Not able to provide energy during the night/calm days
Not energy dense - require enormous amount of land that can be put to better use
Rely on battery storage - huge fire and explosion hazard
Need to be replaced and serviced much more often - the lack of density means that repair and maintenance crew have a lot of ground to cover
Energy output wildly fluctuates due to weather conditions.

Renewables have their place, but they cannot sustain the entire grid. At this point, going all in on renewables means either prolonging fossil fuel usage, or condemning vast swaths of the population to brownouts and energy poverty.

[–] Blake@feddit.uk -2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Look at all of these wrong arguments. It’s so thoughtful of you to bring them all together like this.

It’s always day somewhere. Also there’s still wind, wave, geothermal, hydroelectric, etc. not to mention interconnectors. Additionally, energy demand during the night is very low. Peak energy usage is at the same time as peak solar generation. The idea is that if you spread renewables across a large enough area, natural shortages of wind/sun in one area is compensated for the wind/sun being in another area.
It’s true that it isn’t energy dense, but it’s definitely not true that it can be “put to better use”. 5% of the US is covered in parking spaces, enough to provide 8 spaces for every car. If 10% of that land was allocated to solar power it would be enough to meet the electricity demand of the entire United States.
Doesn’t rely on energy storage. Just build interconnectors. Electrical energy can be moved from where it is greatest in supply to where it is greatest in demand. Additionally, electrochemical batteries aren’t the only choice, there are countless ways to store electrical energy - pumped storage, thermal storage, etc.
This is outright wrong. Source your claim that nuclear is easier and cheaper to maintain than renewables. I’ll wait.
This is the same as your first point. See 1.

You’re wrong. There are numerous studies which say a 100% renewable future is entirely possible with current technology. Since you’re incapable of googling this basic fact here’s a link for you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy

[–] Rooty@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Power lines are not superconductive, there are always losses when electricity is moved long distance
You sidestepped my point and went on a tangent
Again, there are losses when electric energy is converted into other types - pumped storage requires large reservoirs, and you're basically making ineffective hydro.
I never stated that renewables are easier to maintain than nuclear, just that the monetary and enviromental cost of maintenance is swept under the rug by anti-nuclear zealots.
Again, renewables have a reliabilty problem that cannot be handwaved by "just move the power somewhere else.

Judging by your sneering tone, I doubt you're going to be receptive to any further points.

[–] Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

You didn't provide any sources.

If you're trying to wave your dick around you better provide more sources than Blake did above. Moving electricity long distances isn't really losing much anyway.

[–] Blake@feddit.uk -1 points 1 year ago

Sure, but it’s so much cheaper than nuclear, that it’s nearly irrelevant. A typical loss for 800 kV lines is 2.6% over 800 km. That means it’s cheaper to generate renewable energy 16,000km away from the point of consumption. That’s almost half the circumference of the Earth.
You claimed that renewables would take up too much space. I provided an explanation backed up by facts and figures which clearly demonstrate that claim was false. You clearly can’t refute my point or you would have done so.
Again, yes, but again, it’s so much cheaper that it doesn’t matter. Even with a conservative estimate, pumped storage is 70% efficient. In reality, it’s closer to 80%. This means that it’s still much cheaper to generate electricity and store it with pumped storage than it is to directly produce electricity with nuclear sources. 99% of the world’s electrical storage is pumped storage. Do you think you know better than industry experts?
Good, I’m glad you’re willing to walk back this argument. The fact of the matter is that renewables are the cleanest, cheapest, safest source of energy available to us, and so that is what we should be investing in. That’s all that matters. Everything else is propaganda and rhetoric.
No, they don’t. Again, this is just the same argument as argument 1. There’s no point in arguing it twice. People need to eat food, we produce food all over the world. People need to power their homes? We should produce power all over the world. It’s not a hard concept.

[–] hh93@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

For #2 to add: you can just install them over a parking lot, too

Makes people happy that their car isn't exposed to the sun/rain anymore and not removing anything from NIMBYs that fear for their car-privileges

[–] vodnik@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s always day somewhere

Pretty obvious you have no idea what you are talking about. You can't transfer power from the other side of the planet.

[–] Blake@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Nice, ignoring 99% of my comment to attack a strawman. The sun covers half the globe at any one time. I’m not suggesting that somewhere in midnight takes solar power from somewhere in midday. For example power can be moved across the US grid, which covers three timezones, which gives solar 3 hours more viability.

[–] PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not a strawman when you respond to "sometimes it's night and solar doesn't work" with "it's daytime somewhere". The natural assumption is that your intention was that day side power could be used on the night side.

Do you have anything to back up your idea that the US grid can or does actually supply power across the entire nation?

[–] Blake@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your assumption is mostly correct - “day side power can be used on the night side”. Say that you live in a city where the sun sets at 7pm. The largest synchronous power grid in the world is in Continental Europe - from east to west, it’s approximately 5600 km, and connects Portugal (UTC 0) all the way to Turkey (UTC +3), covering three time zones. That means when the sun sets in Portugal, solar panels in Turkey are still generating power at 75% efficiency.

As you can understand, this is an entirely different claim from “we would get power from the other side of the world”. It’s a strawman because that’s the weakest possible version of the argument I made.

As for the US power grid, no, you’re right, I was totally wrong about that. I had thought that the east and west power grids were connected, but it seems that they still haven’t sorted that out yet. Thanks for correcting me. It looks like they have a project in the planning stage to make it happen (Tres Amigas SuperStation) but it probably won’t be for a while. It’s absolutely achievable, though, and pretty easily.

It would also be achievable to get a single planetary power grid, theoretically, but I think it’s practically impossible to achieve that at the moment. It would need a level of global cooperation far beyond what we have ever accomplished. Definitely a future goal for our species!

[–] PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Transmission losses prevent most of what you are suggesting. Across a continent, even with high voltage low loss power lines, you lose 35% to resistance. This doesn't count the added loss from stepping down the voltage at various substations and transformers along the way. You can expect another 8-15% more reduction from that.

You're suggesting that the amount of excess power from one side of the country could be enough to power the other side (while still meeting the demands locally) with 40-55% losses. Come on.

[–] Blake@feddit.uk 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Absolute bullshit. HVDC cable power loss is between 0.3% and 1% per 100km. And when it comes to UHVDC, a typical loss for 800 kV lines is 2.6% over 800 km. Transformers and substations cause a power loss of around 0.5% to 2%.

https://www.nationalgrid.com/sites/default/files/documents/13784-High%20Voltage%20Direct%20Current%20Electricity%20–%20technical%20information.pdf

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6761670

By the way, even with your completely wrong, off by a factor of ten numbers, renewables with that transmission loss would still still cheaper than nuclear, safer than nuclear, and quicker to provision than nuclear. Sucks to suck.

[–] PhantomPhanatic@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It bothers me that you want to educate people but you are being so combative and smug. This isn't the way to change people's minds. All you are doing is making people feel personally attacked and driving them further away from having an open mind.

This is the first I've heard of HVDC, my experience is with typical AC transmission that makes up most of the current grid. Not a lot of experience, but college physics level.

US high voltage transmission is usually AC in one of the following voltages: 345 kV, 500 kV, or 765 kV. I used the 765 kV worst case losses of 1.1% per 100 miles (according to American Electric Power Transmission Facts Q12) which is over generous since most transmission would likely not be using only the high efficiency lines.

Also, transmission range is affected by load and high load reduces line capability.

We're talking about moving a huge amount of power across 3000 miles. In my experience transmitting power across a nation as large as the US is unheard of.

You also seemed to have missed my point about how much excess power would be required to power the opposite side of the country (in the dark) while basically at dusk. Let's say 30% of the east coast's power comes from solar. That would mean that the West Coast would need to provide that 30% excess on top of their current energy demands during a relatively high demand time period. It would also be a bit unfair for the West Coast to be the ones responsible for over-provisioning to accommodate the east coast.

Is HVDC even installed and able to transmit across the US now?