Thursday, May 31, 2018

Cheap EVs

Carlos Ghosn, head of the Nissan-Renault alliance, reckons that at 300 kms (188 miles) the range of an EV (electric vehicle) is enough.  What is needed now is for the cost to decline:

At about 188 miles, the range of today's electric cars is enough. It's the price that needs to come down.

So says Carlos Ghosn, an electric-car pioneer among CEOs of mainstream automakers. Ghosn made the statement at a Nissan event in Hong Kong, according to Nikkei Asian Review.

The speech revealed key marketing insights from one of the world's bestselling makers of electric cars.

“We have seen that consumers do not talk anymore about range or autonomy as long as you guarantee more than 300 kilometers (188 miles)," Ghosn said. “You could not have guessed this through studies. You had to have 500,000 (electric) cars on the ground to understand that consumers do not put autonomy on top of their concerns any more when you cross 300 km.”

[Source: Green Car Reports]

It so happens that Honda plans to introduce an EV with 300 km range at a price of $18,000 (2 million yen) in 2020.  It will be produced in China by a JV with the world's largest battery manufacturer, and will presumably initially only be sold  in China.  And the Chinese measurement on an EV's range is more generous than the USA's.  But if a well-regarded brand like Honda can produce an EV with a real range of 150 miles (240 kms) for $18,000, and if it exports this car to global markets, it's hard to see how petrol-driven cars (ICEVs) can compete.  EVs are much quieter than ICEVs; they're much smoother (they don't vibrate and judder); they're significantly cheaper to fuel up; they can be recharged overnight in your garage; maintenance costs are negligible; and they're already cheaper to run (total cost)  than ICEVs.  Up to now, their 'sticker price' has been a negative.  At $18,000 that will no longer be true.  EV sales are going to explode.

In 5 years' time, you will be able to choose from a spread of EVs, some luxurious and expensive with long ranges, other cheaper with mid-ranges, and still others very cheap with low ranges ideal for city use.

(Source: Nikkei Asian Review)

Rush to gas risks billions in stranded assets

There is a massive rush on in the USA to build new gas-fired power stations and the pipelines which will supply them.  Now, gas is a good complement to renewables, because the output from gas-fired power stations can be scaled up or down much more quickly than is the case with coal-fired power stations. That doesn't necessarily mean that gas is financially viable.  If you are only using a power station for part of the day, its average cost is higher because the costs of maintenance, depreciation, and interest/capital repayment have to be spread over a smaller output.  Which means that there is a big risk that batteries will soon be cheaper than gas because battery costs are falling by 20%+ per annum.  The Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) has done some sums:

RMI’s The Economics of Clean Energy Portfolios notes that, in many cases, these gas plants are being built to replace the older generation, including aging coal and nuclear power plants. Over half the U.S. thermal generation fleet is more than 30 years old and expected to reach retirement by 2030, and RMI estimates that it would require $500 billion to replace all of these plants with gas generation. This would lock in a combined $1 trillion in asset and fuel costs.

This would also result in 5 billion tons of CO2 emissions through 2030, with that number increasing to 16 billion tons through 2050. With these emissions comes the release of methane (CH4), a far more potent greenhouse gas over 20 and 100-year timeframes.

None of this is necessary. RMI conducted case studies of four natural gas-fired power plants currently proposed for construction across the nation and found that in three of four cases, the optimized portfolios of renewable energy and other non-emitting resources could replace the gas plants at a lower cost. In the fourth scenario, RMI found that the clean energy portfolio would cost roughly 6% more.
Source: PV Magazine


These are at current costs for clean energy resources, and do not include a price on carbon. RMI found that when factoring in a modest $7.50 per ton cost of CO2 and expected price declines for distributed solar, clean energy is the cheaper alternative in all cases.

These clean energy options showed generally superior economics versus both combined cycle gas plants and combustion turbines, which have different use cases. Combustion turbines are typically used as “peaker” plants, running seldom and in times of high demand, wheres combined cycle plants tend to run more often as “mid-merit” plants.

The clean energy portfolios modeled by RMI have the ability to provide not just energy, but also the ancillary services required by the grid.

[Source: PV Magazine]

My guess is that most of these new gas plants planned for 2020 onwards won't be built.  Utilities are naturally conservative--they own assets with lifetimes of  3 decades or more; they have leveraged balance sheets; the regulators themselves are conservative; and we're all still feeling our way towards a 100% green grid, so aggressive jumps to new technologies are potentially very risky.  So right now they're choosing gas over storage, which may be a rational decision.  The trouble is, in 5 years, storage won't just be normal, it'll also be cheap--perhaps 1/4 its current cost. 

As RMI points out, the renewables alternatives are already nearly as cheap as or cheaper than gas.  In 5 or 10 years time, the cost advantage of green energy will be irresistible.  What will all these shiny new gas power stations and pipelines be worth then?

Monday, May 28, 2018

Xcel Energy's CO2 emissions down 35%


(Source: Energy Digital)


Xcel Energy serves 8 states in the west and mid-west of the USA.  It is one of the largest US utilities.

Xcel Energy has cut carbon emissions 35 percent since 2005 and expects to surpass 50 percent by 2022, largely by retiring aging coal plants and replacing them with renewable sources.

The Minneapolis-based owner of Colorado’s largest utility appears ahead of schedule on its goal of reaching a 60 percent reduction in 2005 greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and it is doing so  without passing on cost increases to customers, according to the company’s Corporate Responsibility Report released this week.

Xcel has announced the retirement of 20 coal units, accounting for 40 percent of its coal-powered capacity, from 2005 to 2026, including several in Colorado. To fill the gap, the company has invested heavily in wind-powered sources, and to a lesser degree solar, while also promoting energy conservation.

Last year, about 40 percent of the electricity Xcel supplied came from carbon-free sources, and half of that amount from wind. Besides reducing its carbon output, the company said emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides were down by more than 70 percent. It also has cut its water consumption by 40 percent.

[From The Denver Post]

Last year, the utility reminded us that it originally believed that even a 5% penetration of renewables in the grid would lead to dangerous instability.  Now it's heading for 60%.

Publicity

A cartoon by Steve Artley



Thursday, May 24, 2018

Peak stupid from the WSJ

The Wall Street Journal used to be one of the Anglosphere's great newspapers, 30 years ago.  Its articles were well researched and often of very high quality.  They assumed their readers were intelligent.  I used to read it with pleasure, even though its political views inclined right.  I remember  being impressed that it had few pictures and plenty of densely spaced text, the exact opposite of the tabloid press at the time, and now.

All newspapers have suffered from the migration of advertising to online forums.  And as revenue has declined, newspapers have had to reduce costs by dispensing with quality journalism.  However, for a paper of this calibre to sink to these lows is quite sad.

A recent paper by Fred Singer shows how far the WSJ's standards have declined.  The writer accepts that water expands when it's heated but nevertheless states that global warming has nothing to do with rising sea levels, because the increase in the Antarctic ice cap has compensated for this expansion.  He uses data from 1915 to 1945 (!) from just one location (San Francisco) to back up this theory.  It's not as if we were in 1818, with limited data!    The old WSJ would never have published this tripe.  Alas, its pages now serve the climate denialism god, as its master Rupert Murdoch requires.

In fact the whole question has been well studied:

Figure – Global sea‐level budget from 1961 to 2008. (left) The observed sea level using coastal and island tide gauges (solid black line with grey shading indicating the estimated uncertainty) and using satellite altimeter data (dashed black line) with thermal expansion and glaciers melting components; terrestrial storage (e.g. dams) partially offsets other contributions to sea‐level rise. (right) The observed sea level and the sum of components.
The chart of the left shows the different sources of the rise in sea levels.  The brick-red line at the bottom shows how "terrestrial storage", i.e., the increase of water on land, including any "rise" in the amount of ice in Antarctica (it's actually been falling) has offset the effects of the other two factors (thermal expansion and melting ice sheets).  The right-hand chart shows the combination of these factors (red line with pink uncertainty band) compared with actual sea-level rise both from tidal gauges and (in recent years) satellites (black solid and dashed line with grey uncertainty band) and the fit seems accurate.

Yes, the sea level is rising, and yes it's due to the thermal expansion of the ocean and melting of the glaciers and ice caps.  And those in turn are due to rising global temperatures which are rising because the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising because mankind is burning fossil fuels. 

[Hat tip to Climate Denial Crock of the Week (always excellent reading.)  There is also a Guardian article (Yes, EVs are green and global warming is raising sea levels) discussing this WSJ article and another ineffably feeble article in Politico about how EVs pollute more than ICEVs.]

The denialists are getting desperate.  They're also scraping the bottom of the barrel with the "scientists" and "journalists" they use to write their (frankly) feeble rebuttals of the facts of climate change and its causes.



Energy's next big thing

The decline in the cost of renewables just keeps going:

Unlike almost all their rivals in the energy-generation space, solar panels and wind turbines are mass-produced goods. That means they’re subject to the rules of continual improvement and falling costs that we see with semiconductors, household products and clothing as production volumes rise and factories undercut each other. Traditional power plants are essentially large-scale construction projects, which rarely achieve the same sorts of efficiency dividends.

As a result, the cost of new-build renewables has been sinking. The highest-cost solar and wind projects in the U.S. will now produce electricity at least as cheaply as as the lowest-cost coal plants, according to a report last year by Lazard Inc.

In Australia, that price differential means one of the world’s largest coal exporters is unlikely ever to build another generator powered by the stuff, Catherine Tanna, managing director of EnergyAustralia, told a Bloomberg Invest conference in Sydney Wednesday. By the early 2020s, renewables will have gotten so cheap that it will be more cost effective to build them than to operate even an existing coal or nuclear plant, Jim Robo, CEO of Florida-based NextEra Energy Inc., said during an investor call in January.

[Read more here]

The chart below shows the gap between the cost of new coal and the cost of new solar in some Asian economies, which are all places the coal industry hopes to expand sales. They're all places where electricity demand is rising strongly (in developed countries electricity demand is stagnant or slowly declining)

Source: Bloomberg

The trends in the charts are obvious.  The gaps between coal power LCOEs and solar LCOEs ranges from -$11/MWh in India to +$47/MWh in Indonesia (which has lots of cheap poor-quality domestic coal)  In the Philippines (+$4/MWh) and Thailand (+$12/MWh) it is likely that new solar will become cheaper than new coal over the next year; in China and Vietnam (+$21/MWh) 2020 seems more plausible as the cross over point, while in Indonesia it will be after that.  But the point is that any analyst can see this trend.  It takes 5 years to build a new coal-fired power station and they last for 30 years.  Who wants to be stuck with expensive power for 30 years?  Even if coal is for this year and next year cheaper than solar, over the full lives of the assets (the coal power station and the  solar farm) solar will be cheaper.  A classic case of stranded assets.

But there are important implications for storage:

The trouble with things that get extremely cheap, however, is that you often end up with too much of them. That situation is exacerbated by the no-off-switch nature of wind and solar power. Take California’s recent mandate to put solar panels on the roofs of all new buildings. As my colleague Liam Denning wrote last week, one likely effect will be to push more electrons into a mid-afternoon electricity market that’s already glutted with supply.

That’s where storage comes in. Most power markets are structured in the form of minute-by-minute auctions, where the grid will buy whatever electricity is cheapest. One result is that where renewables penetration is greatest, wholesale electricity prices have occasionally gone to zero or even into negative territory.

For conventional generators, that’s terrible news: They must either sell electricity for less than the cost of producing it, or temporarily shut down — which creates essentially the same problem, since it reduces a plant’s capacity utilization and undermines its return on capital.

If you’re in the storage business, however, it’s a compelling proposition. As we argued last year when Tesla Inc. installed a lithium-ion grid battery outside of Adelaide, negative prices give storage operators the opportunity to get paid to charge their cells, and then paid to discharge them as well.

[Read more here]

Of course, as the amount of storage increases, that will by itself reduce the negative and the maximum prices, and storage will become less profitable.  However this diminishing profit margin will be offset by falling storage costs, to the extent that even a small gap between peak and trough prices will be profitable.

Quacking the code

Solar: No possible doubt whatever


Coastal Flooding: from nuisance to trouble

[From RobertScribbler]

In the Southeast, high tide flooding days since 2000 have increased from an average of 1.5 per year to 3 per year. In the Northeast, similar flooding days have increased from about 3.5 per year to 6. Flooding is also becoming more common on the U.S. West Coast, though at a slower rate of growth. But hotspots for this region include San Francisco — which is seeing both land subsidence and rising oceans.

By mid-Century the Western Gulf of Mexico is expected to face between 80 to 185 days of flooding per year, the coastal Northeast expects 45 to 130 days, and the Southeast and Eastern Gulf of Mexico is likely to see between 25 and 85 flooding days per year. By 2100, under expected fossil fuel burning scenarios, many locations will see at least minor flooding on most days.

In other words, already widespread flooding is about to get much worse. And the increasingly powerful storms we now see roaring out of an ocean riled by climate change will push their more intense storm surges up over already higher seas. Eventually, there will be no U.S. coastal zone that is untouched by this combined impact.



Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Solar tipping point

(Source)
New solar or wind, including depreciation and interest, is close to being cheaper than the operating costs of coal.  In most places they are already cheaper than new coal.  To emphasize: the coal and gas lines in the chart above show operating cost; the wind and solar lines show total cost.

Monday, May 21, 2018

Rooftop solar now required in California

From The Orange County Register (California)

For seven years, a handful of homebuilders offered solar as an optional item to buyers willing to pay extra to go green.

Now, California is on the verge of making solar standard on virtually every new home built in the Golden State.

Just 15 percent to 20 percent of new single-family homes built include solar, according to Bob Raymer, technical director for the California Building Industry Association.

“California is about to take a quantum leap in energy standards,” Raymer said. “No other state in the nation mandates solar, and we are about to take that leap.”

In addition to widespread adoption of solar power, the new provisions include a push to increase battery storage and increase reliance on electricity over natural gas. Among the highlights:

  • The new solar mandate would apply to all houses, condos and apartment buildings up to three stories tall that obtain building permits after Jan. 1, 2020.
  • Exceptions or alternatives will be allowed when homes are shaded by trees or buildings or when the home’s roofs are too small to accommodate solar panels.
  • Solar arrays can be smaller because homes won’t have to achieve true net-zero status.
  • Builders installing batteries like the Tesla Powerwall would get “compliance credits,” allowing them to further reduce the size of the solar system.
  • Provisions will encourage more electric use or even all-electric homes to reduce natural gas consumption. State officials say improved technology is making electric water heaters increasingly cost-effective.

The new energy standards add about $25,000 to $30,000 to the construction costs compared with homes built to the 2006 code, said C.R. Herro, Meritage’s vice president of environmental affairs. Solar accounts for about $14,000 to $16,000 of that cost, with increased insulation and more efficient windows, appliances, lighting and heating accounting for another $10,000 to $15,000.

But that $25,000 to $30,000 will result in $50,000 to $60,000 in the owner’s reduced operating costs over the 25-year life of the home’s solar system, Herro said.




Of course, this will make the duck curve even steeper.  Expect a similar explosion of grid-scale storage in California to what is now happening in Oz.

SpaceX's completely reusable rockets

It used to cost about $15,000 to $20,000 to lift one kilogram (2.2 lbs) to LEO (low earth orbit).   SpaceX can do it with the Falcon 9 for $2700 per kilogram, even when the Falcon 9 isn't reused.  SpaceX charges $62 million per launch, and that price assumes it's not reusable.   If the rocket could be reused several times without major refurbishment, then the costs would be slashed further, because most of the cost of the rocket is the hardware.  Only a tiny percentage is fuel.

With the "Block 5" version of the Falcon 9, SpaceX aims to reuse the first stage of the Falcon 9  for 10 launches with minimal or no refurbishment between launches.  This will cut the cost per launch to $5 or $6 million.  Note: the cost not the price.  SpaceX will still charge $50 million, and will use its profits to pay back the development costs of the Falcon 9 and to fund its new BFR.

At first glance, that Falcon 9 looked little different from the previous versions of the rocket. Its interstage section between the first and second stages was now black, as were the four landing legs at the base of the first stage. Those superficial aesthetic differences, though, hid more substantive changes to the vehicle in the company’s quest to make it more reliable and more reusable.

Elon Musk said that this “Block 5” version of the rocket is really the sixth version of the rocket. “Because we had version one; version 1.1, which was really like version 2; arguably a version in between that; and then a bunch of blocks,” he said.

Whether you call it Block 5 or Version 6, Musk said a major change in the vehicle was an emphasis on rapid reusability. “The key to Block 5 is that it’s designed to do ten or more flights with no refurbishment between each flight, or at least no scheduled refurbishment between each flight,” he said. “The only thing that needs to change is you reload propellant and fly again.”

SpaceX already demonstrated reusability with the previous Block 4 version of the rocket, with 11 reflown first stages launched to date. However, the Block 4 version required more maintenance between flights, and were only being flown a couple of times. “With Block 4, we’d optimized it to probably about a week’s worth of refurbishments if pushed. Maybe, call it about ten days of work between flights,” he said. But Block 5 is “really better in every way than Block 4.”

The no-refurbishment goal of the Block 5 first stage means it is at least theoretically feasible to fly it twice within 24 hours, and Musk has set a goal to do just that later next year.

“So it’s going to take some amount of time—we’re going to be very careful and deliberate about this—but that will be I think truly remarkable, to launch an orbit-class rocket—the same orbital-class rocket—twice in one day,” he said.

“There’ll be some moderate scheduled maintenance at ten [flights], but we believe that the Block 5 boosters are capable of on the order of at least a hundred flights before being retired, maybe more,” Musk said.

Musk said he expected that customers, once reticent to fly on previously-flown boosters, will soon come to prefer them. “I think the general sentiment will change from feeling like a flown rocket is scary to feeling like an un-flown rocket is scary,” he said. “Would you rather fly in an aircraft that’s never had a test flight before, or would you rather fly in an aircraft that’s flown many times successfully?”

With that kind of reusability, Musk said he anticipates building just 30 to 50 Block 5 first stages, even though he expects the vehicle to perform at least 300 launches before being retired in favor of the company’s BFR (officially, Big Falcon Rocket).

Another key motivator for the Block 5 upgrade, Musk said, was reliability. The Block 5 will be used for launching commercial crew missions for NASA—Friday’s launch was the first of seven launches of the new vehicle required before NASA will allow it to be used for crewed missions—as well as for national security missions for the Air Force.

“We need to exceed all of NASA’s human-rating requirements for Block 5, and they are quite extensive, as well as meet all of the Air Force requirements for extreme reliability,” he said. “I really don’t want to jinx fate here, but this rocket is really designed to be—the intent is to be—the most reliable rocket ever built. That is the design intent. I hope fate does not punish me for these words, but that is unequivocally the intent.”

[Read more here]

Some of the changes SpaceX has made to make the Falcon 9 safer and more reusable are:


  • The pressure tanks used to store helium ("the composite-overwrapped pressure vessels" or COPVs) have been redesigned and will now withstand twice the pressure they are subjected to.  The only two losses of Falcon 9s have come from failures in the COPVs.
  • A heat resistant coating has been applied to parts of the rocket which overheat during re-entry.  These are the black parts you see in the photos of Block 5 of the Falcon 9 (see image below)
  • The grid-fins, used to control the rocket during re-entry and landing have been redesigned and the aluminium alloy previously used has been replaced with titanium which is much more expensive but also doesn't catch fire during landing.
  • The landing legs have been made retractable so they don't need to be physically removed for transport after every landing.
  • The 'octaweb' which keeps all nine first stage Merlin engines in place has been strengthened and the alloy used changed, and the engines are now bolted in rather than welded to make replacement easier.  One aim of the stronger octaweb is to allow a single Merlin engine to fail without it also destroying the other engines.
  • Improved avionics.
SpaceX's aim is to 'fix' the design of the Falcon 9 so that all research and development effort can go into the BFR.  It's also a NASA requirement that the design be stabilised before manned missions can be started.  There will be no further 'blocks' or versions of the Falcon 9 except for minor tweaks.  Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy will become cash cows that fund the BFR & BFS.  

Some interesting articles/videos:


Falcon 9 block 4 (left) vs block 5 after re-entry
Source: Scott Manley

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Tesla Model 3 exceeds 4000 per week

From a commenter at the Tesla Motor Club (hat tip to CleanTechnica)

Report from Freemont on Model 3 Production line 5/13/2018 (midday):

* 4290- Last 7 days production of M3
* 638- Last 24hrs production of M3

The last line shutdown/retooling had a significant improvement on the speed of the M3 line. Everything is working in conjunction like intended and no bottlenecks anywhere. The upcoming May line shutdown for retooling is going to be much shorter than past, and currently scheduled for May 26-27th weekend. Shutdown could get moved up if production continues to increase at its current rate. The sentiment from the line is 5k sustained is pretty much guaranteed and 6k before end of June is very likely. Bottom line is I was told this is as good as Tesla employees have felt about the M3 production since production began.

This is not inconsistent with Bloomberg's Tesla Model 3 tracker, nor with Musk's comments in a leaked staff email.  However, over the last week fewer VINs were registered (possibly because of another scheduled shut down of the assembly line towards the end of the month), so Bloomberg's model predicts fewer assemblies next week and the week after.

Source: Bloomberg


I reiterate: by end June Tesla will have achieved at least a week of 5000+ model 3 production.  By end of Q4, they'll be running at 7000 a week.  Some of these will be directed to Canada and other international markets, but even assuming 20% are exported, US sales of the Model 3 alone will be running at double the rate of sales of all EVs in the US in 2017 (3800 per week.) 

The royal wedding's ..... EV

Yep, I watched it.  Excuse a sentimental elderly bloke.

There have been many malicious comments about Meghan's race, gleefully promoted by the gutter press in the UK, and I liked the quiet way the royal family made it clear what they thought about that: a black gospel group sang, a black primate (head of the Episcopalian church in the US) delivered the sermon, the Queen's black (and female) personal chaplain made a prayer, and a young black cellist played (he's justly been compared to Jacqueline du Pre).

Now, the dress(es) did nothing for me.  But I liked this:

The couple then rode off into the sunset toward their final private reception at Frogmore House, a 17th century English country house, in a silver blue Jaguar E-Type Concept Zero which was originally manufactured in 1968 and now runs on electricity.

The car’s number plate bore the date of the wedding - E190518.


The conversion to an EV was apparently done by the Jaguar company itself.  And you can buy one if you've got $500,000.  (The car was hired by the Prince, not bought, so it cost him a bit less).  Note that the steering wheel is on the 'wrong' side for the UK. It has a top speed of 150mph/240 kph, and a range of 270 kms.  How beautiful it is!

The royal family can't make or change legislation.  But they can still make some very pointed comments.  And the Duke and Duchess of Sussex did, bless them.



Solar: No possible doubt whatever

Of that there is no manner of doubt-- 
No probable, possible shadow of doubt-- 
No possible doubt whatever.

[The Gondoliers.  G & S's gentle mockery of hereditary monarchy.]

From Tony Seba's latest speech:

Solar's cost has been falling by 11% a year for 4 decades.


In recent years the cost decline appears to be even faster.  4 years ago, solar cost 8 cents/kWh ($80/MWh) and in sunny places it now costs < 1.8 cents/kWh ($18/MWh)  Unsubsidised.


Not only is solar now often the cheapest source of energy, in many geographies it is cheaper than the operating costs of coal and gas.  In 80% of global markets the cost of solar is below grid parity, i.e., below the retail price of electricity.  And that ignores potential technological wild cards, such as the new perovskite solar which can be easily manufactured by ordinary glass factories and is as cheap as glass.





In consequence, installed solar capacity has been doubling every 2 years since 1990. Currently, solar PV provides about 2% of the world's electricity.  In 5 doublings--10 years--it could provide 64% of the world's electricity.  Of course, the growth rate will slow as supply reaches saturation.  And it is limited by the cost of storage.  The next few doublings in solar won't be a problem for grid stability,  but after 16% (i.e., in 2024) a rapid increase in storage will be essential.



Fortunately,  the cost of batteries is plunging.  If battery costs fall 16% per annum, that means they will decline by 60% in 5 years.



In fact, since 2010, the rate of decline in battery costs has further accelerated to 20% per annum.  This means battery costs halve every 3 years.  In 6 years, battery storage will cost 25% --or less--of what it does now.  The cost of 24 hours of storage for an average household will be below $1 a day.




I've sliced and diced Seba's arguments, and I strongly recommend you watch the whole presentation.

There are some very clear conclusions:


  • The moral of the story is that by 2024 storage costs will not be an impediment to solar reaching 64% of total global electricity supply.  
  • Solar will provide something like half our power within 10 years. The rest will be provided by wind and water, wind especially in higher latitudes.
  • The grid will have substantial battery backup both at grid level and behind the meter.  In fact battery storage will be ubiquitous.
  • Coal is finished.  Any new coal power stations built now will be stranded assets within a decade or less.  Given that they are supposed to last 30 years, that will be financially disastrous.  
  • High quality coal will still be needed (for now) for making iron and steel.  Low quality coal mines are another lost cause. 
  • Countries which insist on staying with coal will face much more expensive electricity than those which ditch it.
  • Peaking gas plants are in trouble too.  Batteries are faster and cheaper, and will get cheaper still.
  • If you add in the explosive growth of EVs (sales doubling every 18 months), CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels will start to fall rapidly within 5 or 6 years.  Not because governments and the elite have suddenly turned green, but because of sheer selfish motives by millions of energy users.
  • The carbon bubble is a serious risk to world financial markets.
  • Utilities will face a big decline in demand from households and businesses with their own rooftops (blocks of flats and office blocks are different.)  It will be cheaper for them to install rooftop solar and batteries than to use grid electricity. In fact, the cost of the grid alone will be more than the costs of (distributed) solar and storage.  That means that even if generation costs zero, it would still pay households/small businesses to install their own solar/battery combo.

Saturday, May 19, 2018

Even Republicans like renewables

As y'all know, the divide between left and right on the issue of climate change seems unbridgeable, and the chasm is widest in the USA.

Yet, amazingly, both Republicans and Democrats are strongly in favour of wind and solar, even though they just as strongly disagree about whether there's global warming and what causes it and whether offshore drilling and fracking are good.

Source: Earther
What's not to like?  When the wind blows and the sun shines, electricity is produced.  Seems miraculous doesn't it?  Yet it's a thing.  And these days wind and solar are cheaper by far than coal, nuclear and even gas.  To put it another way, even if you don't "believe" in global warming, it still makes sense to switch to renewables.

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Tesla Model X tows a Qantas Dreamliner Boeing 787




Tesla has shown that its Model X can do more than drive itself, out-drag supercars and haul the family around town.

The American electric car maker's range-topping Model X P100D variant has towed a Qantas Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner for almost 300 metres.

Weighing in at 130 tonnes, the Jumbo's successor is just a touch heavier than the P100D's official 2.5 tonne towing capacity.

Nevertheless, the feat was made possible by Tesla's dual motors that produce a massive swell of torque that is just short of 1000Nm.

That amount of pulling power puts the Tesla near the top of the torque pile in Australia with only enormous turbocharged diesel engines in US-style trucks - such as the Ram 2500 and upcoming Chevrolet Silverado - capable of eclipsing the electric machine.

However, the Tesla's usual range of up to 565km would be seriously compromised by the effort of towing such a load.

The stunt took place at Melbourne airport and was used to promote new rewards for Tesla owners who are also Qantas frequent flyers.

[Read more here]

Peace goes splat

From David Rowe of the Australian Financial Review


Where's Captain Ryan?

A cartoon from Marshall Ramsey


Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Quacking the code

[Hat tip to Climate Denial Crock of the Week for the clever title.]

Here's a short video from Vox which explains the difficulties the rising penetration of solar is creating for the managers of the grid.


Before the widespread adoption of rooftop solar, the (Californian) electricity demand curve looked like this:


There was a morning ramp up and then another ramp up in demand from 6 pm to 10 pm.

But as rooftop solar spread, the daytime net demand (the demand visible to the grid operator CAISO) fell each year and is forecast to continue to fall.


This produces a curve which looks like a duck, hence the "duck curve" or "peaking duck curve".  As you can see, from the point of view of the grid operator there is a huge surge in demand in the evening, made up of an actual increase in demand and a tail-off of rooftop solar generation.  This requires that peaking gas plants need to be started up to cater for the demand.  Peaking gas is expensive, because you need to pay for the plant maintenance, depreciation and debt repayment from just a few hours of use each day.

It produces a second consequence too: overgeneration.

 
Because baseload power generators (coal and nuclear--the tan line in the chart above) can't really be scaled up and down or switched off over midday when solar supply peaks causing net demand to drop below supply from baseload generators, output has to be curtailed.  I.e., any generator which can be switched off will be asked to.  Otherwise the grid would burn out.

The solution to those dual problems is of course storage.  If storage is cheap enough then it would pay utility-scale solar farms to install storage.  When the grid operator requests that output into the grid be curtailed, the solar farm would just switch its output from the grid to its batteries.  And when net demand ramps up in the evening, the solar farm would simply supply it from the power it stored earlier in the day.  By the way, this applies to wind too, even though wind farm output doesn't fall off at night, because the grid operator will ask any dispatchable power supplier to shut down when supply is excessive, even when it's not its fault.

So how much storage would be needed?  Well, from the POV of the grid operator or any individual wind or solar farm, any storage would be better than nothing if it's cheap enough.  A renewable generator would reduce curtailment and the grid would reduce the need to ramp up expensive gas peaking power plants.  But to remove or significantly flatten the peak of the duck curve plus remove the need for curtailment would require 4 to 6 hours of storage. 

And how cheap is cheap enough?  1 hour of battery storage costs about $4.5/MWh, 6 hours about $27.  The cost of wind is $30-$60/MWh, the cost of solar $43-$53/MWh.  But it depends on the wholesale price, which fluctuates during the day.  The cost of peaking gas is $156-$210/MWh, and of course the need to use peaking gas would drive up the wholesale price in the evening demand peak.  So a solar or wind farm installing battery storage would avoid curtailment (=zero income) at midday while earning (potentially) $150/MWh plus in the evening.

The big battery in South Australia has shown what is possible, and already wind farms in that state (60% renewables penetration) are retrofitting battery storage to avoid the costs of curtailment and to take advantage of evening peak wholesale prices.  As battery costs fall--and they should halve over the next 3 years--this will become widespread wherever the penetration of renewables rises enough to either require curtailment or to affect wholesale prices.  Also, as batteries become cheaper, households and businesses will install behind-the-meter storage, thus eliminating the daytime net demand decline.

The duck curve, curtailment and the evening ramp up would be a major problem in the absence of cheap storage.  But with cheap storage, batteries will soak up daytime sunshine so avoiding curtailment while reducing the need for peaking gas in the evening.

Sunday, May 13, 2018

Full speed ahead--Mars by 2024

After Musk announced the new all-purpose BFR and BFS at the International Aeronautical Congress in Adelaide in September, there were all sorts of questions and doubts about whether what he announced was even possible, let alone whether he could do it in his time scales.  We've all heard of "Elon Time"--although many who mock his timetables forget about Elon Time's close relative "Elon Achieves".   We've seen that with the Tesla Model 3: delays, it's true, and yet all in all, extraordinary achievements.  We've seen it with SpaceX too.  16 years ago it was just a few people and a mariachi band.   Now it is the world's premier space launch organisation.

The first question raised was: how would SpaceX transport something so massive as the BFR through the congested streets of Los Angeles from its Hawthorne factory?  Aside from the disruption and the time, it would cost $2.5 million to move the BFR the 15 kms from the factory to the port of Los Angeles.  SpaceX obviously agreed.  So, nothing daunted, it leased some land in the Port of Los Angeles right next to the water.  And, so that production could start at once, they didn't wait to demolish the existing building on the site or build a new factory but started building the BFR in a giant tent!  By the way, when Elon announced the BFR in September 2017, he said construction would start in Q2 2018.  Which it has.

Elon stated that the first test flights of BFR would begin in the first half of 2019.   Now, note, he didn't say that flights to Mars would begin then.  These would be test flights of the BFS, the upper stage of the BFR, the actual space ship which would make the trip to Mars, flights like the "grasshopper" tests at SpaceX's McGregor Texas testing site.  Elon has stated that the BFS would be built first, because SpaceX understands what's needed to build the first stage.  Even though that's 3 times wider and 20% longer (58 m vs 48 m) than the Falcon 9 first stage, the principles are the same.   The BFS, though, will be quite new, entering the Earth's atmosphere at orbital velocity (roughly 26,500 kms/hour), carrying humans, landing on the moon and Mars.

The first tests (after the static fire test) would take the BFS up towards the Kármán line (one technical definition of the edge of the Earth's atmosphere, 100 kms above the Earth.)  Later tests would have it "hop" from one launch site to another.  Then SpaceX would test orbital flight and the BFS's ability to survive the heat of re-entry and be ready for re-use within 24 hours (incidentally, it seems that this will be achieved by the block 5 iteration of the Falcon 9 which has just had its maiden flight and landing).

The timetable for all this is relatively optimistic.

 At Satellite Conference 2018, the typically reserved and pragmatic executive [Gwynne Shotwell, COO of SpaceX] confirmed beyond any doubt that she had become aggressively bullish [optimistic] on the Mars rocket, stating that she believed the spaceship would be ready for suborbital testing in 2019, while the booster-spaceship system could potentially reach orbit by 2020. Musk and Shotwell’s suggestion that BFR’s first suborbital testing – akin to an extreme version of SpaceX’s Grasshopper and F9R programs – is expected to begin in 2019 meshes well with a recent explosion of activity at Port of San Pedro in Los Angeles, CA, thanks to a combination of land acquisition, successful bureaucracy-wrangling,  and the first hints of construction and BFR production. It’s highly unlikely that SpaceX would have chosen to temporarily move BFR prototyping into a giant tent on abandoned dock space rather than waiting for port and city approvals for their permanent port factory if they were not keen on moving full speed ahead with the fully reusable launch vehicle’s development.

Early phases of in-house BFR structures prototyping is taking shape behind the flaps of a custom-ordered temporary tent, something like 60m long, 30m wide, and ~15m tall at the highest point – half an acre of eccentric but functional space for Mars rocket R&D, in other words. The primary benefit of these facilities’ dock-side locations is the minimization of the transportation hell that SpaceX would have had to suffer through to transport 9m-diameter rocket hardware through downtown Los Angeles – feats that would cost as much as $2.5 million one way each time components had to be moved from the Hawthorne factory to the Port of LA, where it would be finally shipped to Texas or Florida.

Speaking at a private talk given to MIT campus members in October 2017, attendees reported that Shotwell stated that although “[BFR’s] composite tanks [would] be a challenge [for SpaceX],” the company was already working on maturing the technologies required, and also noted that SpaceX was “building a larger [version of] Raptor right now.” Half a year later, outsiders have heard nothing of any additional carbon composite propellant tank testing at the new 9m diameter, but the existence of custom-ordered (i.e. very expensive and specialized) composite fabrication tooling of the same diameter as BFR effectively guarantees that SpaceX has settled upon and is confident in its approach to manufacturing the massive composite tankage and structures. Along with a similar line of thought, expensive tooling with a fixed diameter also indicates – albeit with less certainty – that the vehicle’s Raptor propulsion system is not expected to change significantly as BFR marches closer to suborbital and orbital testing. Raptor, in other words, is probably considerably more mature than SpaceX’s composite tankage expertise, itself fairly advanced given the mandrel and additional fabrication tooling already present at Port of San Pedro.

And yet, Shotwell’s most telling display of confidence occurred just a handful of days ago at the TED2018 conference. In a lengthy and fairly well-orchestrated interview with the session’s host Chris Anderson, Shotwell repeatedly and happily made comments indicating that she has become extremely bullish on BFR and BFS in the last several months. In her opinion, BFR (and point-to-point Earth transport) will be deployed “within a decade, for sure.” Prices would nominally be “between business and economy,” or a few thousand dollars per person. Speaking on the trip from Earth to Mars, she estimated a three-month journey with BFR Block 1, “but [SpaceX is] gonna try to do it faster.” She further confirmed that SpaceX intends to build much larger BFRs, meshing with Elon’s suggestions that 2016’s ITS concept is now perceived internally as a sort of BFR Block 2. Perhaps most importantly, she qualified her timeline estimates as “Gwynne-time” when Anderson jokingly deadpanned about the infamous Elon-time. Overall, Shotwell came across as more bullish than she has ever been before on BFR’s development and future prospects, including both point-to-point transport on Earth and crewed missions to the surface of Mars – both of which she expected to begin “within a decade, for sure.” Smirking, she quipped that she was “sure Elon would want us to go faster.”
[Read more here]

Musk said in Adelaide the goal was for the first manned ships to reach Mars in 2024.  He said that goal was "aspirational".   But judging from the speed with which SpaceX is moving on the BFR/BFS, it might actually happen.  The next Mars/Earth opposition dates are December 2022 (when SpaceX plans to send two unmanned cargo ships to Mars) and January 2025 (when they will send 2 cargo and 2 manned ships) and February 2027 (if those "aspirational" dates slip.)

I'm beginning to believe that Musk and SpaceX will do it.  What a remarkable achievement that would be.  I really hope I live to see it.

(Source)


Karl Marx was right?

This is from The Economist.  Not The New Left Review.  Or Think Progress.  Or Mother Jones

It's almost as bad as the IMF doing research which shows that decreasing inequality increases growth (oh, the horror!) or actually going so far as to ask whether neo-liberalism has been oversold (what have these guys been smoking?)

When these sorts of people are asking these sorts of questions, it is abundantly clear that the pendulum is starting to swing back from extreme capitalism towards something softer--and more rational.  Politicians (on both sides of the divide) take note.

(Hat tip to Kristina Keneally)



Tesla suppliers starting to see higher volumes from Model 3

From Electrek:

JL Warren Capital, an equity firm based in China tracking local suppliers, has seen “encouraging signs” in Tesla’s supply chain (via Bloomberg):

“Suppliers for the electric vehicle maker’s more affordable sedan have started seeing increased orders, the research firm said in a note to clients. SAS Automotive, a German cockpit manufacturer and assembler with one plant in California, ordered 20,000 display screens for the Model 3 in May, and 10,000 in June from a sole producer in China, according to the research firm.”

The firm says that the supplier is preparing 58,000 vehicles during the third quarter or about 5,000 per week, which is Tesla’s projected production exit rate in the second quarter.

The Model 3 production ramp has suffered delays and it has been difficult on Tesla since they have invested in the production of 5,000 vehicles per week, but they have been falling short of that goal for months now.

But it’s also difficult on Tesla’s suppliers who have also invested in production capacity increases to respond to the demand.

[Read more here]

Bloomberg's Tesla model 3 tracker agrees.

(Source)


The Model 3 tracker has fluctuated a lot over the last three or four weeks, thrown by the closing of the assembly lines at the Fremont and Nevada gigafactory for upgrades and by a huge jump in VINs issued to Tesla which the computer algorithm at first thought was an outlier:


Our Model 3 Tracker is in flux. We've had a flood of VINs reported to Bloomberg from new Model 3 owners since late last week. The highest reported VINs jumped by almost 10,000, to about 30,000 over the course of a week. Of course, we know that such a jump far exceeds Tesla's current production capabilities, which Elon Musk discussed during the earnings call last week.

We initially weren't sure what to make of this development, as there was a gap in the typical distribution of reports, where several thousand VINs were apparently skipped before production resumed. Our model initially considered these higher VINs as outliers and ignored them entirely.

As more VINs came in, it soon became clear that these were not outliers but that Tesla had skipped an unusually large block of VINs when it resumed production from its reported factory halt. The jump could be related to the production halt, to the coinciding start of deliveries in Canada, or any number of other factors.

We're not sure yet what this will mean for the tracker. It's possible that the Trend feature might see large volatility swings in the next few weeks, as the model seeks Tesla's new equilibrium. While we don't think the gap should affect the model's long-term accuracy, we're testing a feature that would remove gaps of a certain size from consideration, to avoid unnecessary volatility in the future.

One thing our model suggests is certain: Tesla has resumed full production in Reno and Fremont and may already be testing new levels of weekly production.

[Read more here]

I have no doubt that Tesla will reach its Model 3 production goals of 5000 a week by end June.  Even if it's just for one week.  And I am confident it will reach 7000 a week by the end of the year, though the growth rate from now on is likely to slow.  This sales level will take the Model 3 into the top 10 car models sold in the USA in Q4 2018.  (Number 10 in this ranking, the Ford Escape, is running at 5000 per week) Not bad for a company which was unknown 8 years ago and which pioneered a totally new driving technology.  

Friday, May 11, 2018

Valued at zero

For sandy coastlines, the rule of thumb is about one metre lost for each centimetre of sea level rise.
(From a news article about how some WA (West Australian) home owners face financial ruin as the sea level rises.)

I've noticed at my local beach (Inverloch, in Victoria) that there is already serious coastal erosion, with dunes being washed away at their bases and whole beaches simply disappearing.  This report is from the other end of Australia.  And it's happening there too.

Engineering consultants have warned residents in the coastal Shire of Gingin that governments could force them out when the sea renders their homes unsafe, and could well decide to provide no compensation for homes rendered worthless or taken by the sea.

State policy dictates a controversial process of “managed retreat” for already-developed areas at risk of coastal erosion due to sea level rise. This means public infrastructure is gradually dismantled and moved behind hazard lines, and private properties are surrendered to the sea when utilities or access points are lost.

Hard protections such as groynes and seawalls are considered a last resort.

Coastal councils have been ordered to develop coastal hazard plans according to these policies, and the latest council to get one is the Shire of Gingin.

Engineering firm Cardno’s draft plan depicts the threats Seabird, Lancelin and Ledge Point communities face, and people’s real prospect of being abandoned to deal with financial ruin.

The shire, with just 1300-odd ratepayers across those areas, is unlikely to have the tens of millions required to buy back homes or build and maintain protective structures across all three towns.

And governments are under no legal obligation to buy back land or compensate people if property is lost to the sea
[Read more here]

The costs of global warming and climate change aren't in some dim and distant future.  They are happening right now.  And they will only get worse.

Erosion at Grace Darling Park, Lancelin, late last winter.

Erosion protection (sandbags) on Marmion Beach, West Coast Highway.

 Photo: David Prestipino.


Lancelin after the last storm season.
(Source of all pictures: The Age)




Cute? That's all they care about?

From Business Insider:

It’s great to hear that US delivery service UPS is on-board with the EV revolution.

It’s ordered 35 new delivery trucks from UK technology firm ARRIVAL. They’ll be trialled in the UK and France first, and operate with a total of zero exhaust emissions.

They’ll have a battery range of 250km and a host of extra tech including Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) to manage safety and driver fatigue.

All of which is very laudable. And it isn’t even UPS’s first foray into EVs. It’s ordered 125 of those Tesla semitrailers which it hopes will be built next year, and overall to date has invested nearly a billion dollars in some 1000 EVs and hybrid vehicles.

So what’s new here?

This:

UPS' new electric trucks
Source: Business Insider

They save money, they produce zero emissions, the driver has excellent vision in all directions, and they're cute.  What more could you ask for?

800,000 years of CO2

From Climate Central (hat tip to Climate Denial Crock of the Week)




Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Sun power


India: solar generation up 100% yoy

In Q1 2018 the amount of electricity generated by solar PV in India jumped 103% relative to Q1 2017.  This takes India's solar as a per cent of total generation to 3.2%.  Total renewables (including large hydro) made up 16% of total generation in 2016.   See previous pieces on the Indian renewables revolution, here and here and here.  Essentially, though India is unlikely to have net closures of coal power stations over the next few years, all new growth in demand is likely to be satisfied by renewables.

Source:  Mercom India
Note: 1 million units (MU) = 1GWh

[Read more here]