Wind & Photo voltaic, However What Else? — India Version Transcript

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Beneath the auspices of the India Good Grid Discussion board, the assume tank based as an umbrella group over India’s 28 state utilities to supply thought management, share main practices, and produce worldwide insights to India, I’m delivering bi-weekly webinars framed by the Quick Checklist of Local weather Actions That Will Work. With the glories of on-line recordings and AI transcription instruments, it’s comparatively simple to share each the transcript, and in addition the slides that I used, so I’m making a behavior of it.

Most not too long ago, I delivered a chat and held a Q&A session overlaying my tackle the top recreation for electrical technology applied sciences, which can dominate, which will likely be a rounding error, and which received’t exist in any respect. For many who choose talk-talk to read-read, right here’s the recorded video of the presentation and dialogue.

Thanks, Reji and the assembled ISGF crew. Hi there to everyone, wherever you’re on the earth, no matter time zone you’re in. So, initially, I had assembled this specific set of fabric for a worldwide funding financial institution, one of many bigger ones. They requested me to talk to a worldwide set of institutional buyers who have been making an attempt to determine the sign from the noise about what forms of technology would present up on grids and what percentages, in order that they may begin considering strategically about their portfolios, what components of their portfolio are in danger, what components of their portfolio technique and funding theses ought to they begin leaning into, and it stays helpful for this context.

So, with out additional ado, I’m going to start out by way of this. I’ll undergo a complete bunch of various applied sciences and discuss what they’re helpful for, how huge they’ll be ultimately recreation, no matter how huge they’re now and what that seemingly means.

Let’s begin with the fundamentals. Hydroelectric. We’ve been doing it for a very long time. Sooner or later, it’s going to be about 10% of all power, and let’s begin there.

Electrical energy goes to be the idea of all power sooner or later. We received’t be burning stuff, we received’t be digging up fossil fuels. We’re in all probability not going to creating numerous biofuels, aside from lengthy haul aviation and lengthy haul delivery. The whole lot else will simply electrify.

Hydroelectric goes to stay a helpful set of that seize bag, regardless that it’s challenged by adjustments in precipitation. A part of the rationale why coal went up final yr was as a result of there was a drought in western China, the place the Three Gorges Dam is, and they also needed to burn extra coal to accommodate for the discount in hydro technology.

However, you already know, if we expect the Three Gorges dam is huge, effectively, China’s constructing a dam thrice the dimensions within the mountains to the west of there. We’re nonetheless constructing numerous hydroelectric now, capability adjustments quite a bit.

These tables keep the identical by way of the presentation.

It has capability. It has a distance from demand facilities, which turns into essential as we take into consideration the place to place stuff. Technology kind synchronous versus asynchronous. Synchronous permits us to maintain the grid on a gradual heartbeat at regular hertz. Asynchronous offers us extra flexibility and a smoother ramp up and ramp down curve. Synchronous, we are likely to need on excessive voltage alternating present. Asynchronous could be on HVAC or HVDC.

Then we have now flexibility. Flexibility is a big part lately of what we want on grids. We want agency and versatile. We don’t really want baseload. We want agency and versatile technology as a result of wind and photo voltaic are intermittent. Hydro can do base load and peaking.

Then there’s co-benefits, such because the voltage and frequency regulation, which I discussed, which tends to be on the excessive voltage, alternating present grid. However that’s replicable with electronics lately. We additionally get recreation, irrigation, we even get a fishing trade on a number of the huge hydro dams. However there are the constraints. Seasonality of it’s one. It tends to be extra sturdy as a type of technology within the springtime. In numerous geographies, that balances effectively with wind being extra sturdy within the fall time. That turns into essential as we begin eager about balancing the curves throughout time.

Personally, I believe numerous hydroelectric technology is simply going to finish up as passive batteries. We’ll let nature fill it up for us, and we’ll draw it down as required, relying upon lulls and different stuff. So it’ll be much less of one thing we use on a regular basis, and extra of one thing we use, like trendy gasoline and coal vegetation for peaking technology.

Subsequent we get to coal technology. No shock, I venture zero room for coal in the way forward for the technology grid.

It’s pretty rigid. It must be gigawatt scale for thermal technology.

The attention-grabbing factor proper now’s that as I look internationally’s coal vegetation, I see considerably declining capability elements. Whereas they’re designed to run at 90% plus capability elements as baseload technology for probably the most half, if we take China’s coal, whereas they’ve all these permitted vegetation, they usually have 1.1 terawatt of energy capability of vegetation in operation, there are two issues which can be essential to notice. One is that the capability issue of their coal vegetation is lower than 50%. It’s nearly precisely the identical capability because the United State’s pure gasoline vegetation. In different phrases, they’re working it as peak demand energy, not baseload energy, for his or her nation.

The nuance there’s that as increasingly more renewables get constructed, and clearly China is constructing huge quantities of renewables, that’s going to say no even additional. There comes some extent the place the vegetation are usually not worthwhile. Information out of the finance trade of China signifies that whereas there are numerous vegetation which have been permitted, monetary establishments are very leery about truly financing them.

Whereas coal vegetation in China are getting all of the information for permits, they’re not getting cash they usually’re not getting constructed. Whereas I mentioned there was 1.1 terawatts of energy capability there, they’ve additionally shut down 775 gigawatts of energy capability. That’s two thirds of what they’ve working. They’ve both shut down operational vegetation, the older, worst ones, or they’ve eliminated the permits as a result of they stopped making sense. They shelved them, they mothballed them, they absolutely decommissioned vegetation.

There are some benefits there and a few disadvantages from a constraint. All thermal technology vegetation, the legacy ones, a lot of them are being challenged by the requirement for cooling water. The thermal design was required for the water to be a sure temperature, in order that it might truly cool the whole lot down appropriately. However now the water is quite a bit hotter, they usually’re stepping into challenges, and incessantly the water is simply not there, to allow them to’t cool in any respect. Local weather change is impacting numerous the legacy coal technology vegetation and making allowing of latest ones clearly extra problematic.

Subsequent we get to pure gasoline sooner or later, 1%, which could shock some individuals, however let’s put that in context. Pure gasoline, or methane a minimum of, is a helpful endgame strategic reserve of electrical energy for actually bizarre lulls, like those that happen each ten to 50 years the place there’s an extended interval with out the solar shining or the wind blowing, and a necessity for one thing else as a strategic reserve.

However pure gasoline technology can be biomethane technology. I venture a future the place strategic reserves of electrical energy will likely be supplied by capturing the methane that’s baking off our dairy barns, our landfills, our different sources of anthropogenic methane and put into strategic reserves as a substitute of pure gasoline. We’ll be capturing a local weather drawback and storing it to resolve an power problem, as a substitute of simply letting it leak to the environment and be a local weather drawback.

Pure gasoline technology, particularly mixed cycle, is fairly versatile and it may be fairly near human beings. It has excessive nitrous oxide emissions, precursor to smog that causes bronchial asthma in kids, so not nice to have proper beside rising households, but it surely doesn’t must be. It’s not almost as dangerous as coal from a well being influence perspective. And it has important flexibility. It’s a synchronous technology, so you must spool it up.

There aren’t any co advantages. You don’t get voltage and frequency management. Particularly up to now three or 4 years globally, what we’ve seen is very large gasoline value fluctuations structurally. This began in 2019, when the debt laden US shale trade and fracking trade began hitting roadblocks. Their projections of size of service, of fracked and unconventional oil wells have been off. They have been working about, they have been working a few third the size that they’d projected of their prospectuses, and consequently, they have been going bankrupt. What we have now is a state of affairs the place gasoline value fluctuations began being baked in. Then there was the Saudi Arabian, Russian oil struggle that was attacking unconventional oil extraction in 2021. That was impacting American shale oil as effectively, which is the place they obtained 70% of their pure gasoline. That was all structurally inflicting challenges traditionally with pure gasoline costs that had been steady for about 18 years. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and the world’s gasoline costs simply spiked.

As we transfer ahead, the precise value of gasoline technology goes to proceed to be structurally unstable. As we mannequin out the price of that power, it’s truly costlier than we thought.

Then, in fact, there’s the issue that methane alongside its distribution channel leaks. Whereas the US claims to have carried out an amazing job at lowering their carbon dioxide, their fracking and shale oil trade has elevated methane emissions a lot, they’ve worn out their greenhouse gasoline beneficial properties from carbon dioxide. Pure gasoline was thought-about a bridge gasoline. Nicely, it seems the bridge is to nowhere.

We additionally use pure gasoline in numerous locations the place we want warmth and energy. Airports are a basic instance. There are numerous airports which have pure gasoline vegetation that present electrical energy for the services, that are pretty electrical energy demanding, but in addition warmth for the terminal.

How a lot of that’s going to proceed? My projection a pure gasoline cogeneration goes to vanish. There are a number of locations the place pure gasoline cogeneration is used. There are district heating programs, steam assisted gravity drainage within the oil sands, there are airports and a number of other different use instances. That’s going to all go away, partly as a result of warmth pumps work rather more effectively for heating and cooling and we’re going to have renewables.

It doesn’t make sense to do cogeneration and create greenhouse gasoline emissions. As soon as once more, the gasoline value fluctuations are altering the economics.

One other huge chunk that’s used that lots of people are contemplating is biomass. That is huge in northern Europe for legacy historic causes, reducing down previous development forests and burning them for warmth or energy is taken into account to be local weather impartial, besides they’re destroying a biomass sink. This can be a actually bizarre factor out of northern Europe, the place they really, in northern Germany and Denmark, what they’re doing is that they’re having previous forests in Finland and northern Sweden or in Canada or the US minimize down, pelletized into effectively burning wooden chunks, which implies it’s not scrap wooden, after which trucked or shipped throughout oceans, in lots of instances to be burned in Europe. And they’re pretending that it’s local weather impartial. I don’t purchase it personally, and I believe they’ll come to get a way of actuality on that.

However nonetheless, there’s numerous scrap biomass out of the timber trade. We’re not going to show all of the scrap into biofuels, though that’s a completely viable pathway. Some biomass for electrical energy will likely be on the grid someplace. I believe it’ll be smaller, it’ll be pretty small vegetation the place there occurs to be a giant provide of timber or one thing like that, which is fairly dry.

And the constraints there are apparent. It solely is smart whenever you’ve obtained a co profit of warmth and the constraints. We actually shouldn’t be reducing down forests except they’re going to be sturdy wooden merchandise. The truth that we’re reducing down the lungs of our planet to make chopsticks that we throw away as soon as, or paper towels, it’s not an amazing thought. We’re going to start out seeing extra preservation of forests and fewer of a deal with biomass. It’s simply not as smart a pathway as many individuals consider it.

Now, there’s an attention-grabbing edge case in agriculture, the place biomass waste biomass is used for course of warmth, for meals, for sure courses of meals preparation, like for instance, chili peppers. Most of these instances could be handled by warmth pumps, but when they’ve an area provide of waste warmth or waste biomass that may in any other case rots in middens and turns into methane due to anaerobic digestion, it’s cheap to make use of it for course of warmth in that house, however you could have watch out with that as a result of the air air pollution out of biomass is kind of excessive.

I all the time wish to say that the worst type of heating for human well being is respiratory the smoke from a lifeless tree. The quantity of poisons that come out in wooden smoke is outstanding.

India has numerous nuclear, numerous CANDU reactors. I regarded on the fleet. Most of them are within the 300 megawatt vary. So arguably, India was constructing small modular nuclear reactors earlier than small modular nuclear reactors have been a factor. Now, lately, India has realized the identical factor that everyone else realized, which is that small reactors aren’t financial. It is smart to get them as much as the gigawatt scale. And so India has been constructing gigawatt scale reactors, and sooner or later, we’re going to have nuclear technology.

I simply don’t assume we’re going to have almost as a lot of it as many individuals assume. I believe it’s going to be beneath 5% of the worldwide power provide, which is greater than it’s when it comes to absolute numbers, however a decrease proportion {of electrical} technology in relative numbers. And the rationale for that’s fairly easy. The graph on the left of the chart is a dataset I’ve been monitoring of a pure experiment in China of nuclear technology deployments versus renewables deployments.

In 2014. Someone mentioned to me, effectively, clearly nuclear can scale and renewables can’t. I mentioned, that doesn’t make any sense. We’ve obtained extremely manufacturable gadgets in wind and photo voltaic, wind generators and photo voltaic panels that may have a large world provide chain with low safety dangers and massively parallelized deployment. On the nuclear aspect, we have now gigawatt scale megaprojects that may’t be manufactured and put in delivery containers and shipped to the opposite aspect of the world and turned on with semi expert labor. It didn’t make sense to me that may be the case.

I regarded round for a geography the place the query might be answered by what they’re doing. All the explanations that individuals within the West say that nuclear can’t develop largely don’t apply to China. It ought to have been ready potential to create all of the situations for fulfillment comparable to a long run stability of governance, which permits the nuclear packages to proceed no matter electoral adjustments within the west, for instance, the place nuclear is usually part of the wedge politics. It has a nationwide scale program for deployment as a nationwide strategic requirement, has alignment with the event and upkeep of nuclear weapon functionality, has the flexibility to do a nationwide program for human assets, and it ought to have had the flexibility to choose a single design or two of know-how to allow it to duplicate its studying throughout all of its websites.

They may have had all of the situations of success. Nonetheless, China is, rather more than India, an export pushed nation. Its technique relies on that. As an alternative they constructed certainly one of each nuclear know-how and design to allow them to export something any buyer anyplace on the earth needs. Consequently, their nuclear program is languishing badly.

I nonetheless assume it wouldn’t have scaled almost as shortly as renewables did. That white line is further terawatt hours of precise technology with capability issue added every year. As you possibly can see, that’s nonetheless an accelerating curve. It’s going to speed up for the following ten or 15 years as effectively. In the meantime, nuclear peaked in 2016 and 2018 with about seven gigawatts of capability, and it’s been including a lot much less capability since then. Final yr, it solely added 1.2 gigawatts of latest capability.

The query for India, as a result of I’m certain this debate is robust within the nation is, if China can’t obtain the situations for fulfillment for nuclear and renewables are really easy to construct, which one ought to India be specializing in within the subsequent few years? I actually know which approach I’m betting, and I’m not betting for nuclear.

Right here’s the place we get into the large wedges. Onshore wind farms, they want sturdy winds they usually want a grid. About 30% of all power for the world in my projection will come from onshore windfarms, and a few of them are fairly honking huge. We’re attending to the purpose now the place I’m seeing fairly massive wind generators on land. I believe we’re peaking at about 5 MW capability for a person turbine. After we energy previous wind farms we’re getting much more energy with quite a bit fewer wind generators, getting larger capability elements.

The technology is asynchronous. There was an experiment with synchronous wind generators again within the seventies in the US, which failed miserably. They ramp up and ramp down. As I mentioned within the Electrify the whole lot all over the place, all of sudden dialogue and different earlier discussions, one of many issues that individuals don’t understand about wind power is that it’s truly accessible about 85% of the time.

It solely has a capability issue of maybe 40%, which implies if we take into account the wind blowing at good pace all yr lengthy, that’s 100%. The wind doesn’t blow on the good pace all yr lengthy, so the precise technology is 40% of the optimum technology. However the wind truly blows between the startup pace and the cutoff pace 85% of the yr. Even on the sting days, we’re nonetheless getting numerous electrical energy from wind.

One of many issues that’s within the quick checklist is overbuild wind and photo voltaic. And the rationale for that’s that 85% and the roughly half of a day, on common, that photo voltaic is doing one thing. As we add up these 50% of some technology from photo voltaic, and 85% from wind from when these curves begin overlapping.

We’ve got constructed extra of each type of technology, aside from nuclear, than we might presumably. Then we’ve underused them, like coal vegetation working at beneath 50%, and numerous pure gasoline peaker vegetation working at beneath 10%.

We don’t have an issue with overbuilding technology and underutilizing it, and we’re not going to have that drawback with wind or photo voltaic as effectively, particularly as a result of it’s cheaper than them. One of many good issues about wind and photo voltaic, they’re grime low-cost.

The co advantages are attention-grabbing. From a flexibility perspective, wind generators are very easy to show off, they usually’re very easy to run under optimum and switch up. Easy SCADA instructions from centralized grid administration programs can simply handle wind property to scale back their technology after we want rather less on the grid, but in addition to run them at 90% of their optimum, after which have 10% in reserve to pop them up as wanted.

That co profit comes with a reserve for voltage and frequency energy administration options which can be on wind farms as effectively. Proper now, we’re getting voltage and frequency help from huge hunking, spinning chunks of metallic in steam coal plant generators and hydroelectric dams, and in nuclear vegetation, however we began requiring wind and photo voltaic farms to placed on energy administration as a result of they have been so huge that to ensure that them to be effectively managed individuals within the grid, we wanted them to duplicate these ancillary providers.

More and more, we’re going to have the ability to get the co advantages of voltage and frequency for the grid from wind farms, that are asynchronous however we’re utilizing electronics to do this in order that they turn into rather more versatile individuals within the grid.

Bear in mind, they’re working 85% of the time, slightly below most. We are able to run them at 90% of what the climate situations may allow them which supplies us instant free backup that may be turned on electronically. That is only a market requirement.

The constraints are wind, and wind situations do change over the yr and over the day, and that varies quite a bit by geography. It’s not a slam dunk. It’s an amazing participant within the grid, however it’s not the one participant within the grid.

Offshore wind has some benefits that onshore wind doesn’t. The winds are quite a bit steadier, they usually’re quite a bit firmer nearer to the water, so the masts don’t must be as tall. The logistics offshore means wind generators could be large. China’s setting up, I believe it’s a 20 or 21 GW single turbine this yr. Generators began out effectively beneath a megawatt. An over 20 megawatt single turbine is an astounding factor.

Logistics are simple as a result of we will put them on ships. We don’t must drive them alongside highways and get them beneath bridges and stuff like that. You may put them on ships the place there’s many fewer logistical constraints.

Offshore wind has the identical benefits as onshore wind, in that they’re asynchronous and simply feathered.

One of many constraints is subsea transmission, however we’ve solved that drawback. Excessive voltage direct present interlinks are actually repeatedly carried out all over the place on the earth for offshore wind. The break even level is 50 km for top voltage direct present versus excessive voltage alternating present as a result of traits of the ability administration answer.

One of many good issues about offshore winds is that incessantly they are often put quite a bit nearer to main demand facilities. America has very particular constraints on its offshore wind due to the Jones Act that forestalls maritime delivery from being sensibly managed for historic causes. They’re actually constrained when it comes to placing offshore wind in there, they usually’ve obtained billionaires with compounds who simply don’t wish to have a touch of a wind turbine on the horizon. We’ve got a few headwinds there.

If they may put offshore wind off of New York state, they might be offering huge quantities of electrical energy at instances when it’s demanded for his or her greatest demand middle of inhabitants. That’s why they preserve making an attempt regardless of the headwinds.

Offshore wind goes to be huge. Its potential is inconspicuous. If we have a look at Japan, it truly has very important offshore wind capabilities, it’s simply not constructing them sensibly. It’s doing foolish stuff. It’s speaking about importing ammonia and co burning it with coal, which goes to be 9 instances the price of power. It is going to bankrupt their economic system if they really persist in happening that pathway.

Then, in fact, photo voltaic farms, utility scale photo voltaic farms. My projection, 35%, the most important single type of electrical technology. Ten years in the past, I believed that wind may need the sting on photo voltaic. Now, I do know that from the proof of the previous decade we put photo voltaic panels in containers, we ship them all over the world, they usually’re simple to put in.

There’s this nice video out of China of heavy carry drones plucking large photo voltaic panels off a stack and flying them autonomously all the way down to their location on a hillside photo voltaic farm. It’s astounding to observe. The size of photo voltaic panels is true for human interplay. Containerization is a robust profit.

Photo voltaic has all the benefits of wind. In New Delhi, the place most of the individuals are at the moment, it’s about 12 hours of sunshine a day, which implies 12 hours of photo voltaic technology, simply not at peak. If there’s extra photo voltaic farms, you get extra electrical energy within the edge situations, and it’s simply turned off. We are able to flip off strings of photo voltaic panels in a photo voltaic farm as soon as once more with the identical SCADA instructions that we use for wind generators.

We are able to run photo voltaic farms suboptimally and activate capability if we’ve overbuilt photo voltaic or we will do issues the place we will truly load steadiness for placing warmth into warmth storage, and performing some industrial processes that require numerous electrical energy in the fitting time, when peak photo voltaic is completed.

There’s nice flexibility with photo voltaic and wind that doesn’t exist with nuclear or coal which is underestimated as a bonus. After all, if it’s cloudy, we get much less electrical energy. If it’s nighttime, we get no electrical energy. So what? The whole lot has some constraints.

Business photo voltaic goes to be a giant factor. Each nation has huge field warehouses. It has distribution facilities for a contemporary distribution based mostly economic system. These issues have huge flat roofs. Conference facilities incessantly have huge, flat roofs. There are many industrial buildings the place there’s numerous rooftops accessible for slapping on photo voltaic.

North America particularly has huge expanses round malls in the place there ought to be photo voltaic canopies defending the vehicles from daylight and, oh, by the best way, producing the electrical energy that goes into the vehicles. It’s going to be two to three% of the worldwide technology combine, in my estimation, as a result of it places electrical technology the place there’s important demand. Distribution facilities are more and more going to have electrical vehicles rolling out and in.

They’re going to wish huge batteries. What’s going to feed the large batteries that buffer that stuff? Nicely, numerous that’s going to be rooftop photo voltaic. We don’t want almost as a lot grid if we have now ot extra demand facilities coated in photo voltaic panels.

That’s a giant wedge and it’s an apparent one. I’ve handled a variety of industrial photo voltaic builders who do very effectively for themselves due to this, and due to the the autumn in photo voltaic panel costs lately, globally, it’s a no brainer.

Residential photo voltaic is a unique story, 2% to three%. I’ve had this debate with Mark Zed Johnson Jacobson out of Stanford. He and his crew because the early 2000s, have been growing a mannequin for 100% renewables by 2050. He’s one of the crucial influential individuals talking about what the grid will seem like sooner or later. And I disagree on some stuff, however largely it’s issues of diploma, not of form. Mark thinks that rooftop photo voltaic between industrial and residential will likely be 15% of power sooner or later. I believe it’s going to be 5% to eight% between them for a easy cause. We’re not going to mandate that everyone has photo voltaic on their roofs. It doesn’t make numerous sense to do this. There’s numerous rooftops which can be shaded. There’s numerous rooftops that aren’t aligned effectively with the solar. There’s numerous rooftops that individuals simply don’t need photo voltaic on.

To be clear, Mark is an excellent, nice man. I’ve numerous time for him. We’ve got spent numerous time collectively. However he lives within the suburbs of prosperous California, in a ranch dwelling with an enormous roof in a sunshine state. His perspective is certain by his situations. I’ve spent much more time in Asia and in Latin America with my management roles in São Paulo and Singapore, and I traveled extensively round Asia and Latin America.

Most individuals don’t reside in suburban ranch properties with large roofs for a household of three or 4. In Asia, 90% of individuals reside in multi unit residential buildings, and people have a lot much less means to place photo voltaic on the rooftop to supply the ability for the residents of the multi unit residential constructing.

I reside extra like an Asian individual. I’m in a 19 story condominium constructing with 233 models, in all probability 400 residents. That’s rather more Asian than North American, so I are likely to have a unique perspective

I like to explain geothermal as an answer that’s actually helpful if you’re in fixed menace of getting your nation destroyed by earthquakes or volcanoes comparable to New Zealand or Iceland. I spent six weeks in New Zealand final yr. I describe them as collections of volcanoes which can be briefly dormant. Sooner or later, they’re simply going to be worn out by the equal of Krakatoa, however within the meantime, they’ve obtained nice entry to geothermal electrical energy.

The constraints of geothermal, I believe, are going to depart it at about 1% of world power technology. There are locations like Japan, which ought to be leveraging their geothermal, and British Columbia, the place I reside, that ought to be leveraging geothermal the place completely different preconditions means we aren’t. In Japan, the onsen tradition means scorching springs are sacrosanct of their tradition, and you may’t contact them for a geothermal technology. In British Columbia, we have now only a few individuals. We’ve got heaps and many hydroelectricity, so we don’t really want to do geothermal.

We ought to be doing extra of it. And so I don’t assume it’s going to be an enormous factor. I’m not that huge on deep geothermal. There are development dangers there that I believe are underappreciated.

Tidal electrical energy, there’s going to be some technology, but it surely’s going to be lower than a thousandth of world power wants. Individuals don’t recognize how exhausting it’s to maintain one thing working underwater with shifting components offshore. Wind works nice as a result of there’s no shifting components underwater. The whole lot that’s underwater is only a wire, concrete or metal, and it’s coated metal, so it doesn’t corrode, it simply accrues minerals and wildlife.

I’m together with tidal right here for completeness.

Nearly the whole lot goes to be grid tied, so the grid can act as a battery, a requirement middle, and a provide middle a minimum of a part of the time. A whole lot of technology that’s on the grid is there to produce the electrical energy that the grid wants. The rooftop photo voltaic and industrial photo voltaic that’s not on rooftops remains to be going to be nearly fully grid tied. It doesn’t make sense to not have it grid tied. You get numerous advantages from the grid, like voltage and frequency management and backup that you just don’t get should you’re not connected to the grid.

The grid stays an integral part of this. One of many challenges round technology is everyone appears to assume that the wires don’t matter and that they don’t should be paid for. That’s simply not the case. Utilities have a function, and that function is to take care of the wires and the wires should be paid for.

There’s a totally unreasonable dialog the place individuals say, effectively, you must do away with the utilities. I simply sort of scratch my head and assume, have you ever ever truly regarded on the approach that electrical energy will get round?

Mining is an exception. A whole lot of mining is in distant areas the place it doesn’t make sense to string a wire 1000 km. It is smart to place up a six gigawatt photo voltaic farm during the mine after which rip the photo voltaic farm down and put it up subsequent to the following mine, which is what’s occurring in Australia. And in numerous these locations, they’ve numerous room for wind. I labored on an engagement briefly the place they have been placing three huge wind generators up in northern Quebec on a mining website in Raglan. It made numerous sense. It avoids having to ship in numerous diesel or different power.

The mining giants have all agreed on this. Rio TinTo, Fortescue BHP and Vale have all mentioned they’re going to impress their mines, that it’s the pathway to the longer term. They’re going to construct numerous renewables near the mines the place it’s viable. They’re going to run transmission to the mines. It simply is smart. It’s probably the most environment friendly strategy to do it and it’s more and more probably the most economically viable one.

The subsequent one is grid storage. We simply have numerous locations we’re going to place grid storage and grid storage could be anyplace that it is smart. One of many coming lectures on this seminar collection is simply all about storage and a dialogue of India the place there’s much more capability for closed loop off river storage than the Indian outlook seems to consider, and I’m curious to discover that.

Battery storage has plummeted in value a lot, they’re exhibiting up on micro grids. They’re exhibiting up in industrial services and distribution facilities. They’re exhibiting up in locations the place as a substitute of strengthening the wires, the transmission or distribution, it is smart to place a buffering battery at both finish to optimize that bodily asset of the wire. And so we’re seeing numerous that stuff, and it more and more could be regarded as a type of technology as a result of it offers so many various items of capability.

Warmth pumps, whether or not floor supply, air supply or water supply, are shifting models of power out of the surroundings into the locations we want them. They’re utilizing electrical energy to do this, however the effectivity is astounding. We find yourself with the flexibility to make use of quite a bit much less power for a similar worth proposition, so we don’t must generate almost as a lot electrical energy. There’s numerous thermal storage that may steadiness power inside a 24 hours interval. There are some important benefits to considering of environmental warmth as an power supply on this context.

All of this technology is working on the grid, more and more on excessive voltage direct present transmission. Now we have now reconductoring as effectively. I’ll be speaking about reconductoring and Heimdahl sensible balls and excessive voltage direct present in one other seminar within the collection.

All grids are going to have numerous several types of technology, and this isn’t a reliability situation. The grids on the earth with the best penetration of renewables, like Germany and Denmark, for instance, are extra dependable, with round 13 minutes of common outages per buyer per yr. Germany is an industrialized nation, it’s a excessive demand nation, and it will get 60% of its electrical energy from renewables.

German greenhouse gasoline emissions have minimize by 10% over the previous couple of years, and it’s accelerating decarbonization with cheaper electrical energy. Their wholesale electrical energy costs are among the many lowest in Europe. They preserve artificially excessive electrical energy costs simply as they preserve artificially excessive fossil gasoline costs to incentivize effectivity. It really works, however now they must tweak that, make electrical energy cheaper and fossil gasoline costlier to allow them to get extra individuals to impress.

That’s the slides. Reji, I hand it over to you to average the Q&A.

Query

One is about he’s saying there’s a lot of funding carried out already on the coal vegetation, so why don’t we focus extra on making the coal power cleaner?

Reply

There have been numerous makes an attempt to attempt to fake that coal could be clear. All coal could be is much less filthy.

If we take the consideration of supercritical coal vegetation burning excessive grade washed coal and low sulfur coal, they will get all the way down to the purpose the place they’re solely killing 40 or so individuals a yr per plant. They will get all the way down to the purpose the place they’re solely inflicting important well being degradation in a smaller portion of the inhabitants, versus we’re seeing 7.5 to 12 million individuals a yr having considerably degraded high quality of life, productiveness and lifespan.

A part of the rationale that China is so centered on renewables and clear power, and has shut down so many coal vegetation, is as a result of they have been seeing in northern China, twelve yr reductions in lifespan. Their life expectancy was being degraded by coal technology.

And that’s why after I discuss China and coal, I say, effectively, they’ve changed numerous their brown coal vegetation that have been working in simply crappy methods. They’ve changed them with supercritical vegetation, with low sulfur, washed coal which can be working very effectively. However nonetheless, that’s taking, from a local weather perspective, 1,400 kilograms, 1.4 tons per megawatt hour of carbon dioxide from the worst coal vegetation, solely all the way down to about 800 tons from one of many new supercritical coal vegetation.

It’s not clear, not low carbon. It isn’t a pathway to the longer term.

The brand new supercritical vegetation are barely extra versatile, to allow them to be handled extra as peak regeneration. And that’s in all probability vital. However there’s no strategy to make coal clear or low carbon. It’s principally carbon wealthy grime with mercury and different hint parts that find yourself within the surroundings and find yourself in our kids, and find yourself within the biosphere, and find yourself in bioaccumulating vegetation and animals.

It’s actually exhausting to truly bolt carbon seize onto an present coal plant to cope with this. Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan tried to bolt a carbon seize and sequestration answer onto their present coal plant. After a number of years of operation, they discovered a number of issues. One is, for most of the years, they’d solely achieved 40% seize, effectively under the expectation. Second, they have been utilizing the carbon captured for enhanced oil restoration, pumping it down into tapped out oil wells to liquefy the sludge that’s left over, pressurize it, and allow it to be sucked out after which burned. Each time you pump a ton of carbon dioxide into an oil effectively for that function, you get about 0.2 to at least one tons of latest petroleum, which whenever you burn it, negates the advantages of sequestering CO2.

Factor three is what they discovered is it made the electrical energy from Boundary Dam extremely costly. It was $140 per megawatt hour for coal technology, which is meant to be low-cost. What Saskatchewan did after that wxperiment was say, okay, we’ve tried it, it doesn’t work economically, and we’re not going to ever do it once more.

The Petra Nova coal plant within the southern United States tried one thing related. They’d twelve technology models in a large coal facility. They bolted on carbon seize to certainly one of them. They needed to construct a pure gasoline plant to energy the carbon seize, as a result of the auxiliary energy drain of carbon seize compression and coping with the carbon dioxide, which within the case of coal is over thrice the mass of the coal.

It was a really huge drain. The carbon seize and sequestration neighborhood claimed that was a hit. They managed to stand up to 93% seize for one month, however largely, like Boundary Dam, it failed miserably to attain its carbon seize aims. It made the electrical energy extremely costly they usually needed to construct a pure gasoline plant to supply the ability with the fitting traits to run carbon seize. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s only a declining pathway to thermodynamic, financial and local weather idiocy.

I don’t have any temperament that enables me to assume that making coal cleaner is an answer. Utilizing coal vegetation much less is an answer if coal is required. Changing your worst coal vegetation with a supercritical coal plant with low sulfur, washed, excessive grade coal is an answer, as you’d scale back the capability issue of your coal vegetation.

The true reply is to not construct extra coal, if in any respect potential. And so for India, the query is, what’s that slim pathway? If we consider the information rails, how do you get as near no coal? What’s the minimal coal you could handle to construct and handle to function?

There are such a lot of well being impacts to your residents, there are such a lot of productiveness impacts from the well being impacts. You want a productive labor pressure, you want a wholesome surroundings to your individuals to reside in.

Coal does none of that. It kills individuals.

It generates electrical energy within the absence of the rest. Coal is healthier than nothing else. However we have now alternate options now they usually’re cheaper.

Addition by Reji

If you’re carried out. Again to the questions. So India’s coal has excessive sulfur content material, it’s not appropriate for even carbon seize and storage even when the know-how has matured. A desulfurization unit was accredited by our central regulator and a number of other individuals calculated completely different numbers. Simply earlier than COVID somebody calculated {that a} plant which generates electrical energy at two or two and a half rupees, the desulfurization unit will add one other 40 to 45. No person was keen to purchase into that. It was a 20% to 25% enhance within the value of energy. Nothing has been carried out thus far.

Now that battery storage has turn into less expensive in comparison with many different applied sciences, the final two years the ISGF has been arguing that we should always not spend that a lot billions of {dollars} putting in desulfurization models on thermal energy stations which we’re going to retire after some years. As an alternative we should always make investments that cash into constructing distributed storage on the grid by which we will combine extra photo voltaic and wind.

Query

35% of that world energy combine will likely be photo voltaic. With a lot uncertainty concerning the sunshine, how can we be so certain that 35% contribution of complete energy in future will likely be from solar energy?

Reply

Two or three issues associated to this query. Sure, photo voltaic doesn’t work at evening, and in heavy night masses, there isn’t solar energy. Nicely, time shifting photo voltaic a number of hours is simple, utilizing two completely different easy frequent applied sciences. India is, whereas not one of many greatest nations, it’s not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not the US, it’s nonetheless the seventh greatest nation on the earth, and that features east to west. So sunshine that’s hitting the west coast of India in a low demand interval could be transmitted throughout India to excessive demand facilities within the east. And equally, you’re in a geography the place you even have neighbors, and transmission can circulate to your neighbors, so you possibly can truly be transmitting peak photo voltaic throughout better geographical distances. You’re already doing a few of that. That’s going to develop.

The second factor is it’s simple to place numerous photo voltaic power into more and more low-cost batteries and shift the electrical energy a number of hours into the night. We’re seeing that more and more happen in prosperous nations and battery costs are plummeting. It’s even shocked me. Everyone’s being shocked by how a lot battery costs are happening. I’ve been saying that in 2020s, not betting on batteries is like round 2000, not betting on fiber optics and information availability, or wi-fi and information availability, it’s an identical sort of constraint. The constraint is a brief one based mostly upon an obvious lag. Proper now, we’re seeing CATL projecting supply of batteries at $56 per kilowatt hour of capability. That’s a value level that wasn’t anticipated to be achieved till 2030 by people who find themselves truly optimistic about batteries.

Then there’s the opposite types of grid storage. I’ll be speaking extra about each grid storage and transmission in subsequent lectures. The sunshine hours availability, as I mentioned in New Delhi, it’s 12 hours of technology. If we overbuild 25%, that really accommodates most of our shoulder wants, and we will transfer the height of sunshine a bit and really then collaborate with wind and the opposite types of technology which can be on the grid to supply that energy that we want. It’s not that arduous.

Query

What’s the optimum mixture of sustainable power capability and know-how deployment in a rustic like India.

Reply

There are individuals who’ve carried out this type of work and there are many completely different situations. I encourage individuals to go to discover the Mark Z. Jacobson, which has a perspective on India. As mentioned, he leans too closely into rooftop photo voltaic from my perspective, however he’s within the ballpark. So you possibly can have a look at his projections of transmission, wind, photo voltaic and water and get a reasonably good reply there. It’s Mark Z. Jacobson, Stanford College 100% renewables by 2050. His fashions now prolong to, I believe it’s 145 nations globally as a result of he reruns them with CIA factbook information for each nation. It’s not good, but it surely’s a believable state of affairs that’s price .

India has additionally has a future oriented grid technique that it’s articulated. I disagree with elements of it. It’s a bit too heavy on hydrogen, which is a lifeless finish, and we’ll be discussing why. There’s a bit an excessive amount of deal with nuclear and there’s an excessive amount of of a reliance on fossil fuels. There’s an underappreciation of the worth propositions of renewable power, which is pretty typical for a few of these legacy issues.

Expertise failed at this level, so the final couple of questions don’t seem within the transcript.