I been following tony for a decade..still feel like I’m one of the privileged few…I try to tell people but they still think I’m an alarmist ..🤦♂️ this revolution is gonna wake a lot of people up suddenly.. looking forward to this.nice one tony..👍👍👍
Agreed. I was so happy to discover him on one of Steven Mark Riley’s videos. I tried to share, but people just aren’t interested. So disappointing, I could listen to him for hours
Not a thing in this presentation was accurate. He completely falls flat on the storage issue, and without proper storage, solar is a major burden on the grid. Ask Germany and California.
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk You are absolute right, SWB is crap when you have to face a 'Dunkelflaute', 2 - 3 weeks in winter without sun and wind. No one would overbuild an energy system to meet such challenges. All these mega forecasts simply ignore basic principles of engineering and come from IT guys who compare the virtual world (where almost everything is possible) with the real world with physical limitations. The war in Ukraine, increased interest rates and expensive raw materials (cement and steel - needed in huge quantities for wind energy!) may cause the end for many subsidised energy projects. Poland and the Czech republic have installed phase shifting transformers on the grid coupling towards Germany to protect their 400 kV grid from German wind 'superpower' because these grids were never designed to cope with such loads. How long (and how much!) would it cost these countries to upgrade the 400 kV transmission system to handle the double or tripple load? 10 years? 15 years? 20 years? Germany has driven its 'Energiewende' for 23 years now and the results are quite disappointing. France: 50 to 80 g CO2/kWh Germany: 434 g CO2/kWh France is upgrading their older reactor to run up to 60, possibly up to 80 years! The amount of steel and cement is minimal compared to wind energy. Older windfarms are ready for decomission after the feed-in contract ends (after 20 years) and will meet a demolition master. They can't be operated with a profit if the electricity is sold at a market price. High energy prices, the rising AfD (alternative for Germany) and other issues will probably end the project 'Energiewende' (energy transition). Tony Seba will probably end like many future analysts - they disappear into oblivion. Prof. Philip Tetlock has analized 82.000 future predictions between 1987 and 2003 and found out: Future prediction does not work.
I know the purpose of this presentation isn't, and shouldn't be, to help with my mental health, but I've had my first real experiences with climate anxiety this year and I've been trying to find a way out of spiralling into despair, and watching these videos has really helped to give me hope for the future. Thank you.
@@quiriousone8270 ERM where I live it's very expensive. We are talking 25-50k I believe. Definatly far from zero. And the bureaucratic hurdles are insane.
@@Ample17 I didn’t say it costs $0. It’s $0 out of pocket which means the solar company will pull permits, for the engineering blueprints, install and activate the system all before you make a payment. You just start paying a monthly fee until the loan is paid off. And your loan will be cheaper than your prior energy bill.
The world is waking up thanks to you Tony. The turning point when enough people have this message clearly intact is approaching ! And there is no turning back thank God ! Generation On Demand !
Mind blowing presentation, every politician/decision maker should be made aware of Tony Seba's presentation. Super Power is mind blowing, i.e. it will change the world for the better!!!
Tony Seba extrapolating and further extrapolating the details. Explaining the almost endless possibilities of when power becomes so cheap it's almost free. And practically none of it can be held hostage by oil companies, aggressive nations and inevitable wars. Isn't that a liberating thought and what we've been waiting for all along?
What we need is one of the G7 nation to be fully transform itself to be dependent on solar for its 100% energy needs and that would be a game changer and will bring forth the multiplier effect like how Tesla did with its BEV.
A groundbreaking and historic presentation that every politician, economist and entrepreneur should watch and understand. The first question they will ask is are the cost curve projections robust, so far everything Tony has predicted has been very accurate. The effects of intermittent but superabundant, marginal cost zero energy will be profound: power grids will soon become pointless outside city centres and heavy industry, in the long term for heavy industry too, which will tend to relocate to the sunniest or windiest places. New nuclear power projects with fixed cost contracts should all be abandoned. National priorities should be to secure a slice of battery production capacity at or near the cutting edge of falling costs, and scale up solar and wind capacity quickly. Desalination will transform coastal desert economies and ecosystems. Legislation controlling LED light pollution even more urgent as floodlights will be free. Mined cryptocurrency will boom. Electric scooters and bikes and autonomous frequent buses or battery-powered trams best transport solution for denser towns than cars, even robotaxis are space inefficient. Metro for inner cities, high speed rail for medium / long distance corridors. The congestion threat from marginal cost near zero EVs, autonomous or not, will need a policy response. The Netherlands already shows what you can do with bikes, they are going to get cheaper and hills won’t matter. The implications go on and on, and on. Food for thought.
Tony has been proven right time & time again. I first stumbled across his work about a decade ago & as someone already involved with a community energy project, the numbers immediately made sense to me... sadly my fellow project workers thought I was mad & even after watching him, they didn't get it. Yet here we are a decade later and everything he predicted back then, has happened on schedule.
Ive had a 3.5KW DIY solar setup since 2014. Ive never been without power for my appliances when the grid goes down. I recently upgraded from Lead acid to LIFEPO batteries and get even better capacity. Solar just makes sense as its also near zero maintenance.
Such a legendary presentation sir. This video, in the next 10 years will be even more legendary. A prior presentation a year ago about SWB super power is already amazing but given analyses of just 3 states of the U.S. may not meaningful enough in my opinion but analyses in a scale of countries like what you do now is very meaningful to me now. Good analogy on AWS too. The future of energy is clean energy, UNDOUBTEDLY.
Awesome as usual Tony. Keep up the good work. I think more have started to see the change and are looking to understand and you will help them understand the big picture.
Should I point out the Tesla impact report? (Paraphrasing.... Page 5?) "Between 2012 and 202, Tesla Solar (sold?) Produced substantially more energy than was used by all Tesla factories, and all other Tesla facilities, *and* by all charging of all Tesla vehicles over that period" . It's a perfect demonstration of the fact. Tesla "Superpowered"
and yet, Solar City was unprofitable and needed to be bailed out by Musk using Tesla money (to the howls of investors) who is incidentally the cousin of Solar City founders.
Beautiful Tony. While I have been following you for over a decade and you have said everything here before this is a really well paced extraction and presentation. What is so impressive is your earnest measured style without the use of technical words makes it understandable to a wide audience.👍
@@yomanyo327 By no means solar will provide a significant amount of power in central/northern Europe between November and February. I've got 19 Panels on the roof and in winter the battery inverter/charger stays in the 'idle' position, the panels can't even match the ordinary demand, roughly 90% is coming from the grid. This '100% SWB' is a giant myth, nothing more. Impractical and utopian, no one will overbuild capacity the meet the demand at any time of the year. Wind energy might be dead in Europe, rising interest rates and expensive raw materials have caused wind farms to loose bids on the enrgy market. In Austria, Denmark, Sweden and the UK the price per MWh wind energy (crap on the grid, non dispatchable) won't be sold for less than 83 to 95 €/MWh on new projects - short term (Batteries) and long term (Power-to-Gas) storage *not included* as well as the *grid upgrade*. Nuclear is the way to go, simple answer.
He will just copy and paste this video to his channel and add some of his comments repeating Tony's points 😅 but probably SMR making alot more money that Tony himself from the video
I'm curious. At the ~15m mark he is saying Germany can do it but currently Germany just went back to burning coal after their solar and wind capacity, rated at ~200% of peak demand needs, failed to supply the necessary power. Is the difference all down to storage?
Most likely the answer is yes. There is not enough utility scale storage in many places including Germany. As battery prices keep dropping massive battery storage units will drop in price and also be able to hold more energy as energy density also increases in those newer batteries. Currently Tesla produces Megapacks at their new factory in Lathrop, California. They have a two year backlog. Tesla also recently announced they are building another Megapack factory in Shanghai due to start production in 4 qtr 2024 also with a 10,000 unit/year capacity like the Calif. factory.
Had a guy come to my house to quote me on roof top solar. Said with financing it would be $80k to cover me for a $300 month electric bill. No batteries. Even with the subsidy it would take 20 years to pay for without any problems/repairs/degradation of panels. If someone could do it for 25K cash I would put panels on my house. 80k is crazy.
Best to think of building your own power plant using the forever free fuel source on your own property which Will pay for itself. Your utility Energy BillS will Never be paid off!! They will just Increase at utility rate Inflation...and the Bills will be due til you die. Owning a Solar PV system is the best investment for a biz or homeowner because it Eliminates rising utility electric costs. Once, it may be a decade+, yourowned plant install cost, is paid off PV power sys. will be PAYING YOU monthly (becomes a Positive Cash flow to you!) ...since the then even Higher utility bill you Would be paying...is Gone!! A hundred dollars not spent is a hundred $$$ Saved & that money still in your bank account🌻🌅🗽
This is the reason I am fully invested with confidence in the renewable space many years ago , very happy with my selection….brilliant as usual , thanks
Could someone please help me answer the following questions: 1. What happened if there is no, or very little sun for many weeks? Caused by I.a a rare weather phenomenon or volcanic eruption? Would we need a fossil fuel back-up plant? 2. Has he considered the shortage of rare earth materials used for battery production which we are likely to meet around mid decade? Thanks
Not rare earths but battery metals: Lithium, Nickel, Cobalt, Graphite, 100’s of mines needed. Expecting it to happen, but still waiting for the first BIG catalyst. Something like Tesla becoming a big time battery metals miner, as Musk just announced in an interview with Ron Barron.
I guess this would be the Alaska alternative. I live in Sweden, which have a climate similar to Alaska, and during a winter month such as December the output from my solar panels is less than 10 % of the summer output. It’s nothing. And often, there is no wind. I am an admirer of Tony Sheba’s work, but for other parts of the world than sunny Texas, I don’t see any realism in wind, solar and batteries only. The power system needs additional sources such as hydropower or nuclear power. Plus the stability that large, rotating, heavy turbines give which is essential to keep the frequency stable.
My experience of GOD was the price of memory. I paid $100 per Meg of ram for my first PC, I now upgrade my phone giving away 128 gig of memory. Imagine Tony telling me 'on day you will give away memory as it's so cheap" on recept of my 286 PC 20 years ago.
The example I often use to help explain this to people is solar panels. In the 70s, a residential solar panel cost $1000 per watt (pre-installation costs); today it is around $1/w pre-installation. That's a 1000x decrease in price over 50 years. Batteries for energy storage, and EVs are just at the beginning of that steep price decline. By the time 2025-2030 are here, people literally won't be able to afford internal combustion engine cars anymore, and EVs will be vastly cheaper.
@@AMortalDefiant No one will WANT an ICE car and folks buying new ICE today will be stuck with them (stranded asset). I think about that every time I see a new ICE with temp tag.
@@AMortalDefiant What about the notion broadcasted by many a commenter that EV's only breakeven on cost and emissions after 80k miles, and batteries need replaced at 100k miles at $8-20K? In 2022 production reality how do construction emissions actually compare for ICE an EV? Purchase pricing usually favors the ICE car though operating costs for fuel and maintenance is higher. Most will say ICE cars last longer and EV's battery degrades or dies too soon making overall EV efficiency to low, too costly, and too polluting. I want to believe Tony but solid data is hard to find and verify.
Hi @tonyseba been following you since 2015, always a pleasure to hear your thoughts. Rethinkx and youtube always a great way to hear knowledgable informed thoughts. I am both scared and excited about the future, and I really hope it will be as you describe without burning fossil fuels.
Such a profound implications video. Mr Seba refurbushing his ideas. Nice. Brilliant. It will be interesting to see which major economy will first achieve 100%. I bet on California, in 2039 what do you think?
Look at Germany, we are collapsing with Superpower 😢 The grid is one major factor. We have up to three weeks in winter without sun and without wind. Nobody can pay the batteries needed.
Actually wind is the strongest in winter, at least in Germany. There is also biofuel. Biofuel has to fill the gaps when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine.
@@hg6996 Biofuel is just a mere drop in the ocean. I do not reject Superpower. We run three EVs, have two solar generators on the roof (27kWp, 22kWp) and run two house batteries @ 39kWh and 42kWh. But north of the 35th parallel you need nuclear power for the winter.
@@UnterBlog Bekanntermaßen ist die Atomkraft in Deutschland keine Option mehr. Überdies ist sie eine endliche Ressource, die so viele Nachteile birgt, dass sie niemand mehr will. Man muss ja nur nach Frankreich gucken. Flamanville ist dasselbe finanzielle Desaster wie es in Finnland Olkiluoto und in der UK Hinkley Point C sind.
He should also show his model on winter days where they dont have solar so we can see where the energy is coming from, I assumed it had to come from arizona and the sunny states?
Amazing. Still waiting for the shoe to drop on land prices and therefore housing when we get rid of most carparks with the advent of Robotaxis which won't need to park anymore as they will be constantly on the move.
@@roryscott9872 Not exactly.My thinking is that the reason houses are expensive is based largely on the availability of land and particularly in cities land is at a premium and therefore property.Since carparks take up huge amounts of land in cities what would happen if we didn't need them due to Robotaxis.Tony Seba has already discussed the disruption to the design of cities generally if this were to happen but the specific disruption to land prices and housing hasn't been mentioned anywhere to my knowledge . Logically creating a huge additional supply of land in cities would put huge downwoods pressure on land and housing costs based on simple supply and demand economics.
Lets see if we ever get to spend only 1cent per kilowatt-hour. Maybe, but then 1$ on delivery and distribution 🤣🤣🤣😎 Our people in power always want to milk us!
@@Gallardo6669 So, let me get this straight, the reason you think the people in power are tyrants is because you think they're going to introduce a tax that no one has mentioned? Damn, and I thought I was paranoid.
Awesome Part 3 tony. I wonder if you will/could create a video showing what the SWB impact is and will be for China. In some way one could believe that China read your 2010 papers and books and began building SW and now try to catch up on B. How will the economy and the influence in the world change with China being far ahead in SWB development and installation?
Great presentation and excellent points. I look forward to seeing more details about superpower; for example: desalination water stations at the coast; steel production, or how about low cost EV-chargers?
It's nice to be an influencer because you get a lot of positive feedback of the people that agree with you and the ones that don't simply will ignore you. But the politicians that try to realize this vision get a lot of flack because then the rubber meets the road. So if you are really into this vision please show some more support for the politicians that try to realize this. And respect them for coming up with a compromise that at least gets us partly on the right track. Too many times they get the flack from all sides, some who think they go too far, others think they don't go far enough. Being an influencer is easy, being a decision maker is way harder.
If unsubsidized, solar is half the cost of coal, then why after shopping three companies, it's $55k cash (or $76k loan financed for 20 years) for a system (27.5kW size producing 28.9kW annually, NO battery storage) for which the sun will produce only 40% of my December consumption, while producing 250% in June. That is the system we ARE installing in early 2023. It provides a 4-6% IRR WITH the 30% credit -- a huge negative return without the credit, which is a terrible allocation of capital either way. We're doing it because we care about the environment. An entire region would be subjected to the same equation, because it gets the same sun, and wind in Kentucky is hardly capable of putting a dent into winter production, according to all the folks who sell turbines and tell me my production expectations in one of the most ideal locations should be very low. So my house scales to represent my region from a production-consumption standpoint (please explain if you think that is incorrect), which means, my house system would need to be 250% the size, AND require storage (our system would be about $175k cash, $241k financed). Our region therefore would need capacity to produce about 500-600% in our best months to cover our worst. So either Tony's claims are totally bogus/misrepresented, OR the immoral dirty energy companies are FAR more fair on pricing than clean energy companies. With battery backup, a self-sustaining system in this region is 400-500% times the cost of coal as an end consumer, not 50% LESS than the cost of coal as he claims. Someone has a lot of explaining to do if the costs should be 10-20% of what's being offered to home owners. That is a 500-1000% markup. A CASH price for the right sized system, installed, and serviced would cover 48.6 years of my dirty coal. Who wants to pay for a lifetime of energy, upfront??? Green washing? Or solar isn't ready yet?
The unsubsidized solar is a utility scale calculation, not residential rooftop/groundmount financials based. I think the assumption that 'An entire region would be subject to the same equation..." may therefore be inaccurate. Check your numbers re '27.5kw producing 28.5kw annually' as they don't seem to make sense. Production is in kWh not kw. Our 16.6kw system produced 56.8kWh in just one November day last week. I expect you know of and will be benefiting from Net-metering. If so, the grid is acting as your energy 'bank' except during grid outages. Your 250% June production will be supporting your 40% Dec production. It's almost like having an off-site battery but not quite. Your solar production, regardless of the time of year, is ultimately benefiting the grid. Is your system sized to include annual energy needed for EVs? The pay off is greatly accelerated when marrying solar and EVs. Our 16.6kw system has already paid for itself in just a few years' time, we are not subject to energy or gasoline price fluctuations and the system has another 20+ years of free service. One could say we paid for our energy upfront and we are also reaping the benefits financially while contributing to the clean energy disruption future.
@@bluebiplane thanks for the response! I'll response to your points/questions 1. Good call on the system size and production, I had mistakes on it. Our system size will be 23.4 kW and it is predicted to produce 28,873 kW hours (kWh). That's an average of 79.1 kWh per day . . . probably 110 kWh/day in the summer and 50 kWh/day in winter. This is in Kentucky, with a completely unobstructed ground mount. Where are you located? Your array size to production is more favorable. 2. Totally understand the net metering. Again, with 30% credit (which will take me two years) and a 15 year 0.99% financing, the IRR is between 4 and 6%. If I paid cash, my payback period would be 13+ years. Hardly a responsible financial investment, especially considering this is not a risk-free investment. A 10-15% hurdle would be more appropriate. This works because of creative financing gimmicks. It only makes sense to me, because I intend to pocket the credits, which means I'm borrowing money for 15 years at 0.99% -- that's a no brainer. Without that, this is basically a wash and a donation to cleaner air. By the way, my assumption assumes my net metering is $1 for $1 (practically unheard of), so the most favorable scenario. There is risk that that does not sustain, which makes sense, because someone has to pay to upkeep the grid since my huge investment is far too small to be self-sustaining. The angle I'm approaching this from is questioning Tony's 100% claim, which means net metering doesn't apply exactly the same -- there's no coal to subsidize the system at night and in the winter, which is why net metering works. Coal produces consistently and predictably every day of the year. If every consumer did what I did, and created a 100% solar grid, we'd only have 40% of the power we needed in December. Every consumer in my region is subjected to the same production-consumption calculation, and the array must cover the dynamic in December, when consumption is twice as high and production is twice as low than in June. This means there must exist 58.5 kW in the grid, plus storage to cover fluctations, to provide for my needs in December. That array is 250% larger than the one I am about to purchase, PLUS, battery storage (Tony says 30-90 hours -- I say he's never experienced a week of rain). Since every consumer in my region has the same sun, my array production is a proxy model that can be scaled for any size and any number of consumers in it -- in December, there is not excess production anywhere, because there's no extra sun anywhere, and we can't store the excess from June, the way a credit on my bill from summer solar production can purchase kWh of coal production in the winter. [Based on my research, wind is not a big enough factor in my region (2-5%), so let's just focus on solar and battery only.] If (big IF?) the regional system has the same pricing that I do, this model is prohibitively expensive, and inefficient -- where does all the excess summer energy go when we only have 1-3 days of storage and we're producing multiples of what we need? So from a practical, boots on the ground perspective, how is the claim being made that solar is 1/2 the cost of coal, when the economics being subjected to consumers suggest that a 100% independent system would be twice the cost of coal, and wind can't explain this 400% discrepancy. I'm very curious to see the details and assumptions behind Tony's calculations per kWh. Something is not translating to the real world. If this were true, the demand for solar would be spiking . . . and we'd quickly create a supply imbalance until prices closed in on the competing resources (in which case, he claim could never really be true). Right now, I posture that prices are TWICE that of coal for a consumer -- they are for me. So something in Tony's figures is vastly different as an end consumer, and end consumers make the decisions. If it's not true for us, then it's not true. Maybe this is like arguing mass vs weight with a physicist -- they say it's different, but for people on Earth, it's not. If Tony is correct at some theoretical level, then my suspicion is the financers and installers are inflating prices to create a 10, 15 or 20-year model that makes consumers save a bit more than their monthly bill, bundle it with the summation of 30 years of savings and lots of pretty pictures and it sounds like a deal -- net metering is quite a used-car salesmen business. The value of my savings in year 30 has an NPV of about $0. Why else would a cash price be $50k to the installer and a financed price be $75k to the installer. Huh??? . . . someone's getting a kickback? If Tony is stating facts at some level, then some entities are really sticking to early adopters, who in my region must rely on coal, and the % of solar cannot exceed 20% of the grid, because anything over that amount and there's nothing left for the energy company to buy from you in June and not enough production in the winter without scaling the coal. 3. We have not gone to EV yet. I'm not sure when we'll get to that point -- I haven't done that math in about 10 years when gas was about $2/gal, but imagine it's a lot different with diesel at $5/gal and gas at $4/gal. We drive about 30k miles per year, averaging about 25 mpg, so figure we buy 1,200 gallons . . . which is about $300-400/month (in comparison, our electricity bill avgs about $300). The EPA says a gallon of gas is 33.7 kWh. I'd have to produce 40,440 more kWh (on top of 28,873) . . . that sounds like a razor thin return. Although, I don't know if 1,200 gallons from old cars translates 1:1 to new EVs. If I used 30 mpg or 35 mpg things look better . . . on the margin, higher returns than I can get from the system I'm buying for the house. 4. Bonus material: :) All the experts and salespeople say a wind turbine is a waste of my money here at the top of a hill in KY, but I will be getting one anyway . . . in the name of science and curiosity, but my expectations are that I'll be throwing money away.
Here in Antigua Barbuda we have discovered that Sunshine is cheaper than gasoline and we have no shortage of sunshine. Scientia Non Domus, (Knowledge Has No Home) antiguajohn
awesome!! this confirms my suspicion a few months ago, calculating what is needed for running 24/7 air conditioner. long story short, I found that it doesn't make sense for plenty batteries but overbuild a combination of solar and wind and dump the excess electricity!
Thank you so much Tony ! Of course you know this, but, I promise that everything you say here will be exceeded and the line will be much steeper than even what we've fathomed so far ! First time in history and may it be forever this time. And of course, it will be !
I have not followed or heard of Tony until recently. But listening to his talks, assessing the subject matter, and seeing that this particular talk is in San Francisco - the home of silicon valley, I cannot help but wonder if he is 'the chicken or the egg'. What I mean is, he is literally articulating a blueprint to technologists on how to profit from disruption. It's kind of like what engineers are doing with hollywood movies. Creatives make up a vision of the future, and visionless engineering types go get to work on it. Case in point, the movie iRobot. RObots were at a theater near you and are now coming to your town. Here Tony is giving silicon valley a road map of what to target. Some may say he is a visionary that saw it coming. Maybe so. But being out there speaking and writing about it puts ideas in the heads of software and hardware engineers looking for project ideas, right? So, who is the chicken, and who is the egg? It may have happened anyway. But he is providing finer focus to the path forward. So is he architect or keen observer?
The Greedy are not going to share. On energy bills now there are charges that are not for energy. In the summer my gas bill is 80% non gas charges and 20% gas. If electricity was free people would not use other polluting types of energy. Places that import oil and gas have the most to gain by going Solar.
Man, I’ve only started watching Tony Seba. Now I’m binge-watching his presentations. I wish I had known about him earlier. Shout out to Electric Viking for clueing me onto Tony.
Ty for this and your other series on disruption Seba. Can you share any information on the impact upcoming labour disruption (bots) will have and what the timelines for this may take place? My concern is, if the past is any indicator, ie. cars replacing horses. Then I'm wondering what is to become of people when bots replace humans in a meaningful capacity to the economy, ie. 80%+ of all work is performed by bots. I will be very interested to hear your take on this disruption inparticular as it seems to be approaching fast from the horizon.
Tony hits the nail on the head: we have the technology to mitigate the climate crisis, we only lack the political will to implement it. C'mon, world leaders: tell the petrol "pushers" what they can do with their "drug."
This of course applies only to electricit production, grid electriciy prices are a completely different field. Wholesale grid price is dependant on the most expensive poducer on the grid at any time. the instantaneous grid pice is raied untill enough producers find it economic to switch on and everyone gets that price so cheap solar is raking in the money during those periods and the consumers pay the sku high price. It will not be until enough cheap reneables are produced to keep ethe expensive producers off the grid that peak periods with high prices shorten that consumers will see a reduction in their bills.
What when solar panels are covered with snow? Snow-melting solar panels would have to be used. Everyone around me uses normal solar panels without the snow-melting feature.
Incredible as always! I think he would benefit from updating his charts and graphs in terms of readability like they do on visual capitalist, as his ones takes awhile to process and look dated
I've been a big fan of Tony Seba. However, I'm troubled by these two assertions (at around 4:35): 1) solar panels can be used in place of structural plywood 2) solar panels are already less expensive than structural plywood Any links to this project in Australia?
US is way behind on the next generation of wind turbines. These are giant sized wind turbines anchored off shore. Goldwind’s GWH252-16MW intelligent wind turbine has a rotor diameter of 252 meters (827 feet). It also has a swept area of around 50,000 square meters (538,195 square feet) - the equivalent of seven standard football pitches. The turbine’s hub is 146 meters (479 feet) high - that’s as tall as a 50-story building. It is located at sea. The 16 MW wind turbine was installed in June 2023 at the Zhangpu Liuao Phase 2 offshore wind farm in the southeastern Fujian Province and came online on July 19. It’s blades adjust in real time and can rotate in hurricanes force winds unlike traditional wind turbines which lockdown in high winds.
At what battery cost per KWh, the solar energy (production + storage) becomes cheeper than traditional energy ? Currently Solar energy is already cheaper when when you add storage to it, its littel higher. That is why Coal fired plant is still running (purticularly during evening and night)
Warren Buffet had recently invested in Wind.... Just saying. Batteries.... You could hit a 1000x company, but it's a lottery (maybe) Solar? I suppose if you put "$1" into 50 companies and a couple make it big, you're laughing?
@@PassportGaming Absolutely, but there will probably be multiple companies operating in that space. American Battery Technology Company is publicly traded.
The price of electrisity would fall as the production increases. That means the investments becomes less profitable. At some point the investments become negligible. I think that point is well below super-capacity! Battery storage is the bottleneck. The build up will therefore take longer than a rough calculation says. And theres a competition with BEVs for batteries. Battery prices therefore won't fall as predicted. One way to get overcapacity, especially in battery storage, would be to price electricity higher when battery capacity is diminished.
Then there's the geopolitical ramifications for the "old system" (monetary) since it's based on a .... "Non Solar economy"? The Equatorial countries, often poor, will not only suddenly be rolling in abundant energy, but won't need to buy the "old energy". . Any of the old guard not recognising the change will not only be out of the new game, but will lose the "old energy income". Far reaching consequences?
Yes, it's amazing and the government's have to weaned off the perks for not doing. The planning laws designed and forced by the corporations would have to change. And stop subsiding oil, that's still happening in tricky ways. So individual house owners can start and not on roofs if possible as then there's maintenance costs.
Why is electricity prices still going up tremendously during the past 6 months, when solar power is so cheap? What are the key reasons for this to happen? Expensive electricity storage required for solar power? Inadequate or expensive electricity storage? Monopoly by utilities? 3-5 fold excess solar & wind power with battery storage currently provide the least cost electricity generation, due to the current high cost electricity storage. The current high electricity prices, despite very low solar electricity cost is puzzling to me.
Maybe it's just greed, covid and war related supply chain factors raise prices of goods/services so Utility companies join the bandwagon without adequate reason or explanation.
You're right, it is insane, because it will never happen. I'm old enough to remember when nuclear energy was promoted as being able to provide power that would be too cheap to meter.
Here in Denmark we have periods, when wind and solar delivers so much energy, the the cost for the actual kWh is negative. So expanding that capacity as Tony describes seems like a no-brainer. Excellent video. Using batteries is not the only way to store the excess energy. I got the following off ChatGPT: Flow batteries, also known as redox flow batteries, are a type of rechargeable battery that stores energy in two separate liquid electrolytes. Here's a detailed explanation of how they work: ### Components and Structure 1. **Two separate electrolyte tanks:** - Flow batteries have two separate tanks, each filled with a liquid electrolyte. One tank contains an electrolyte with a positively charged redox pair (e.g., Vanadium(V)), while the other contains an electrolyte with a negatively charged redox pair (e.g., Vanadium(II)). 2. **Electrolyte cells:** - Between the two tanks, there are a series of cells where the energy conversion takes place. These cells consist of two halves separated by an ion-selective membrane. 3. **Ion-selective membrane:** - The membrane allows specific ions to pass through, maintaining the charge balance while keeping the two electrolytes separated. 4. **Pumps:** - Pumps are used to circulate the liquid electrolytes from the tanks through the cells and back to the tanks. ### Operating Principle 1. **Charging:** - During charging, an electric current is passed through the cells, causing a redox reaction in the electrolytes. This reaction changes the chemical energy in the electrolytes to electrical energy. The positive electrolyte is oxidized, and the negative electrolyte is reduced. 2. **Discharging:** - During discharging, the reverse process occurs. Electrolytes are pumped again through the cells, but this time, the stored chemical energy is released as electrical energy. The positive electrolyte is reduced, and the negative electrolyte is oxidized. ### Advantages of Flow Batteries - **Scalability:** - The energy capacity can be easily scaled by increasing the size of the electrolyte tanks without changing the number or size of the cells. This makes flow batteries ideal for large-scale energy storage. - **Long lifespan:** - Flow batteries can have very long lifespans because the chemical reactions occur in the liquid electrolytes, which can be easily replaced or regenerated. - **Safety:** - Since the energy is stored in liquid form outside the cells, the risk of thermal runaway or fire is much lower compared to traditional batteries. - **Quick response:** - They can respond quickly to changes in load and can deliver large amounts of energy in a short time. ### Challenges - **Complexity:** - The system requires pumps and pipes to circulate the electrolytes, which can make installation and maintenance more complex. - **Cost:** - The costs of materials and system components can be high, although the cost per energy unit can be lower on a large scale. Flow batteries represent a promising technology for future energy storage, especially in grids with a high share of renewable energy sources, where flexibility and large energy capacity are crucial.
Solar capacity in winter is very low. You need months of storage, not a couple of days. Or maybe that was somehow accounted for in your calculations in which case it is rather strange that you didn't discuss it. Either way, it makes this proposal very dubious at best.
@@gilian2587 Exactly, so might be worth mentioning it in this talk. He did talk about it in other presentations, but I don't remember it being convincing.
@@prins424 I have seen charts that show the cost of Lithium Ion Battery storage went from $7500 per kWh in 1991 down to it's current value of $151 per kWh in 2023. If it drops to be less than $10 per kWh -- that would be a breakpoint where wind-solar-battery storage systems will start to be cost competitive with coal, natural gas, and nuclear power.
I have been trying to do this math for my state of Georgia for a while. Georgia has 4.3 gigawatts of production but uses more than it produces. It buys about 15% of its electricity. If we built about 3 times that in solar that would be say 14 gigawatts of solar farm. Three times may be overkill since we already get 70% of power from hydro, but we'll go with that. New solar farms around here average about to 11 or 12 acres per megawatt of installed capacity. But if we accept industry standard of 15 acres per megawatt that would be 210,000 acres of solar. Yeah that sounds like a lot. Its about 330 square miles. But actually its just a little more than ½ of 1% of Georgia's land area. The current cost of solar farms are about $1 a watt, so $14 billion for 14 gigawatts of solar farm. Georgia has two new nuclear plants being built at plant Vogal that are years and years behind schedule and way over budget. They are currently looking to cost twice the amount of such a solar farm or about $30 billion. Of course with solar we still need to buy batteries, about another 4 billion for a three day backup. Interesting stuff. PS. We have cheap power now,... about 10.5 cents per Kilowatt hour. But I bet it goes way up the minute they fire up those 2 new nuclear plants. Can finally start charging us for them.
Greetings from Germany. This would be good news for Germany's future. Unfortunately the government currently in power is rather clueless. It may take them quite some time before the message goes through to them.
Yep! And we just have to get rid of all the corruption from the fossil energy industry and from ruzzia! That‘s the real problem here in germany. Solar, wind and batteries are not wanted by the energy industry, and was not wanted by the former governments, including the Kohl and Schröder and the Merkel government because of a systematic, large scale corruption. And i don‘t see that Scholz is going this way. They are already telling us that we need to import gas and „clean hydrogen“ so we will be dependent of regimes like the arabs, ruzzia or iran. 🤮
Germany is the best example of how to ruin a former prospering economy. What many ignore is the system cost of a whole electrical supply system, that's more than cheap solar and wind* power. The grid needs spinning/instantaneous reserve of large synchronous machines to provide stability and frequency control. Wind and sun do not deliver this, meanwhile Denmark and northern Germany are a bit short on this, a massive short circuit on a 400 kV busbar at a substation can cause a significant outage, according to an analysis from Transnet BW. The grid itself needs massive reactive power and the ability from power plants to control reactive power. A 400 kV cable across Berlin needs impressive 110 Mvar, without that the voltage would collapse. Any grid has to be able to perform a black start, wind and sun cannot do this, they require and external supply to be able to be synchronized. Adding renewables always means to build two generation systems, one for good weather and one for bad weather. Since the pandemic and the war in Ukraine things changed that will lead to Germanies failure: 1. No cheap and plentiful Russian gas for backup plants (that are not even fully built). 2. Increased interest rates making financing difficult. 3. Increased material prices which are almost the death sentence for mineral intensive generation equipment. Wind uses per installed MW 6 to 9 times the amount of copper compared to nuclear. China refuses unrefined copper from South America due to the high amount of arsenic (!) Waste - often in the ratio 1:1. 4. No feasible storage capacity. Battery prices have reached a stable level over the last two to three years. Grid level storage for more than a couple of hours will possibly be forever too expensive, other methods like storing excessive power via compressed air or in molten salts have a too low round trip efficiency. 4. Low EROI. Renewables are in many places comparable to agriculture in 1850 with no machines. 98% of the population has worked in agriculture back then because it was so demanding. *wind energy seems to be widely unable to be run without subsidies in Germany, I highly recommend this: NZZ Windkraft in Deutschland. Große Versprechen, kleine Erträge. Germany fails again because people are afraid of resisting against government interference, they are very subject to authorities and lack critical thinking. If this path would be so successful it would have been copied by France, but they go nuclear. Bulgaria has ordered two Westinghouse AP-1000 units for 14 Billion € (fixed price). Cheap for a power source that will last 80 years. Energy policy is made for decades, not short term decisions. Finland has built a final deep storage for a couple of Billion €, it is possible to do. Meanwhile the first plants in the US are licensed to operate 80 years. It will take Germany a couple of years to recognize this mistake, many industries will leave. But Prof. Lesch, Claudia Kemfert, Marcel Fratzscher and children book author Robert Habeck will sell it as a success to the people. Don't get me wrong, solar panels and battery storage will work on private homes, we have done it as a DIY project. But powering industrialized nations in the northern hemisphere with renewables is economic suicide.
So I did a quick calculation for Germany (360.000 km2) The sheet says it needs 180 GW of wind capacity alone and that is no less than 60.000 on-shore wind turbines of 3 MW each (current technology). That is one wind turbine for every 6 km2 of Germany. That is without solar capacity which is even more. Imagine that (and think again).
Upgrading the 380 kV grid is costing Germany according to their "grid development plan" 237 Billion €, the 110 kV grid needs a triple Billion € investment. The costs for medium (20 kV) and low voltage (0.4 kV) levels cannot be summed up centrally since there are 600 operators. N-ERGIE Netz GmbH estimates 1 Billion € for their area around Nuremberg with 1,318,912 residents supplied. That's 758€/customer extra (!) just for the local grids! I know what many will vote for - the populist AfD. "Just make it stop!" The planned all electric soceity will never happen that way and the energy transition will be brought to a more reasonable path with nuclear power. I think Tony Seba has not looked at the big picture, only at dropping cost curves and even they are not true, Wind energy became more expensive in the recent years. Why? Sun and wind are medieval sources of energy with a super low energy density requiring vast amounts of raw materials to be constructed. Since covid and the war in Ukraine things have changed dramatically, the costs for capital, material and labor have risen, making many renewable projects far more expensive. If wind energy would be a success, why is Europe's biggest onshore wind farm in Sweden facing bankruptcy? I would like to see more people with a practical background talking about things.
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