all worked up and excited about the whole deal in the same way clogtard and his alt-right retard crew got worked up about Trump getting elected

You mean the tard crew that got elected and is now in power, that tard group?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtJvYdX4GKM

NWO exit, ROFL

The black chap at [1:29] is exactly right: “this is a white-lash against a changing country”. Well I got news for you, this country is going to change much more, change beyond recognition.

Michael Moore: “if Trump gets elected this will be the end of America”.

Moore is exactly right.

Cloggie on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 3:56 am 



Las Vegas is a tourist town in the middle of the desert. Soon it won’t be located in America anymore, since it is not in the Mississippi basin, the future homeland of European America:

http://tinyurl.com/ho93dbe

Here Las Vegas demographics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas#Demographics

The non-Hispanic white share is declining with more than 10% per decade; expect it to be reduced to 36% by 2020. After the coming global financial reset, planes won’t be flying to the city anymore. Bye-bye Las Vegas. It will soon be owned by Mexico (again). On this ancient map the Spanish speaking area matches everything West of the Mississippi basin:

http://tinyurl.com/h4ow32l

Demography is destiny.

Davy on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 4:07 am 



Clog, you amaze me because you skip over the getting from here to there. A world of the future looking vastly different and less globalized is not going to be a world able to make an energy transition of the type you believe in. The inconvenient reality of alt-energy is it is a global technology because of the economies of scale of global just-in-time manufacturing and finance. This situation is a prerequisite for a force of global energy transition to materialize. Localized energy transition will never self-replicate nor realize self-maintenance. Some areas may someday get close to a majority renewables but most will not that is the sad reality of limits to growth and a civilization in overshoot. Modern technology must have a global base with dynamics of economies of scale with healthy global finance nurturing it.

A logic that acknowledges decline then talks about growth of alternatives in a status quo way skips the part of paying for it. This is just more extend and pretend that is going on at the global level. It is proving a failure as anyone who has pretended and extended finds out eventually. Fantasy runs its course and dies a dearth of imagination. People need prosperity to grow technologies. Economies must have velocity of economic activity to grow and innovate. Declining world trade along with an increasingly nouveau trend of nationalism and protectionism is not consistent with growth and prosperity. You skip this part of the equation as if diffusion of growth will occur without basic economic conditions. This is a disconnect that is so often present with techno optimist.

We have the technology to do wonderful things we just don’t have an economic future to realize it. Systematically it takes many variables for a civilization to grow and prosper. Technology and energy are only part of the equation. Decay and decline are a momentum that is destroying the economy and social fabric. We are going to be hard pressed to maintain stability let alone transition a civilization to a new and more complex paradigm. If you think your little Northern Europe will do it alone then you are really obtuse. Northern Europe is wealthy because of global wealth transfer and comparative advantage as a hub of complexity. Global support is a must for energy transition and currently globalism is sick and dying.

Cloggie on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 5:14 am 



you amaze me because you skip over the getting from here to there. A world of the future looking vastly different and less globalized is not going to be a world able to make an energy transition of the type you believe in. The inconvenient reality of alt-energy is it is a global technology because of the economies of scale of global just-in-time manufacturing and finance.

I’m not buying into the idea that after a global financial reset, all of a sudden everybody is going to sit on his hands. When the dust settles we will be living in a different world indeed. And poor Americans and Europeans, used to work for 5000 dollar/euro per month, will have to do the same work for 1000 (PPP), boohoo. They’ll work anyway. We have enough fossil fuel, so that’s not going to be a limiting factor. The world has seen giant depressions, crashes, revolutions, world wars… but life continues, somehow.

In the worst case you can smelt the tens of millions of cars in Europe into tens of thousands of wind turbines.

We have the technology to do wonderful things we just don’t have an economic future to realize it.

I don’t believe that, but believing is something you do in the church. We’ll see. Besides we don’t have much choice anyway.

Northern Europe is wealthy because of global wealth transfer and comparative advantage as a hub of complexity.

Europe is wealthy because it is home of the European race, by far the most creative people on the planet, despite an almost total lack of resources.

http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/BwnCM9OCYAAJfu9-1-e1449202145292.png

Thank God we now have Russia.

Russian journalist holding up a placard yesterday during Putin’s annual press conference, completely unthinkable in Europe, yet:

http://tinyurl.com/z68ry65

Russia is ready for Paris-Berlin-Moscow and Eurosphere.

Welcome to the club, Russia.

Davy on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 5:46 am 



“I’m not buying into the idea that after a global financial reset, all of a sudden everybody is going to sit on his hands.” I am not buying into anything at this point just reality. I can’t connect the dots for your world, Clog. I hope things will fall into place but as I study globalism and the status quo ever more intimately I don’t see how we can do the things we do today without it.

Clog, you have wonderful discussions on technology and energy but you have yet to give me optimism with what makes everything possible and that is a human economy. You are very lacking on your economic narrative. In fact you skip that part as a given or a constant in your equation. Until you present a valid plan B for a global economic reset I am going to squash your optimism. Clog, nothing personal just the “Truth”.

Your technology and energy meme is fine. Where you are in denial and use fantasy is how we are going to pay for it. We can’t pay for what we have now properly with real and healthy global investment. I want to see how we are going to pay for all this new technology and energy transition with a new less potent economic situation. That statement is even optimistic because there are many indicators pointing to economic collapse without a global system of manufacturing and finance. An economic reset may not even be in the cards because we are not sure we can reset to anything resembling the status quo.

I see anything with significant complexity suffering an extreme reset. The same will be true of regions in population overshoot. We are heading for a rebalance that will cull population and complexity. The time frame and the process are beyond modeling but the direction is clear. I am all ears Clog so good luck and keep at it. I am not excited about being cold and hungry and that is what all of us are looking at soon. I would appreciate so real news with real optimism not just “pub talk”.

Kenz300 on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 5:59 am 



Wind And Solar Now Cheapest Unsubsidized Electricity Sources In The U.S. – First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ:FSLR) | Seeking Alpha

http://seekingalpha.com/article/4031497-wind-solar-now-cheapest-unsubsidized-electricity-sources-u-s

World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That’s Cheaper Than Wind – Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-15/world-energy-hits-a-turning-point-solar-that-s-cheaper-than-wind

Solar cheaper than natural gas and coal. Climate Change will be the defining issue of our lives.

makati1 on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 6:22 am 



“In the worst case you can smelt the tens of millions of cars in Europe into tens of thousands of wind turbines.”

Do the math Clog. Do the math. Do you know how many windmills it would take to melt ONE ton of scrap steel? You talk of millions of tons. Melting scrap is only ONE step in a multi-step process to get a windmill blade.
And how are you going to transport it?
Install it?
And where does the generator come from that will provide the electric from the wind? Recycled car generators?
And the tower.
And the base.
And the excavation.
And the road to haul the parts to the site.
And the truck to haul the parts.
And the crane to lift those tons in place.
And….

Yep. you are full of bullshit, as usual.

Cloggie on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 6:51 am 



Do you know how many windmills it would take to melt ONE ton of scrap steel?

Do you?

You are still stuck in the ASPO-2000 baloney.

Let it sink in that the entire peak oil narrative as per Heinberg is BS.

And melting iron doesn’t cost that much energy in a modern smelter where heat can be recuperated:

https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/11/f4/theoretical_minimum_energies.pdf

Let’s do the calculation, based on the (erroneous) assumption that we won’t have fossil fuel, far in the future.

Scrap iron: 1300 MJ/ton or 360 kwh/ton.

Assume a (meanwhile standard) 5 MW wind turbine:

5 MW = 5000 KW
to produce 360 kwh it takes 360/5000 = 0.07 hour = ca. 4 minutes

Latest Siemens light-weight 6 MW turbine:

http://www.energy.siemens.com/mx/pool/hq/power-generation/renewables/wind-power/6_MW_Brochure_Jan.2012.pdf

tower head 350 ton
tower (usually 60%) 525 ton.
Let’s say 1000 ton in total.

In order for a modern smelter to process 1000 ton scrap metal it takes 4000 minutes 5 MW wind turbine power or 66 hours or less than 3 days.

[snikker]

But the local collapse heroes never do these kind of calculations… as collapse is a foregone conclusion and call everybody not ready to dismiss an economy based on renewable energy a serial BS-er or techie dreamer.

I’ll carry those qualifications as a badge of honor, on par with “deplorable”.

makati1 on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 7:38 am 



Like I said, Old Man, melting the scrap is only ONE small step in the process from junk to a functioning windmill.

More steps:
Where does the firebrick for the smelter come from? Hint: Not recycled residential brick.
The scrap has to be hauled to the smelter which may be hundreds of miles away over trashed roads and bridges.
How is it loaded into the smelter? Anti-gravity?
Who provides the molds or the machines to mill the blades?
Polishes the blade??
Machines the holes and mounting brackets? (Makes the machines?)
Makes the bolts to mount the blade? (Not something you will salvage from junk.)
Trucks to haul the concrete to the site.

A concrete factory to make the concrete? (1 cy concrete = 1 bbl of oil energy equivalent. “NextEra Energy uses over 800 metric tons of concrete per wind turbine” That is ~400 cy of concrete. 400 bbls of oil equivalent energy required. 25+ truck loads that cannot go on dirt roads.

Do I need to go on and list the thousand other steps to getting ONE windmill in place and functioning?

It wouldn’t matter. you are too damned stupid to understand anyway.

Cloggie on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 7:43 am 



Between 2000-2008 the global share of scrap metal in steel production was 41%.

http://www.oecd.org/sti/ind/46584778.pdf

Interestingly most if not all of scrap metal processing is done in electric arc furnaces, in other words you can simply feed your wind turbine electricity directly in existing steel processing infrastructure.

http://bdsv.org/downloads/weltstatistik_2010_2014.pdf

The share of scrap metal in steel production:

USA – 70%
EU-28 – 54%
Japan – 33%
China – 10%

The countries with the highest recycling rate will need ever less ore until a saturation level will set in and very little ore will be required for those economies, as all the iron they will ever need is already mined and within their borders.

Cloggie on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 7:59 am 



Like I said, Old Man, melting the scrap is only ONE small step in the process from junk to a functioning windmill.

Listen, Very Old Man, I would say that melting scrap is the most energy intensive step by far in creating a wind turbine from scratch.

I calculated the melting process for you, now it is your turn to do some back on an envelope homework and support your bold claims rather than drawing your conclusion from your Allerwertesten.

Why don’t you begin with that part of the construction process that in your humble opinion would take the most energy and show me that windturbines can never produce enough energy for wind turbine production.

As they say during high school and university exams: Good luck, you may use a calculator for this exercise.

Hint: wind turbine EROEI is ca 20 and climbing, so that exercise would be futile anyway, because it has already been done. In other words 1 wind turbine can generate energy to build 20 others, based on economic life of 25-30 years, which is excessive conservative as the Eiffel tower already stands for 130 years and can easily stand another 2 centuries. In other words: these steel towers of modern wind turbines can also last for 100 years of longer.

Oldest windmill in the Netherlands and still functioning (for tourists) and build before 1441, that is before the discovery of America:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HwddedQTXc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafelijke_Korenmolen,_Zeddam

onlooker on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 9:13 am 



Here is something to chew on Techies. Look at the major hurdles to scaling up wind and solar.
1: Power Storage Is Incredibly Expensive On A Large Scale
2: The U.S. Power Grid Is Older, And Has Trouble Handling Solar And Wind
3: Rebuilding The Power Grid To Handle Solar And Wind Is Absurdly Expensive
4: Solar and Wind Don’t Provide Power At Useful Times
5: Solar And Wind Can’t Keep the Lights On By Themselves
6: The Best Places For Solar And Wind Are Usually Far Away From Consumers
7. Solar And Wind Are A Very Small Percent Of The Power Grid Despite Years of Subsidies
8: The Solar And Wind “Low-Hanging Fruit” Have Already Been Taken
http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/25/top-11-problems-plaguing-solar-and-wind-power/
Now, look at just what amount of building out of renewable infrastructure we are talking about.
In fact, at the global level, in order to shift away from a world that gets 81 percent of its energy from fossil fuels and to cut emissions of carbon dioxide to just 14 gigatons per year, here is what the International Energy Agency says will have to be built every year between now and 2050: 35 coal-fired and 20 gas-fired power plants with carbon capture and storage; 30 nuclear power plants; 12,000 onshore wind turbines paired with 3,600 offshore ones; 45 geothermal power plants; 325 million square meters-worth of photovoltaics; and 55 solar-thermal power plants. That doesn’t even include the need to build electric cars and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in order to shift transportation away from burning gasoline.
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/green_energys_big_challenge__the_daunting_task_of_scaling_up/2362/

onlooker on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 9:27 am 



Oh and the article is wrong:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2016/12/23/sorry-las-vegas-isnt-close-to-running-entirely-on-renewable-energy/#10602b514bfa

Norman Pagett on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 10:18 am 



the municipal buildings of Vegas are running on “renewables”
sheer bad journalism to say the entire city is

—totally wrong folks

Boat on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 10:26 am 



Onlooker,

Solar and wind can grow for a long time before having to worry about storage.
The new transmission lines going in all over the US have less electricity loss. They connect the customer to where the wind blows and the sun shines.
Why? In areas the price of a produced btu from wind and solar is simply cheaper. The price of that btu remains stable. FF prices and coal are very volitile.
Most of renewable growth is new demand and closing coal plants. A new coal plant has no fear at least for now. A new plant has the scrubbers and expensive pollution controls the older plants can’t afford.
Number 8 on your list is silly. As the price of solar drops there are millions of rooftops and acres available. Wind turbines are dramatically growing in size requiring less wind to compete effectively. Less wind needed increases the potential footprint.
Because of the enormity of electricity consumption of course it will take decades to realize high percentages of the market. But the trend of dropping prices will not end and the rapid growth of renewables will escalate. I will be here to walk you through the numbers. And, lol, I will be here to shame your support of the hills group. You’ll buy into any cock and bull doomer dream.

rockman on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 10:32 am 



Looker – Good list. And yet Texas makes it work. By spending $7 billion to expand the grid (overcoming some of your list), by keeping our lignite plants functional (more overcoming). And with solar costs coming down and millions of acres of fairly worthless land in the sun belt perhaps a good bit of “low hanging fruit” coming down the road.

As far as a low % that’s relative: at 10% of state consumption the alts have supplemented our demand as our economy boomed. Otherwise we would have had to build more fossil fuel fired plants. And during some very cold snaps it kept us from blackouts as the alts provided almost 40% of statewide demand.

IOW with the proper synergism and govt/consumer support the alts can represent a significant benefit. But it won’t happen with the public sitting on its ass waiting for someone to spoon feed them.

onlooker on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 10:47 am 



Maybe Trump should have chosen some people from Texas for key energy positions as Texas is leading by example. Yes Govt, the Business community and civil society ie. consumers have to all be behind Alternatives.

Cloggie on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 10:49 am 



Were to begin?

1: Power Storage Is Incredibly Expensive On A Large Scale

Really?

https://cleantechnica.com/2016/12/09/much-energy-storage-needed-solar-wind-powered-grid/

“The answer, of course, is storage. But not nearly as much as the cynics suggest. And at not nearly the cost.”

Industry predicts that in a few years time storage cost will come down to $100-200/kwh, which would solve the day-to-day storage needs.
For longer term storage or even seasonal storage you can use pumped hydro storage. Many mountain hydro-power stations already have this dual-mode installed, but many existing hydro-power stations could be “refactored” to add a pump-function at low cost, reusing reservoir, dynamo and pipe-system.

The link says that you don’t need storage until 40-50% renewable. How about realizing that first, shall we, before we begin to worry about storage.

As always with doomers, your “incredibly expensive” is not quantified. Why not give at least an estimation for a 100% renewable energy base?

2: The U.S. Power Grid Is Older, And Has Trouble Handling Solar And Wind
3: Rebuilding The Power Grid To Handle Solar And Wind Is Absurdly Expensive

Everything in life needs to updated, maintained, renewed. That applies to the roads, bridges, sewage system, an yes also the grid.

4: Solar and Wind Don’t Provide Power At Useful Times

That’s why you need storage (above 40% share of renewable).

5: Solar And Wind Can’t Keep the Lights On By Themselves

Why is that?

6: The Best Places For Solar And Wind Are Usually Far Away From Consumers

So what? Just increase the voltage and minimize losses.

7. Solar And Wind Are A Very Small Percent Of The Power Grid Despite Years of Subsidies

In the US but not in Europe. Scotland for instance aims at 100% renewable electricity by 2020. Denmark and Germany every now and then generate all electricity required.

8: The Solar And Wind “Low-Hanging Fruit” Have Already Been Taken

Absolute BS. How many roofs in the US have solar panels? 1%? 0.1%
Holland so far lagged behind in Europe with renewable energy but now plan to cram their share of the North Sea with wind parks in the coming years. And those are excellent windy locations.

Apneaman on Sat, 24th Dec 2016 11:05 am 



Boat, it’s cheap fracked gas what’s killing coal and yes there will be more wind and solar to come. Plenty of room for growth there.

Shale gas, not EPA rules, has pushed decline in coal-generated electricity, study confirms

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161007105548.htm