The main problem with transmission is astroturf NIMBYists.
If rooftop solar can work in Germany (as it does; 4th biggest economy in the world, & 3rd hardest country to renewablize* still, the country already gets 12% of its electricity from rooftops, twice what it gets from utility solar**), it can work anywhere. Factories, distribution centers, parking lots, reservoirs, land wrecked by fossil fuels… there are lots of places in and near cities that can supply significant amounts of solar power without transmission lines. Philadelphia has 60,000 acres of roofs.
Offshore wind has an excellent ~60% capacity factor (amount of power produced vs. theoretical potential if they ran all out 24/7/365), and it’s often very near megapopulation centers. It would only take 20 GE Haliade-X 14MW turbines to power Liverpool.
China just built a 20 MWer.
Agolf Twittler just lost in his attempt to stop 5 wind farms off the east coast of the US. The 1st of 176 14.7 MW Siemens-Gamesa turbines for a 2.5 GW farm is already in off Virginia; that’s more than 2 nuclear reactors’ worth of electricity that will be finished next year.
“The main problem with transmission is astroturf NIMBYists. ”
It isn’t necessarily astroturf: A lot of NIMBYists are more than willing to fight against overhead transmission lines for both aesthetic and property value reasons. There are, of course, people in China who would prefer NIMBY, but the gummints there get the final say.
(As it is, my brother is complaining about the re-routing of a high power line—whose only customer is an LNG plant—through the front yard of his new house. 🙄)
Yes, there are probably a lot of NIMBYids without direct industry funding, just like there are a lot of internet trolls without it. Peter has pointed out the elitist interlopers in farm country objecting to farming, including wind turbines keeping farming happening in farm country, for example.
But their memes, arguments, and many kinds of support come from the same right wing oligarch-created and -funded disinformation industry. Pseudo-esthetic and property value arguments are mostly bullshit; sparked and fanned by the ARF industry.
You can buy a lot of high transmission line and grid storage for the cost overrun alone of the typical US nuclear project, plus the ratepayers and taxpayers don’t end up paying so much extra.
China can afford to build large nuclear by their coastal cities because they are experienced, consistent, and don’t have all of those investor shenanigans. (And still they find it worthwhile to build all of those giant transmission lines from the wind and solar fields out west.)
Sooner or later it’s very likely they’ll regret building them wherever they are. If they don’t mind transmission lines maybe they should build one big nuclear industrial park in one of their western deserts.
Sounds like a lot of good reasons to build nuclear instead and he didn’t even get to intermittency.
HVDC losses are about 2% per thousand miles.
The main problem with transmission is astroturf NIMBYists.
If rooftop solar can work in Germany (as it does; 4th biggest economy in the world, & 3rd hardest country to renewablize* still, the country already gets 12% of its electricity from rooftops, twice what it gets from utility solar**), it can work anywhere. Factories, distribution centers, parking lots, reservoirs, land wrecked by fossil fuels… there are lots of places in and near cities that can supply significant amounts of solar power without transmission lines. Philadelphia has 60,000 acres of roofs.
Offshore wind has an excellent ~60% capacity factor (amount of power produced vs. theoretical potential if they ran all out 24/7/365), and it’s often very near megapopulation centers. It would only take 20 GE Haliade-X 14MW turbines to power Liverpool.
China just built a 20 MWer.
Agolf Twittler just lost in his attempt to stop 5 wind farms off the east coast of the US. The 1st of 176 14.7 MW Siemens-Gamesa turbines for a 2.5 GW farm is already in off Virginia; that’s more than 2 nuclear reactors’ worth of electricity that will be finished next year.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/8/3/17638246/national-energy-grid-renewables-transmission
*Carbon Tracker’s The Sky’s the Limit study
** Electrek
“The main problem with transmission is astroturf NIMBYists. ”
It isn’t necessarily astroturf: A lot of NIMBYists are more than willing to fight against overhead transmission lines for both aesthetic and property value reasons. There are, of course, people in China who would prefer NIMBY, but the gummints there get the final say.
(As it is, my brother is complaining about the re-routing of a high power line—whose only customer is an LNG plant—through the front yard of his new house. 🙄)
Yes, there are probably a lot of NIMBYids without direct industry funding, just like there are a lot of internet trolls without it. Peter has pointed out the elitist interlopers in farm country objecting to farming, including wind turbines keeping farming happening in farm country, for example.
But their memes, arguments, and many kinds of support come from the same right wing oligarch-created and -funded disinformation industry. Pseudo-esthetic and property value arguments are mostly bullshit; sparked and fanned by the ARF industry.
You can buy a lot of high transmission line and grid storage for the cost overrun alone of the typical US nuclear project, plus the ratepayers and taxpayers don’t end up paying so much extra.
China can afford to build large nuclear by their coastal cities because they are experienced, consistent, and don’t have all of those investor shenanigans. (And still they find it worthwhile to build all of those giant transmission lines from the wind and solar fields out west.)
Sooner or later it’s very likely they’ll regret building them wherever they are. If they don’t mind transmission lines maybe they should build one big nuclear industrial park in one of their western deserts.