The Future of Renewable Energies

[Ferdinand Gnadt]

Dear community members,

Within the context of a research seminar by the Institute of Technology and Innovation Management at the Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg, we are investigating the potential of online communities as an instrument for the prediction of future developments and trends in the renewable energy sector. Undoubtedly some passionate practitioners like you, have a deep knowledge of current developments, feasible technological improvements and imaginable future developments of technology, society and politics concerning the renewables. Therefore, we hope to win you over as participants of a lively discussion.


THE PROCEDURE

First phase
What will renewable energy generation look like in the year 2030?
This phase is a brainstorming on the future development of the renewables. There are no limits set, so feel free to present any idea or thought which you consider possible, practicability will be discussed later. You may bring up every subtopic that is the most interesting for you, be it a specific technical change on a turbine, the future renewable energy mix in general or an expectation of coming governmental incentives.

Second phase
Depending on the number of presented ideas, we may cluster them regarding specific topics as far as possible. Subsequently we will discuss the presented ideas and concepts aiming to deepen and evolve them collaboratively towards comprehensive future scenarios.


CONFIDENTIALITY
We want to encourage you to participate without doubts and assure you that every posted idea or concept will only be used for academic analysis without any commercial exploitation by the moderators.


We are looking forward to your discussions!
The stage is yours!

[Ferdinand Gnadt]

Hey Guys,

Seems as if nobody wants to make the start in a discussion about the future of renewables? It could also be fun to collectively gather information and then combine the results to consistent scenarios. What are your opinions on future energy generation regarding, for example, wind, solar, or hydro? We are quite open towards the topics you’re interested in.

Just recently our institute initiated some workshops with industry representatives regarding similar questions about future energy generation, political and ecological development as well as customer requirements.
There is obviously a certain pressure on the big energy companies by both corporate social responsibility with customers developing strong environmental awareness and by the many small and decentralized “Prosumers”. Moreover the real potential of wind and solar energy generation seem to depend on the development of storage technology to either cope with low generation at night and calm or to balance out the production peaks.

This becomes more important as the speed of technological development slows down, e.g. if not put in the way of tornados, we seem to almost have reached the maximum size of wind turbines. And the experts also recognized the possibility of another energy source threatening fossil fuels and the renewables in helium 3 and nuclear fusion.

What do you think, will we still generate wind power in 15 years?

[Jan-Philipp Hoefer]

Dear members of Green Power Talk,

since we could not generate a lively discussion here, our research team from Hamburg developed a questionnaire based on our workshops with industry representatives. This questionnaire is on the topic how the renewable energy industry will look like in the year 2040. Therefore, we kindly ask you to participate in our survey regarding this topic.

You can find the survey here: http://ww2.unipark.de/uc/RE_OC/

The survey will take approximately 20 minutes of your time and it will help us to get a deeper understanding on the future of the renewable energy industry, therefore we would appreciate your participation.

Thank you and best regards
Michael Zeng & Jan-Philipp Höfer

[Abe Gonzales]

I think the better question would be, how do we educate the masses from a young age on how to lower their impact on the earth, and do things that promote the healing of it.

[Joe Blake]

If this article/ survey* is to be believed

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/27/most-australians-want-renewables-to-be-primary-energy-source-survey-finds

then the "masses" (in Australia at least) are already doing a fair bit to move to renewable energy. Whether this is to save the environment, save money, take control over their electricity or any other reason is, I suppose, not that relevant, in that the numbers indicate it's happening.

The problem seems to emanate from our political leaders. In riding around my suburb I occasionally see somebody walking a dog which wishes to go in one direction while the person wants to go in another, and has to drag the dog after them. In this scenario the dog is our politicians and the walker is the public. But what differs is that this dog appears to have two (or more) leashes trying to drag it in yet another direction, the other leash(es) being in the hands of the fossil-fuel industry.

The future of renewable energy in Australia is currently fairly bleak. Back at the end of the 19th Century each of Australia's 6 states built their own railway systems and once completed it was catastrophic, as there was no interconnectibility. Three different gauges (3'6" in Queensland, 4'8.5" in NSW and 5'3" in Victoria to name but a few) meant that to travel from say Townsville in North Queensland to Melbourne in Victoria there were at least two stops required to change trains at the respective borders, passengers, luggage, everything. (This has been rectified, but at a tremendous cost in time, energy and money.)

We now have a similar idiotic problem with each state going its own way with renewable energy. Personally I saw this coming back in about 2004 and began experimenting with solar power "way back when". I'm now in the situation where it is (almost) possible for me to go off grid and say "a pox on all your houses".


*******************************************
* Since this is an international forum, it may not be possible for an overseas reader to access the article, so I've reproduced the body of it below. Sorry about taking up so much space.

"The vast majority of Australians want to see the country dramatically increase the use of renewable energy, a new survey has found, despite attempts by the federal government to characterise renewables as unreliable and expensive.

The Climate Institute’s national Climate of the Nation survey, published on Tuesday, pointed to frustration with the government’s inaction and lack of leadership on clean energy.

Of 2,660 respondents from across Australia, 71% agreed that climate change was occurring, continuing a trend established in the survey through 2014 and 2015. Two-thirds said they were highly concerned by its impacts, while 57% accepted that human activity was the main cause.

Ninety-six percent of respondents said they wanted the country’s primary energy source to be renewable, with support from either storage technologies (58%) or fossil fuels (38%). The phaseout of coal and replacement with clean energy received support from 59%, with 72% of those in favour calling on the government to drive the transition.
Turnbull ignored advice that renewable energy not to blame for SA blackouts
Read more

Olivia Kember, the acting chief executive of the Climate Institute, said support for renewable energy had been steadfast across 11 years of the survey and was widely seen as “economically smart” and future-focused. This remained true, she said, “even as the public discussion of energy mix has got a lot more complicated”, with the federal government labelling renewables unreliable and costly.

“It’s really striking that people have come out the other side of that discussion with really strong support for renewable energy and a strong sense that we need to go towards a cleaner energy system,” Kember said.

The finding that one-third of respondents believed the seriousness of climate change to have been exaggerated – and that 13% did not believe it to be happening at all – aligned very strongly with political affiliation, in particular One Nation and Coalition voters.

But enthusiasm for a greater dependency on renewable energy seemed nonpartisan, said Kember, with support for solar in particular consistent across just about every demographic breakdown.

People linked high electricity prices to the privatisation of electricity generation and supply (55%) and poor policy-making (44%), echoing the findings of Australia’s chief scientist, Alan Finkel, in his recent review of the sector.

Kember said the market was not seen to be functioning effectively: “What they see are higher prices, worse service and companies that seem to be profiteering.”

More than 40% of respondents said the federal government was “doing a fairly poor to terrible job” on climate change and energy, up from 33% last year. Only 18% said their efforts were “fairly good to excellent”.

The discussions of eight focus groups, convened in Adelaide, Brisbane, Parramatta and Townsville, highlighted that the Australian public felt “fatigued, discouraged and disempowered” by the politically motivated arguments around climate change.

This was coupled with what researchers characterised as a “wilful disregard” for scientists, notably the government agency CSIRO. One respondent, in a focus group in Parramatta, said climate change had been used as a “political football”.

“For a long time now – because we’ve been having this fight for such a long time – they get that climate change is a problem that needs to be solved, and they see that there’s a lot Australia can do about it,” said Kember.

“Then they look at what the government is delivering and they’re beyond unimpressed. They’re really frustrated and annoyed at the way it keeps being treated as an opportunity for partisanship, political attacks and bickering.


“While the pollies are fighting about it, they’re not getting on with solving it.”

This was despite widespread support (63%) for Australia to be an international leader on action against climate change, particularly in pioneering the development and implementation of renewable energies. Nearly three-quarters of respondents were motivated by the opportunities for the economy through jobs and investment (73%) and by protecting the environment (70%).

Relatedly, the report found that people were generally in favour of the Paris agreement to curb global warming to 1.5-2C, and could not understand why the Australian government was not making stronger attempts to deliver on it.

Nine out of 10 people opposed walking away from the Paris deal as the US did on 1 June, while almost two-thirds (61%) said Australia should “work harder” to ensure it met its overall goals."

[Abe Gonzales]

Although you are probably right that there is quite the forward movement of trying to switch to renewable methods, we as a human species are still consuming more than ever and all of these renewable resources are still derived by creating things using heavy metals and precious materials.

My fear is that people will be like "oh this is green, or renewable... that means I can consume even more than before right? consume consume consume"

If we educate people on how much they are actually consuming to begin with and that we don't need to consume 90% of what we are consuming then the real change starts. At the point we can keep burning oil as we are consuming 90% less.

Not saying to keep consuming oil just wanted to throw that in there =D

[Michael Scott]

I think the better question would be, how do we educate the masses from a young age on how to lower their impact on the earth, and do things that promote the healing of it.

Very well said.

[Damira Kulma]

Hi,
The renewable energy by 2030 will definitely use volcano magma energy.
Alternative energy is not only about wind, sun and overheated steam deposits. The above is of low profitability which consequently require government support.
The world demands new infinite source of huge free energy and there is such source. During the nearest time humanity will start extracting magma directly from the volcano throat. Apart from the electric energy this will enable us to obtain hydrogen, oxygen, rare earth metals, fertilizers, heat, chemical compounds (magma composition can be controlled directly in the crater), construction materials, etc.
The easiest way to magma mining is by using open lava lakes (e.g. in Hawaii islands or Vanuatu). Magma temperature is usually within 900 oC – 1,200 oC range. Worth to notice that glass is boiled at a temperature of 1,500 oC for centuries. Metal is boiled at even higher temperate rates.
P.S.>
A patent was obtained in Russia. An international application has been filed and a patent application has been filed in the United States. The idea and huge possibilities of the project are described in the Presentation, which can be send by demand.

[Joe Blake]

Damira, I'm not sure how the idea of vulcanism for our energy is going to really be of much benefit. It may be possible to do as you have indicated, but you have not mentioned the problems of distribution. In Australia late last year there was a catastrophic power grid failure caused by an unforeseen weather event, which rendered one entire state literally powerless. Attempts have been made to "fail-proof" the system by installing a huge Tesla battery to STORE wind-generated power, but there is still utter reliance upon a grid for distribution to the consumers. In the South Australian event, several transmission towers carrying high voltage cables were literally blown out of the ground, which precipitated further failures.

Given that we now live in a state where terrorism/ war is endemic, not only would the power grid be subject to natural events, but also physical and/or cyber attack. Simplicity and security would demand that, for many (smaller?) consumers at least local power generation (ie rooftop) would be the ideal - distribution by suburban "microgrids" seems viable now.

I couldn't see factories, to say nothing of suburbs, being built on or near active volcanic areas.

[Damira Kulma]

There are quite a few power plants which use overheated steam deposits formed from magma heat. This is the indirect use of heat. However, no-one used the magma itself, moreover have not tried to raise it. There are cities settled at the volcanoes nearby, which is not a production facility. All the more one can control such facility remotely from a distance of several kilometers. At the same time, we get a significantly larger amount of electricity at costs lower than that of nuclear power plants. Beside electric power we get hydrogen, rare earth metals, fertilizers, etc.
As a fuel for local city power plants it is convenient to use hydrogen as at its combustion there are no any harmful emissions (none any), and its efficiency is 3 times higher than that of gasoline.

[Joe Blake]

Damira, simply repeating your initial post does not advance your cause. You still have not addressed the problem of distribution, whether it be electricity or hydrogen. In the event of massive grid failure such as happened in South Australia, the source of the power is irrelevant. Even if it was nuclear, there would still have been a grid failure.

If you wish to discuss hydrogen, how would that be distributed? Pipeline? How much would that cost? How would it be protected from accidental rupture, let alone a terrorist attack? Distribute by road tankers? In South Australia, the grid failure disrupted much infrastructure such as traffic control signals, which could prevent tankers reaching their destination(s). Even if the hydrogen reached a theoretical hydrogen generating station, there is still the question of getting electricity to consumers. Or are you considering transporting it directly to consumers, each with their own fuel cell generator?

You talk about "remote control" of a facility. If somebody hacks the system, the potential is for a huge disaster. It's been done many times already, and cyber warfare is the latest battlefront.

As far as I can see, you are the only person who has mentioned "raising" magma. I certainly didn't.

On your views on fertilisers and rare earths, I don't say that that is not the case, but since this forum is mainly about renewable energy, I think the relevance of this is fairly small.

[Damira Kulma]

Hi Joe,

1. I was not going to solve the problem of energy distribution. It is solved in a classical manner - electricity is not supplied centrally, but there are many reserved sources - power generators. This is a generally accepted solution. In this way electricity farms, country houses, small towns are supplied with electricity, as well as for instance gold mining, geological prospectors, etc.

2. Generators can work on coal, gasoline, gas, including hydrogen. They exist of any capacity and are mass sold.

3. Fuel storages are made protected. The requirements for them are known and standardized. Usually these are underground storage facilities, like gas stations. Gas stations are a good example of distributed fuel storage. Of any fuel.

4. Gas transportation methods are also well developed, both by gas pipelines and by road transport. In the event of an accident, a separate section of the pipeline is automatically shut off and the sensors indicate the location of the gas leak. Transportation of hydrogen through the pipeline is cheaper than the transmission of electricity by wire.

5. Storages are created beforehand. They are the least affected by accidents. The territorial location of storage facilities depends on the density of the population and the importance of providing electricity.

6. Even the emergency storage system has its own backup implementation. This proceeds from the terms of independent power supply timeframe - a week, a month. Usually, during this time you can fix any problems. You can create and semi-annual reserves, but does it make sense? Here everything is taken into account: the location of ports, deposits, transport delivery network, etc.

7. All these solutions exist during long time and are working. If you had a disaster, then it was not duly foreseen by energy staff in charge. They should foresee this.

8. I mentioned the remote control of magma electricity production facility. This system is completely autonomous. That is, it does not require connection to Internet (Internet is not provided). Thus no-one can intrude into it. Emergency stop is certainly provided and will not lead to disaster.

9. None of the co-production industries can be neglected. For example, the volcano "Kudryavy" in Kamchatka exhales to the atmosphere in its fumarolic gases the rare-earth metal called Rhenium. This is a very expensive and valuable element, which is of great importance for modern high-tech industries. Just it is alone can pay off the plant facility on the volcano.

[Joe Blake]

So Damira, could you explain again how using your proposed power generation system could have kept the reported 50,000 blacked out homes in the state of Victoria supplied with power last night?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-29/melbourne-heat-brings-hottest-night-of-summer-blackouts/9369228

As I have been trying to explain, ANY centralised generation system, whether renewable, fossil fueled or nuclear, is subject to grid failure. Note the report says that solar power would not have been sufficient to prevent the night time black out. However using batteries, whether individual households, or local suburban microgrids, might have assisted in reducing the load on the grid.

You say I was not going to solve the problem of energy distribution. But without a solution this problem becomes absolutely crucial.

Below is a transcript of the report on ABC.

************************************************** *****

Thousands of homes were left without power as Victoria sweltered through its hottest night of the summer, with record demand being blamed for causing failures across the state's distribution network.

Temperatures did not drop below 30 degrees Celsius in Melbourne until 4:00am, and remained above 30C in Mildura and the north-west.

About 50,000 homes across the state lost power, and many were still blacked out this morning.

The State Government said while there was plenty of power being generated, the spike in demand caused blown fuses and failed transformers on the distribution network.

Energy Minister Lily D'Ambrosio said it was the highest peak demand ever recorded in Victoria on a Sunday.

"We had an astonishing 46,000 people who lost their energy supply due to a combination of factors, all related to the excessive heat and humidity built up over a number of days," she said.

"Peak demand was around about 9,100 megawatts.

"It occurred at about 5:30pm last night, putting that additional strain on the electricity infrastructure and that's what caused the localised outages across parts of the state."

The Australian Energy Market Operator also said the outages had nothing to do with supply.

Ms D'Ambrosio said once all customers were reconnected the Government would investigate what could be done to prevent future failures.

"Some of those fixes can't occur overnight of course, when you're talking about infrastructure upgrades, but certainly we will need to have the distribution businesses held to account for their asset," she said.

Air-conditioners put 'enormous stress' on network

Andrew Dillon from Energy Networks Australia told ABC Radio Melbourne the statewide system held up under the strain of demand, but local networks were overwhelmed.

He said all five energy distributors across Victoria experienced outages, putting the problems down to air conditioner use.

"They were all on yesterday and so they were putting enormous stress on the local network infrastructure and in some areas unfortunately we had some issues," he said.

"Many residential parts of Victoria set all time electricity demand records yesterday.

"Overall you probably could say the infrastructure held up pretty well, but obviously that's cold comfort for those that were off."

Mr Dillon said the use of solar power did little to ease the pressure, as peak electricity usage came later in the day.

"What solar power has done is certainly well and truly clicked the load off at midday, and it has helped with these peaks at 3:00pm or 4:00pm," he said.

"But what it's effectively tended to do is shift them to later in the day, so now we're starting to see the network peak doesn't happen until 6:00pm or 7:00pm."

Melbourne's hottest night of the summer

Senior forecaster Richard Carlyon from the Bureau of Meteorology said the high humidity in Melbourne would stick around until Tuesday morning.

"It was a hot and humid night in Melbourne," he said.

"The temperature dropped to 28.4 degrees at 5:30am — not quite a record. The all-time record for January is 30.6C."

In the state's north-west overnight temperatures remained in the low 30s.

There will be speed restrictions on a number of V/Line regional train services today due to the heat.

The BOM has forecast a sultry top of 35C for Melbourne today with an afternoon change, but relief will not come until tomorrow.

"We'll probably have to wait until the early hours of Tuesday before that tropical moisture starts to move away, and by later tomorrow morning we should have cool and much less humid conditions throughout Melbourne," Mr Carlyon said.

"It has been fairly dry over the last few days. We've missed the bulk of the storm activity but we may see falls of around 10 to 30 millimetres throughout Melbourne during tonight and tomorrow morning.

"It will cool off — it will take some time to cool off — but certainly much cooler than last night."

Temperatures in Melbourne reached 37.8C at about 3:40pm on Sunday and in many regional areas it reached well into the 40s.

Surf Lifesaving Victoria said 80 people were rescued at the state's beaches on the weekend.

Authorities urged people to take care of vulnerable members of the community, such as the elderly and the ill.

They also told pet owners to make sure animals had plenty of water and access to shade.

[Damira Kulma]

I was talking about a whole new source of energy which was never used before. This potential source is magma. I was talking about remote control of lava flow use which should not just inspire awe to people. Now technological advances make it possible to deal with it and these source of gigawatts should not stay beyond the reach of human industrial activity.

Electric power transmission network is a SEPETATE subject of activity. Therefore, there are companies GENERATING electricity and there are companies DELIVERING it to the consumer. These are two independent areas of activity. I am talking about the first one.

About the failure, I gave an explanation of how to provide households with electricity. They have long been known and used. Here the Government said: ".. the spike in demand caused blown fuses and failed transformers on the distribution network."
So the problem is the insufficient network capacity. So what? The company had not taken into account peak usage loads. What is the problem here? Thus to install additional transformers, increase the capacity of networks. There is nothing to discuss here. Like if your fuse burned out at home because you turned on too many devices and increased consumption above the calculated threshold. Your solution is: 1. To replace the fuse and turn off excess devices. 2. To re-make the electrical network in the apartment for more power (increase the cross-section of wires, put additional fuses and divide the house into sectors for each fuse. Install an emergency shutdown and diagnostic systems).

All this has nothing to do with the source of electricity. What difference does it make where it comes from: coal, gasoline, wind, sun or whatever. I was not talking about that.

[Joe Blake]

Damira,

If you look at the heading of this particular thread, it's about the FUTURE of renewable energy. You can't just dismiss the lack/failure of power distribution with a wave of your hand and say it's somebody else's problem.

"So the problem is the insufficient network capacity. So what? The company had not taken into account peak usage loads."

No matter how novel the source of energy is, if it can't be delivered to the consumer it has no future.

In August of 2017 the West Australian power consumers received a rather severe price hike in the "supply charge" from the utility, going up from 44.18 cents per day to 86.27 cents per day. Note that well. This was NOT an increase in the price of electricity, but the cost of the GRID. And the result of this increase? Further growth in the number of households going to renewal (mainly solar) energy and house batteries. The future of the grid is looking darker every day. If you go back into the history of this state, the high cost of the supply charge is due to the fact that the owners of the grid tried to take into account the peak load by "overbuilding" it, referred to as "gold plating".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/australian-gold-plated-power-grid/8721566

What you were suggesting (... increase the capacity of networks ...) as a solution has already been tried, and in the main has failed miserably, simply increasing the cost without increasing reliability.

The FUTURE of renewable power today took a very interesting turn, in a news report from South Australia (the state which was last year made totally powerless by a grid failure).

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-04/elon-musk-tesla-to-give-solar-panels-batteries-to-sa-homes/9394352
(Cut and paste)

At least 50,000 homes in SA will be given solar panels and batteries in a scheme by Elon Musk's Tesla and the SA Government to build the world's largest virtual power plant, slashing household power bills in the process.

Under the deal unveiled by Premier Jay Weatherill ahead of the March state election, solar systems and batteries will be supplied and installed free of charge.

The cost of the project will be financed through the sale of electricity, generated by the panels, in what Mr Weatherill said would be the largest project of its kind.

Yes, there will still be a grid, but a very much smaller, more reliable and less expensive one than is currently the case.

Bear in mind that following the failure of the South Australian grid last year, Elon Musk offered to install the largest battery (in the world, at that time) and have it working with 100 days, or it would be free. He delivered ... it went into operation one day before the closing date.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-23/worlds-most-powerful-lithium-ion-battery-finished-in-sa/9183868

Lastly, you seem to be blithely ignoring the fact that in the first paragraph of my first reply to you, I agreed with you, saying It may be possible to do as you have indicated, so I'm left wondering what is the point of your increasingly irrational ramblings about "magma". It's an interesting concept but I don't see it has having much of a future for reasons I've already delineated.