A thought piece

By Ian Page.

Most papers and reports on the renewable transition have a particular unstated mindset. 

It is assumed that the transition involves replacing fossils with renewable electricity in all its forms and worries about the effect of variability, the techno economics of various storage and CO2 capture and use scenarios, effects on transmission and transport, and so on.

This all looks pretty reasonable and is described in the first diagram,


Once the inflection point is reached, the motivation to build new more efficient factories producing renewable generators decreases as they need a large sales volume to repay the investment and the opportunity space is decreasing 

Thus the saturation point becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,

An alternative mindset is shown in the second diagram


Instead of stopping new manufacturing capacity, it's possible that the cost of manufacturing and installation is still decreasing at that point, and some companies may see past the assumed saturation to new opportunities for electricity consumption, assuming that the cost of electricity has diminished, or that systemic effects continue to reduce the contribution of electricity cost to end costs of use  ( eg a heater with a COP of 5 can handle a higher electricity cost that one with a COP of 3)

Whether manufacturers see a saturation limit or new opportunities depends on resting on their laurels or animal spirits as well as a deep understanding of the total system changes.

My hope is that some manufacturers will go beyond the assumed saturation point,

I have shown in the past that dong that for wind and solar can reduce the system cost by reducing the amount of expensive short-term and some midterm storage and that industries configured to use variable electricity, especially near the source can have very low electricity costs, reducing transmission system additional costs, 

Research has also shown the different strategies that are needed at low, medium, and high proportions of renewables, seeing a future of say 300% renewables generation is bound to change the winning mid-term investments that will be profitable.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pulsing industrial chemical reactions

By Ian Page From Nature 605 19 May 22 470. Chemical reactions are often a mixture of potential parallel reactions, and potential serial reactions. Chemists play with temperature, flow rate, pressure, proportions etc. to persuade just the one reaction they want to happen.
Read more

REN: Reperceiving the Grid Part 1

Image
2021.06.30 – Ian Page The grid is normally described as a cloud that delivers electricity as needed to a wide array of sinks/applications/users at an averaged price in control and buys services such as generation and storage from a variety of external suppliers. It has a very difficult job balancing the variable supply and variable demand with congestion on lines and keeping alternative lines to handle outages. Supply and demand are being balanced by market systems such as day ahead bidding for 15-minute periods as well as using inertia and battery systems to balance the system within the 15-minute periods. It's worth comparing this with the internet. The internet also has the need to maintain an instantaneous balance between packets coming onto the system and going out, packets cannot pile up.  Congestion appears as delays to streaming rather than brownouts or overvoltage. The internet also has sources that can deliver huge quantities of packets unpredictably and sinks that can de...
Read more

Serious Plan to Convert Australia's Largest Fertilizer Plant to Green Hydrogen to Save Money

By Ian Page – 2021.12.31 https://cleantechnica.com/2021/12/30/high-gas-prices-lead-to-conversion-of-ammonia-plant-to-green-hydrogen/ I’ve written before that the high price of gas means that it's now cheaper to make hydrogen by electrolysis than from natural gas in Europe. This is the first actual plan I've seen and by a big industrial group. I hope it goes forward. Also:  Hyundai has given up on hydrogen powered cars citing technical issues, and lack of marketability after spending a fortune over many years. With Toyotas ambivalence and deal with a Chinese EV car firm to make rebrand-able EVs, hydrogen powered cars are effectively dead. This is good news because energetically it's a lousy idea, and batteries have gotten good enough to eat into the potential market. However, there is still potential for long distance lorries, although we are already seeing in Germany container lorries doing repeated medium distance trips from port to warehouse, trying pantographs on parts o...
Read more