Technology Renewable Energies & Green Technology

Husky_Khan

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
thehill.com

How did wind power just become America’s biggest renewable energy?

Wind power finally knocked hydroelectric out of the top spot, and renewables are now on track to surpass natural gas by 2050.
thehill.com thehill.com

So recently it seems Wind Power has eclipsed Hydroelectricity as the largest contributor of renewable energy at least here in the United States. Just less then a fifth of America's energy comes from 'renewable' energy resources such as wind, solar or hydro power with the lions share still belonging to fossil fuels and a significant minority fraction to nuclear power. As of 2019 over seven percent of America's electricity was delivered by wind power, the vast majority of which was constructed on wind farms in the past decade.

Solar Power meanwhile provides around two percent of America's energy needs and Hydroelectricity just a smidgen less then Wind. What do you all see as the future of power generation, especially in regards to renewable energies like those stated here or beyond?
 
Next way of generating energy will be by harnessing the tidal movements; there are some proof-of-concept plants going around.

Biggest problem with solar and wind power is how quick they go from 0 to full generation(and vice-versa), which plays havoc with electrical grids. The way people are trying to solve this is by building battery banks. While battery technology isn't quite there to make these truly viable, technology is getting there(I suspect it will be viable by 2030).
 
I wouldn't mind seeing a Solar Boiler type energy plant in multiple states.

Solar thermal power plants - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

An overview of the major types of solar thermal power plants or solar thermal electric technologies including concentrating parabolic trough, parabolic dish, fresnel lens systems, and locations and types of the largest solar thermal power plants.
www.eia.gov www.eia.gov
 
Husky_Khan said:
arstechnica.com

Battery prices have fallen 88 percent over the last decade

Cheaper batteries are making it easier to fight climate change.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com

Apparently Lithium-Ion Batteries have experienced an 88% drop in price over the past ten years, opening up new possibilities in regards to finding alternatives to fossil fuels in large numbers of commercial and passenger vehicles (like buses) and so forth.
Click to expand...

pretty much every cool thing we want is being held back by our shitty batery tech.
 
Husky_Khan said:
Apparently Lithium-Ion Batteries have experienced an 88% drop in price over the past ten years, opening up new possibilities in regards to finding alternatives to fossil fuels in large numbers of commercial and passenger vehicles (like buses) and so forth.
Click to expand...
Lithium ion batteries have two issues compared to flammable oil. One is energy density, the other is safety.

Oil holds lots of energy compared to its mass. You can carry a jerrycan full of gas pretty easily, but a Lithium ion battery with the same energy potential will need a forklift.

For safety, you can get splashed with gasoline and be fine. Gasoline can catch fire and just burn, it only rarely explodes. For batteries, they are highly chemically reactive because that is how they discharge their energy.
 
Yeah I recall when Richard Hammond died crashing that Electric Supercar, the Rimac, they said the car kept having its fire reignited for five days because of something called thermal runaway when each cell kept igniting.

RIP.

 
Battery tech is the big stumbling block with electric cars and trucks. Even so-called green energy (other than hydroelectic), really, since my understanding is that storing the energy from when solar and wind generate power for when load is the highest.
 
They are somewhat situational, but some hydro dams can work for storing kinetic energy for use to generate electricity by pumping water back into reservoirs, and can be done in a way that benefits a power grid. This functions much like a battery to help even out peak and off-peak demand for power. Here is an example: Cruachan Power Station - Wikipedia
 
LindyAF said:
Battery tech is the big stumbling block with electric cars and trucks. Even so-called green energy (other than hydroelectic), really, since my understanding is that storing the energy from when solar and wind generate power for when load is the highest.
Click to expand...
Battery tech is a big stumbling black for all green energy technologies. Its a stumbling block for geen power soruces because they are mostly intermittent and need to store most of their energy to be useful. Its a stumbling block for electric vehicles because gasoline is just that much more mass efficient than batteries. Its a stumbling block for hydrogen power... because hydrogen power is just an exotic and inefficient battery.
 
To clarify by "hydroelectic" I meant dams not hydrogen power. Maybe I used the wrong word?

My understanding is that it also isn't a stumbling block with nuclear, although green/renewable is mostly a political classification and nuclear doesn't fall under the same umbrella as the others on political matters.
 
LindyAF said:
My understanding is that it also isn't a stumbling block with nuclear, although green/renewable is mostly a political classification and nuclear doesn't fall under the same umbrella as the others on political matters.
Click to expand...
Hydro and nuclear are relatively clean power, but they aren't Green power if you define green power by politics.
 
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