WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.468 align:middle line:90% [SQUEAKING] 00:00:02.468 --> 00:00:04.436 align:middle line:90% [RUSTLING] 00:00:04.436 --> 00:00:07.880 align:middle line:90% [CLICKING] 00:00:07.880 --> 00:00:11.140 align:middle line:90% 00:00:11.140 --> 00:00:14.720 align:middle line:84% PROFESSOR: So today we're going to look 00:00:14.720 --> 00:00:16.860 align:middle line:84% at the situation with renewables. 00:00:16.860 --> 00:00:23.320 align:middle line:84% And I said that, in the '90s and the early 2000s, 00:00:23.320 --> 00:00:25.460 align:middle line:84% the nuclear was the obvious path. 00:00:25.460 --> 00:00:28.968 align:middle line:84% And then renewables just showed up and ate our lunch. 00:00:28.968 --> 00:00:30.760 align:middle line:84% But there are a lot of people who are still 00:00:30.760 --> 00:00:35.200 align:middle line:84% kind of skeptical about what renewables can do 00:00:35.200 --> 00:00:37.000 align:middle line:90% for a lot of different reasons. 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:40.960 align:middle line:84% And we ought to have a deeper look 00:00:40.960 --> 00:00:43.760 align:middle line:84% to try to understand some of these arguments. 00:00:43.760 --> 00:00:45.140 align:middle line:90% So we're going to do that today. 00:00:45.140 --> 00:00:48.040 align:middle line:90% 00:00:48.040 --> 00:00:50.880 align:middle line:84% I guess I'll just give you a heads up. 00:00:50.880 --> 00:00:54.900 align:middle line:84% The final answer is people aren't stupid. 00:00:54.900 --> 00:00:59.270 align:middle line:84% They're proceeding with renewables for good reasons. 00:00:59.270 --> 00:01:03.990 align:middle line:84% So we should expect something like that. 00:01:03.990 --> 00:01:05.590 align:middle line:84% Before I get there, I just wanted 00:01:05.590 --> 00:01:07.710 align:middle line:84% to give an opportunity to speak, if there's 00:01:07.710 --> 00:01:11.010 align:middle line:84% any kind of clarifying questions on previous stuff. 00:01:11.010 --> 00:01:13.950 align:middle line:90% 00:01:13.950 --> 00:01:16.110 align:middle line:84% There are some things I've added to this lecture 00:01:16.110 --> 00:01:18.270 align:middle line:84% that people have brought up, but I'll just-- 00:01:18.270 --> 00:01:20.610 align:middle line:84% there's no other questions before I go? 00:01:20.610 --> 00:01:21.590 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:01:21.590 --> 00:01:23.390 align:middle line:84% I keep reading the reading responses 00:01:23.390 --> 00:01:25.730 align:middle line:84% and I see some ideas that have been missed. 00:01:25.730 --> 00:01:31.910 align:middle line:84% So as they come up, I'll try to add them into the lecture. 00:01:31.910 --> 00:01:32.410 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:01:32.410 --> 00:01:40.510 align:middle line:90% So let's talk about this topic. 00:01:40.510 --> 00:01:42.910 align:middle line:84% There are a number of ways of decarbonizing. 00:01:42.910 --> 00:01:43.770 align:middle line:90% Nuclear is one. 00:01:43.770 --> 00:01:44.670 align:middle line:90% Renewables was one. 00:01:44.670 --> 00:01:47.390 align:middle line:84% Carbon capture and storage, which we aren't really 00:01:47.390 --> 00:01:49.150 align:middle line:90% going to talk about, is one. 00:01:49.150 --> 00:01:54.510 align:middle line:84% Geothermal, which you can clump into renewables, is one. 00:01:54.510 --> 00:01:57.940 align:middle line:84% Of all of these, renewables is the cheapest. 00:01:57.940 --> 00:02:05.280 align:middle line:84% And we saw this result from Jacopo Bongiorno's model. 00:02:05.280 --> 00:02:08.660 align:middle line:84% This is for the Southern United States that 00:02:08.660 --> 00:02:10.699 align:middle line:90% has good renewable capacity. 00:02:10.699 --> 00:02:13.380 align:middle line:84% And you see that they allow carbon capture and storage 00:02:13.380 --> 00:02:14.780 align:middle line:90% to be part of the model. 00:02:14.780 --> 00:02:20.580 align:middle line:84% And we had a big chunk of energy coming from renewables 00:02:20.580 --> 00:02:25.300 align:middle line:90% in this modeling simulation. 00:02:25.300 --> 00:02:27.920 align:middle line:84% I think this is something that got missed based on, 00:02:27.920 --> 00:02:30.140 align:middle line:84% like I said, reading people's responses. 00:02:30.140 --> 00:02:32.500 align:middle line:90% This is a cost-optimized system. 00:02:32.500 --> 00:02:34.800 align:middle line:84% So for any level of decarbonization, 00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:39.180 align:middle line:84% it's telling you the optimal mix that gets you that generation 00:02:39.180 --> 00:02:42.942 align:middle line:90% without spending too much money. 00:02:42.942 --> 00:02:44.900 align:middle line:84% I mean, we could build a bunch of little wheels 00:02:44.900 --> 00:02:48.220 align:middle line:84% with hamsters in them and they would 00:02:48.220 --> 00:02:49.440 align:middle line:90% produce carbon-free energy. 00:02:49.440 --> 00:02:51.020 align:middle line:90% It would just be very expensive. 00:02:51.020 --> 00:02:52.860 align:middle line:84% There's all kinds of solutions, but these 00:02:52.860 --> 00:02:55.060 align:middle line:90% are the cost-optimal ones. 00:02:55.060 --> 00:02:58.210 align:middle line:84% But something seems to have not dropped. 00:02:58.210 --> 00:03:02.850 align:middle line:84% Is that these are also dispatch optimized mixes. 00:03:02.850 --> 00:03:08.450 align:middle line:84% Maybe dispatch viable mixes, like the wind and solar capacity 00:03:08.450 --> 00:03:15.970 align:middle line:84% that makes up this chunk is not, let's say, nameplate capacity. 00:03:15.970 --> 00:03:22.350 align:middle line:84% This is like, I don't know what, 60% of generation. 00:03:22.350 --> 00:03:23.890 align:middle line:84% It doesn't mean that the nameplate 00:03:23.890 --> 00:03:27.210 align:middle line:84% capacity of wind and solar is 60% 00:03:27.210 --> 00:03:29.690 align:middle line:90% of the total electrical demand. 00:03:29.690 --> 00:03:32.810 align:middle line:84% The capacity may actually be much, much in excess 00:03:32.810 --> 00:03:37.410 align:middle line:84% of that in order for it to reliably produce 00:03:37.410 --> 00:03:40.250 align:middle line:90% 60% of demand on average. 00:03:40.250 --> 00:03:47.530 align:middle line:84% So these models, despite the of non-dispatchability 00:03:47.530 --> 00:03:53.730 align:middle line:84% of wind and solar, these are models 00:03:53.730 --> 00:03:55.600 align:middle line:90% which keep the grid running. 00:03:55.600 --> 00:03:58.640 align:middle line:84% These are not solutions which are not viable. 00:03:58.640 --> 00:04:01.440 align:middle line:90% And this is an important point. 00:04:01.440 --> 00:04:03.840 align:middle line:84% I also realized I never really talked about what 00:04:03.840 --> 00:04:06.800 align:middle line:90% dispatchability means. 00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:10.280 align:middle line:90% It's a nuanced thing. 00:04:10.280 --> 00:04:13.060 align:middle line:84% So often when we say dispatchability, 00:04:13.060 --> 00:04:17.579 align:middle line:84% we say something like, I went to your nuclear operators and said, 00:04:17.579 --> 00:04:21.279 align:middle line:84% I want you to give me a gigawatt of electricity next week. 00:04:21.279 --> 00:04:23.080 align:middle line:84% And you say, sure, I can do that. 00:04:23.080 --> 00:04:24.660 align:middle line:90% And that's dispatchability. 00:04:24.660 --> 00:04:26.480 align:middle line:84% And if I go to the solar people and I 00:04:26.480 --> 00:04:29.200 align:middle line:84% say, I want you to give me a gigawatt of electricity, 00:04:29.200 --> 00:04:33.200 align:middle line:84% they may say, well, we can't promise you a gigawatt. 00:04:33.200 --> 00:04:36.700 align:middle line:84% Or if they have a lot of excess build, they'll say, 00:04:36.700 --> 00:04:39.660 align:middle line:84% well, we have a 99% chance we can promise you a gigawatt. 00:04:39.660 --> 00:04:42.640 align:middle line:84% And at the end of the day, the nuclear plant 00:04:42.640 --> 00:04:45.300 align:middle line:84% also has some chance of not being able to provide it. 00:04:45.300 --> 00:04:49.000 align:middle line:90% So you can get there. 00:04:49.000 --> 00:04:53.750 align:middle line:84% You get towards dispatchability with excess generation. 00:04:53.750 --> 00:04:58.150 align:middle line:84% But there's a second aspect of dispatchability 00:04:58.150 --> 00:04:59.650 align:middle line:84% that we haven't really talked about, 00:04:59.650 --> 00:05:03.150 align:middle line:84% and that's really maybe it's better termed as flexibility. 00:05:03.150 --> 00:05:09.110 align:middle line:84% If I say to you, oh my gosh, it turns out, 00:05:09.110 --> 00:05:12.110 align:middle line:84% everyone is plugged in their cars for some reason. 00:05:12.110 --> 00:05:14.410 align:middle line:90% And I need more power now. 00:05:14.410 --> 00:05:17.550 align:middle line:84% I need it on the grid in 10 minutes to keep the grid up. 00:05:17.550 --> 00:05:20.350 align:middle line:90% Nuclear I can't help you. 00:05:20.350 --> 00:05:23.430 align:middle line:84% It takes me a day to boot the plant. 00:05:23.430 --> 00:05:25.650 align:middle line:84% And then the solar people goes oh, no problem. 00:05:25.650 --> 00:05:28.790 align:middle line:84% And they can just turn on the power. 00:05:28.790 --> 00:05:32.490 align:middle line:84% So that is a really important element, 00:05:32.490 --> 00:05:34.350 align:middle line:90% same with taking power off. 00:05:34.350 --> 00:05:37.270 align:middle line:84% You can curtail wind and solar instantaneously. 00:05:37.270 --> 00:05:40.610 align:middle line:84% You can't generally curtail nuclear instantaneously. 00:05:40.610 --> 00:05:45.190 align:middle line:84% This thing has got to dump the heat somewhere. 00:05:45.190 --> 00:05:52.020 align:middle line:84% So variability is really important and arguably more 00:05:52.020 --> 00:05:53.540 align:middle line:90% important. 00:05:53.540 --> 00:05:56.020 align:middle line:84% It's hard to rank these things, but it's 00:05:56.020 --> 00:05:59.540 align:middle line:84% really important to keeping the grid operating, which 00:05:59.540 --> 00:06:02.780 align:middle line:84% is it's a just-in-time system where we're constantly trying 00:06:02.780 --> 00:06:06.900 align:middle line:84% to balance supply and demand, and you only 00:06:06.900 --> 00:06:10.700 align:middle line:84% have a tiny margin within which you can work. 00:06:10.700 --> 00:06:16.460 align:middle line:84% But it's also why you don't ever see wind and solar becoming 00:06:16.460 --> 00:06:19.620 align:middle line:84% 100%, because despite the fact that it 00:06:19.620 --> 00:06:23.980 align:middle line:84% is very flexible, in order to achieve 00:06:23.980 --> 00:06:27.120 align:middle line:84% both flexibility and guaranteed dispatchability, 00:06:27.120 --> 00:06:30.060 align:middle line:84% you would need so much overbuild that it just doesn't 00:06:30.060 --> 00:06:31.400 align:middle line:90% become economically sensible. 00:06:31.400 --> 00:06:34.220 align:middle line:84% So you always see it blended in with some storage 00:06:34.220 --> 00:06:37.220 align:middle line:84% to deal with those times where you can't dispatch it, 00:06:37.220 --> 00:06:41.060 align:middle line:84% and some kind of firm resource, which in this model is nuclear. 00:06:41.060 --> 00:06:48.740 align:middle line:84% But in other models, likely that would be taken up by geothermal, 00:06:48.740 --> 00:06:50.410 align:middle line:84% if you had it, because geothermal 00:06:50.410 --> 00:06:53.430 align:middle line:84% is a dispatchable, low-carbon energy source, 00:06:53.430 --> 00:06:56.370 align:middle line:90% just like nuclear. 00:06:56.370 --> 00:06:59.750 align:middle line:84% So those were for the areas where renewables were poor. 00:06:59.750 --> 00:07:03.430 align:middle line:84% Here in areas where renewables are not so great, 00:07:03.430 --> 00:07:08.650 align:middle line:84% you see the total renewable capacity is closer to 20% 00:07:08.650 --> 00:07:10.858 align:middle line:84% or total generation is closer to only 20%. 00:07:10.858 --> 00:07:12.150 align:middle line:90% And that's kind of interesting. 00:07:12.150 --> 00:07:17.650 align:middle line:84% That's actually just about where nuclear is today in the US grid. 00:07:17.650 --> 00:07:20.930 align:middle line:84% So the rest has to come from something else. 00:07:20.930 --> 00:07:23.450 align:middle line:84% And in this model, it's a lot of storage, 00:07:23.450 --> 00:07:25.910 align:middle line:84% and some carbon capture and storage, 00:07:25.910 --> 00:07:29.570 align:middle line:84% a lot of battery storage which I think in this model 00:07:29.570 --> 00:07:33.490 align:middle line:84% is lithium ion, and then some carbon capture and storage 00:07:33.490 --> 00:07:36.290 align:middle line:90% on natural gas. 00:07:36.290 --> 00:07:40.870 align:middle line:84% This technology I don't really track it too closely, 00:07:40.870 --> 00:07:43.090 align:middle line:84% but you could imagine there would be reasons 00:07:43.090 --> 00:07:47.530 align:middle line:84% why this technology doesn't really reach full scale usage 00:07:47.530 --> 00:07:49.960 align:middle line:84% is, for example, I'm not certain how 00:07:49.960 --> 00:07:54.960 align:middle line:84% reliable the CO2 can actually be stored on long timescales. 00:07:54.960 --> 00:07:56.600 align:middle line:90% Does it leak out, and so on? 00:07:56.600 --> 00:07:59.340 align:middle line:84% And I'm not sure that we really have good answers to this yet, 00:07:59.340 --> 00:08:01.520 align:middle line:84% but it would be a good paper topic for people who 00:08:01.520 --> 00:08:03.320 align:middle line:90% really want to dig into that. 00:08:03.320 --> 00:08:05.600 align:middle line:84% If this goes away, what happens is you see 00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:07.300 align:middle line:90% these other things expanding. 00:08:07.300 --> 00:08:09.680 align:middle line:84% We see more storage, more wind and solar, maybe 00:08:09.680 --> 00:08:14.160 align:middle line:84% more nuclear, or more geothermal, depending. 00:08:14.160 --> 00:08:15.760 align:middle line:84% So anyway, I just wanted to remind you 00:08:15.760 --> 00:08:18.500 align:middle line:84% that these are models that keep the grid up. 00:08:18.500 --> 00:08:22.280 align:middle line:90% 00:08:22.280 --> 00:08:24.560 align:middle line:84% They take into account the variability 00:08:24.560 --> 00:08:26.680 align:middle line:90% of the generation source. 00:08:26.680 --> 00:08:28.240 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:08:28.240 --> 00:08:35.760 align:middle line:84% So let's talk about what's going on in the world with renewables. 00:08:35.760 --> 00:08:38.000 align:middle line:84% I said they're kind of eating our lunch. 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:39.900 align:middle line:90% And here is an example. 00:08:39.900 --> 00:08:43.880 align:middle line:84% This is global changes to the worldwide, not just 00:08:43.880 --> 00:08:48.110 align:middle line:84% US, in electricity generation by source. 00:08:48.110 --> 00:08:52.650 align:middle line:84% Every year, we see, so brown means is coal. 00:08:52.650 --> 00:08:55.230 align:middle line:84% We see some coal coming upline, coal coming upline, 00:08:55.230 --> 00:08:56.750 align:middle line:84% coal was built, coal was built, coal 00:08:56.750 --> 00:08:59.370 align:middle line:84% was built, coal coming offline, coal coming offline. 00:08:59.370 --> 00:09:01.010 align:middle line:84% Actually, I shouldn't say offline. 00:09:01.010 --> 00:09:02.130 align:middle line:90% This is generation. 00:09:02.130 --> 00:09:07.230 align:middle line:84% So I just say used or not used, compared to previous years. 00:09:07.230 --> 00:09:10.750 align:middle line:84% But what you see is that basically renewables 00:09:10.750 --> 00:09:17.950 align:middle line:84% are producing more and more and more electricity every year 00:09:17.950 --> 00:09:18.850 align:middle line:90% globally. 00:09:18.850 --> 00:09:24.390 align:middle line:84% And the result is that it's rapidly decarbonizing the grid. 00:09:24.390 --> 00:09:30.550 align:middle line:84% And at least in OECD countries, developed Western world, 00:09:30.550 --> 00:09:34.550 align:middle line:84% renewables now generates not capacity, 00:09:34.550 --> 00:09:38.030 align:middle line:84% but actually produces watts on the grid 00:09:38.030 --> 00:09:41.670 align:middle line:84% more so than any other source of electricity 00:09:41.670 --> 00:09:43.750 align:middle line:90% other than natural gas. 00:09:43.750 --> 00:09:48.180 align:middle line:84% So it's not something that's coming. 00:09:48.180 --> 00:09:52.180 align:middle line:84% It's very much here in large amounts, 00:09:52.180 --> 00:09:56.260 align:middle line:90% and it is growing very rapidly. 00:09:56.260 --> 00:09:59.200 align:middle line:90% So, I don't have data. 00:09:59.200 --> 00:10:01.580 align:middle line:84% Unfortunately, the people who published this chart 00:10:01.580 --> 00:10:03.440 align:middle line:90% rearranged their data. 00:10:03.440 --> 00:10:07.700 align:middle line:84% So they now clump coal and gas and they call it fossil fuels. 00:10:07.700 --> 00:10:13.940 align:middle line:84% And so you can't really tell where 00:10:13.940 --> 00:10:18.060 align:middle line:84% renewables are relative to these other sources. 00:10:18.060 --> 00:10:20.420 align:middle line:84% So that's just my data only goes to 2020. 00:10:20.420 --> 00:10:25.460 align:middle line:84% And I really don't know if renewables has now crossed gas 00:10:25.460 --> 00:10:27.480 align:middle line:90% or not, but it may well have. 00:10:27.480 --> 00:10:30.020 align:middle line:90% 00:10:30.020 --> 00:10:34.260 align:middle line:84% So the result of all of this generation being built 00:10:34.260 --> 00:10:38.260 align:middle line:84% is big changes in the structure of the grid. 00:10:38.260 --> 00:10:41.140 align:middle line:90% This is just the United States. 00:10:41.140 --> 00:10:43.830 align:middle line:90% And this is for this year. 00:10:43.830 --> 00:10:46.530 align:middle line:84% This gets published at the end of the previous year, 00:10:46.530 --> 00:10:48.030 align:middle line:90% and this is what's in the queue. 00:10:48.030 --> 00:10:49.822 align:middle line:84% And these things are typically in the queue 00:10:49.822 --> 00:10:52.350 align:middle line:84% for about five years before they get on the grid. 00:10:52.350 --> 00:10:56.230 align:middle line:84% So we have a pretty good idea of what's coming online. 00:10:56.230 --> 00:11:01.810 align:middle line:84% And so it says between wind, solar, and battery storage, 00:11:01.810 --> 00:11:09.730 align:middle line:84% the United States is scheduled to add 63 watts of capacity. 00:11:09.730 --> 00:11:13.850 align:middle line:84% To add that much nuclear at the current 00:11:13.850 --> 00:11:19.330 align:middle line:84% build rate in the United States would take us 315 years. 00:11:19.330 --> 00:11:20.910 align:middle line:84% So this is happening in one year. 00:11:20.910 --> 00:11:22.070 align:middle line:90% It's happening this year. 00:11:22.070 --> 00:11:23.870 align:middle line:90% And we're halfway done with it. 00:11:23.870 --> 00:11:27.450 align:middle line:90% 00:11:27.450 --> 00:11:29.450 align:middle line:84% That gives you a sense of how big you'd 00:11:29.450 --> 00:11:33.050 align:middle line:84% have to ramp the nuclear industry to start competing 00:11:33.050 --> 00:11:34.770 align:middle line:90% with this industry, right. 00:11:34.770 --> 00:11:40.170 align:middle line:84% A 31,000% increase in the size of the nuclear industry, 00:11:40.170 --> 00:11:42.510 align:middle line:84% just to break even with wind and solar. 00:11:42.510 --> 00:11:44.530 align:middle line:84% I can't really underscore this enough. 00:11:44.530 --> 00:11:46.530 align:middle line:90% This is not something coming. 00:11:46.530 --> 00:11:50.550 align:middle line:90% This is already here. 00:11:50.550 --> 00:11:56.830 align:middle line:84% So our question is like, will it keep going? 00:11:56.830 --> 00:12:01.670 align:middle line:84% Is there something that will in the end suddenly stop this. 00:12:01.670 --> 00:12:05.390 align:middle line:84% And there are two basic things that might do that. 00:12:05.390 --> 00:12:08.750 align:middle line:90% One is resource constraints. 00:12:08.750 --> 00:12:11.710 align:middle line:84% OK, it's nice, but land is going to become 00:12:11.710 --> 00:12:14.070 align:middle line:90% an issue, something like that. 00:12:14.070 --> 00:12:19.390 align:middle line:84% And the other two is when you put 00:12:19.390 --> 00:12:23.510 align:middle line:84% more and more variable generation on the grid, 00:12:23.510 --> 00:12:28.270 align:middle line:84% you have more volatility in the supply of electricity. 00:12:28.270 --> 00:12:33.470 align:middle line:84% And the question is, will we require so much overbuild 00:12:33.470 --> 00:12:36.510 align:middle line:84% in order to dispatch that generation that it 00:12:36.510 --> 00:12:38.270 align:middle line:90% becomes uneconomic? 00:12:38.270 --> 00:12:41.460 align:middle line:84% It's fine if solar that only turns on 00:12:41.460 --> 00:12:43.660 align:middle line:84% in the middle of the day, and you only 00:12:43.660 --> 00:12:46.780 align:middle line:84% have a little bit of solar, because in the middle 00:12:46.780 --> 00:12:51.060 align:middle line:84% of the day, you have a little bit of extra demand. 00:12:51.060 --> 00:12:53.660 align:middle line:90% And so it's nicely balanced. 00:12:53.660 --> 00:12:57.180 align:middle line:84% But in the future, if you have a grid built on solar 00:12:57.180 --> 00:12:59.620 align:middle line:84% and then you need to turn on power 00:12:59.620 --> 00:13:03.000 align:middle line:84% in the middle of the night, maybe it doesn't work, right? 00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:05.020 align:middle line:84% So how much overbuild do you need 00:13:05.020 --> 00:13:08.708 align:middle line:84% to keep the grid running, and that 00:13:08.708 --> 00:13:10.500 align:middle line:84% makes the economics less and less favorable 00:13:10.500 --> 00:13:12.840 align:middle line:84% as you get more and more renewables. 00:13:12.840 --> 00:13:15.900 align:middle line:84% So we'll look at both of these questions today. 00:13:15.900 --> 00:13:19.700 align:middle line:84% So just in the basic most basic level 00:13:19.700 --> 00:13:23.700 align:middle line:84% at the physics kind of approach, yes, there's 00:13:23.700 --> 00:13:28.140 align:middle line:84% a lot of sun on the surface of the United States. 00:13:28.140 --> 00:13:33.900 align:middle line:84% 3,500 times annual consumption, if you put solar panels over 00:13:33.900 --> 00:13:37.780 align:middle line:84% the entire United States, obviously that's not possible. 00:13:37.780 --> 00:13:43.650 align:middle line:84% How much land would you have to cover with solar panels to power 00:13:43.650 --> 00:13:46.670 align:middle line:84% the entire US electrical grid strictly from solar, 00:13:46.670 --> 00:13:47.730 align:middle line:90% which you would never do? 00:13:47.730 --> 00:13:51.530 align:middle line:84% But if you wanted to do that, how much land would you need? 00:13:51.530 --> 00:13:54.050 align:middle line:84% Assuming 20% panel efficiency would 00:13:54.050 --> 00:14:03.850 align:middle line:84% need 0.04% of land, which is a square about 60 miles per side. 00:14:03.850 --> 00:14:08.290 align:middle line:84% And so is that a lot of land or not a lot of land? 00:14:08.290 --> 00:14:12.490 align:middle line:84% And I think we need some context to understand that. 00:14:12.490 --> 00:14:16.770 align:middle line:84% So if I put it all in one spot here, here it is. 00:14:16.770 --> 00:14:19.130 align:middle line:90% It looks enormous. 00:14:19.130 --> 00:14:23.650 align:middle line:84% It looks like it's taking up a chunk of Nevada. 00:14:23.650 --> 00:14:25.650 align:middle line:84% This, Incidentally, is almost exactly 00:14:25.650 --> 00:14:27.670 align:middle line:84% the same size as the Nevada test site, 00:14:27.670 --> 00:14:31.110 align:middle line:84% where we test our nuclear weapons, 00:14:31.110 --> 00:14:34.130 align:middle line:84% so we've devoted exactly the same amount of land 00:14:34.130 --> 00:14:35.970 align:middle line:90% to testing bombs. 00:14:35.970 --> 00:14:38.560 align:middle line:84% I guess we could probably devote the same amount of land 00:14:38.560 --> 00:14:42.420 align:middle line:90% to building solar farms. 00:14:42.420 --> 00:14:46.800 align:middle line:90% 00:14:46.800 --> 00:14:54.360 align:middle line:84% It's also important to remember that we do already devote land 00:14:54.360 --> 00:14:57.675 align:middle line:90% to making energy. 00:14:57.675 --> 00:14:59.300 align:middle line:84% I mean, a lot of land to making energy. 00:14:59.300 --> 00:15:01.700 align:middle line:84% Obviously, every energy production takes some amount. 00:15:01.700 --> 00:15:03.960 align:middle line:84% But does anyone have in mind, like the most land 00:15:03.960 --> 00:15:05.940 align:middle line:84% intensive form of energy generation? 00:15:05.940 --> 00:15:09.560 align:middle line:90% 00:15:09.560 --> 00:15:12.457 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I'd say maybe hydro, with like the lakes. 00:15:12.457 --> 00:15:13.040 align:middle line:90% PROFESSOR: No. 00:15:13.040 --> 00:15:15.600 align:middle line:90% 00:15:15.600 --> 00:15:17.500 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: Is it solar? 00:15:17.500 --> 00:15:20.000 align:middle line:90% PROFESSOR: Corn ethanol. 00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:24.640 align:middle line:84% We grow corn in America strictly to turn it into ethanol, 00:15:24.640 --> 00:15:28.640 align:middle line:84% to make gasoline, well, to dilute gasoline with ethanol. 00:15:28.640 --> 00:15:32.360 align:middle line:84% And this is one fifth of the amount of land 00:15:32.360 --> 00:15:36.630 align:middle line:84% that we already use to grow corn ethanol. 00:15:36.630 --> 00:15:41.750 align:middle line:84% And on top of it, the life cycle emissions of corn ethanol 00:15:41.750 --> 00:15:45.670 align:middle line:90% is about half that of gasoline. 00:15:45.670 --> 00:15:49.310 align:middle line:84% So it's not a low-carbon energy source. 00:15:49.310 --> 00:15:51.050 align:middle line:84% This is a low carbon energy source. 00:15:51.050 --> 00:15:53.030 align:middle line:90% Right? 00:15:53.030 --> 00:15:58.010 align:middle line:84% So we could easily cut down one fifth of corn crops, 00:15:58.010 --> 00:16:01.350 align:middle line:84% replace them with solar panels, and significantly further 00:16:01.350 --> 00:16:05.630 align:middle line:84% decarbonize the system by getting rid of medium polluting 00:16:05.630 --> 00:16:12.510 align:middle line:84% ethanol and replacing it with net zero basically for CO2. 00:16:12.510 --> 00:16:16.030 align:middle line:84% It's also about one eighth of the amount of area 00:16:16.030 --> 00:16:19.470 align:middle line:84% that we currently devote to the emergency planning zones 00:16:19.470 --> 00:16:22.590 align:middle line:84% for the 98 nuclear reactors in the United States. 00:16:22.590 --> 00:16:24.500 align:middle line:84% Now, people live in emergency planning zones, 00:16:24.500 --> 00:16:26.250 align:middle line:84% so you can do other things with that land. 00:16:26.250 --> 00:16:30.990 align:middle line:84% But in terms of just realizing that there are constraints being 00:16:30.990 --> 00:16:34.640 align:middle line:84% put on the large amounts of land for energy generation, 00:16:34.640 --> 00:16:37.420 align:middle line:84% this is something we do all the time. 00:16:37.420 --> 00:16:40.060 align:middle line:84% It looks a lot different if I spread it out. 00:16:40.060 --> 00:16:44.980 align:middle line:84% That's the same amount of land spread out in tiny little dots. 00:16:44.980 --> 00:16:49.260 align:middle line:84% And suddenly like oh, well, that looks fine. 00:16:49.260 --> 00:16:54.180 align:middle line:84% So is there that much land available? 00:16:54.180 --> 00:16:58.140 align:middle line:84% So here's a plot that shows the amount of land that belongs just 00:16:58.140 --> 00:16:59.360 align:middle line:90% to the federal government. 00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:00.080 align:middle line:90% No one owns. 00:17:00.080 --> 00:17:01.520 align:middle line:90% It belongs to the government. 00:17:01.520 --> 00:17:05.099 align:middle line:84% It's about 28% of the United States. 00:17:05.099 --> 00:17:07.500 align:middle line:84% An enormous amount of that land is 00:17:07.500 --> 00:17:10.780 align:middle line:84% in solar-friendly friendly regions. 00:17:10.780 --> 00:17:16.508 align:middle line:84% And so we use this land for things like military bases, 00:17:16.508 --> 00:17:18.300 align:middle line:84% and like I said, the Nevada test site where 00:17:18.300 --> 00:17:21.260 align:middle line:84% we test nuclear weapons, not in principle 00:17:21.260 --> 00:17:23.180 align:middle line:84% any reason why we couldn't also-- we 00:17:23.180 --> 00:17:25.300 align:middle line:84% granted land, federal land, to NuScale 00:17:25.300 --> 00:17:28.280 align:middle line:90% to build their nuclear reactor. 00:17:28.280 --> 00:17:31.890 align:middle line:84% We could theoretically do the same for solar. 00:17:31.890 --> 00:17:33.330 align:middle line:90% Yes question or no? 00:17:33.330 --> 00:17:34.610 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:17:34.610 --> 00:17:36.850 align:middle line:90% OK, so what about non-US? 00:17:36.850 --> 00:17:38.710 align:middle line:90% I mean, the US is a big space. 00:17:38.710 --> 00:17:41.290 align:middle line:90% What about countries like Japan? 00:17:41.290 --> 00:17:43.570 align:middle line:90% That might be more interesting. 00:17:43.570 --> 00:17:46.810 align:middle line:84% So here's a nice way to do the comparison. 00:17:46.810 --> 00:17:48.830 align:middle line:84% Here are the land use in the United States. 00:17:48.830 --> 00:17:53.450 align:middle line:84% And you see 29% of land is pasture land, and grass, 00:17:53.450 --> 00:17:58.570 align:middle line:84% and ranges with basically nothing on it. 00:17:58.570 --> 00:18:00.530 align:middle line:90% We have some forest. 00:18:00.530 --> 00:18:04.930 align:middle line:84% But forest are not a great place for solar panels 00:18:04.930 --> 00:18:07.210 align:middle line:84% because trees tend to grow there. 00:18:07.210 --> 00:18:09.830 align:middle line:84% We don't necessarily want to displace cropland, 00:18:09.830 --> 00:18:11.690 align:middle line:84% but we could because a lot of that 00:18:11.690 --> 00:18:14.330 align:middle line:90% is being used for corn ethanol. 00:18:14.330 --> 00:18:16.450 align:middle line:84% But we have a lot of what you would call 00:18:16.450 --> 00:18:19.130 align:middle line:90% empty land that we could use. 00:18:19.130 --> 00:18:22.490 align:middle line:84% So another potential issue with solar 00:18:22.490 --> 00:18:25.970 align:middle line:84% might be can you build all these solar panels? 00:18:25.970 --> 00:18:31.600 align:middle line:84% So if you look at the minerals required to make solar panels, 00:18:31.600 --> 00:18:34.680 align:middle line:84% there doesn't appear to be a fundamental supply-chain 00:18:34.680 --> 00:18:35.640 align:middle line:90% problem. 00:18:35.640 --> 00:18:38.420 align:middle line:84% The biggest near-term risk is over, 00:18:38.420 --> 00:18:41.120 align:middle line:84% which is used in these-- you see these traces on the front 00:18:41.120 --> 00:18:43.880 align:middle line:90% of these silicon solar panels. 00:18:43.880 --> 00:18:46.960 align:middle line:84% It's actually so the enormous growth of solar 00:18:46.960 --> 00:18:52.680 align:middle line:84% is responsible for the current shortage in the silver market. 00:18:52.680 --> 00:18:55.160 align:middle line:84% But there are all kinds of things 00:18:55.160 --> 00:18:57.280 align:middle line:84% that manufacturers are doing because 00:18:57.280 --> 00:19:00.680 align:middle line:84% of the economic pressure, the rising cost of silver. 00:19:00.680 --> 00:19:03.620 align:middle line:84% To deal with this, they are making the traces thinner. 00:19:03.620 --> 00:19:07.240 align:middle line:84% They are making copper traces that are just silver plated. 00:19:07.240 --> 00:19:09.200 align:middle line:84% And the studies basically suggest 00:19:09.200 --> 00:19:15.280 align:middle line:84% that between this thrift and substitution 00:19:15.280 --> 00:19:19.960 align:middle line:84% for silicon-type solar panels, silver 00:19:19.960 --> 00:19:23.440 align:middle line:84% will not be a limitation in the long run. 00:19:23.440 --> 00:19:28.020 align:middle line:84% Everything else in a traditional silicon cell, the polysilicon, 00:19:28.020 --> 00:19:29.710 align:middle line:84% the glass, aluminum, encapsulants, 00:19:29.710 --> 00:19:33.230 align:middle line:84% even the copper for the wiring are 00:19:33.230 --> 00:19:37.630 align:middle line:84% things that will require a diversified supply 00:19:37.630 --> 00:19:39.210 align:middle line:90% and expansion of supply. 00:19:39.210 --> 00:19:44.190 align:middle line:84% But there's not a critical mineral resource limitation. 00:19:44.190 --> 00:19:48.270 align:middle line:84% When it comes to recycling solar panels, dealing with the waste 00:19:48.270 --> 00:19:54.790 align:middle line:84% problem, there isn't a toxicity issue or a technology issue 00:19:54.790 --> 00:19:56.470 align:middle line:90% with doing recycling. 00:19:56.470 --> 00:20:01.030 align:middle line:84% The problem is really just like the sheer scale of it 00:20:01.030 --> 00:20:04.870 align:middle line:90% and making it economic to do so. 00:20:04.870 --> 00:20:07.030 align:middle line:84% So by 2050, we're expecting something 00:20:07.030 --> 00:20:14.030 align:middle line:84% like 60 to 80 million tons of waste solar panels worldwide. 00:20:14.030 --> 00:20:19.510 align:middle line:84% Most of that mass is glass and aluminum. 00:20:19.510 --> 00:20:21.650 align:middle line:84% Both of those things are very recyclable. 00:20:21.650 --> 00:20:26.550 align:middle line:84% The problem is that the silicon panel itself is very thin 00:20:26.550 --> 00:20:29.280 align:middle line:84% and has virtually no intrinsic value. 00:20:29.280 --> 00:20:32.660 align:middle line:84% Once it's used up, it's not really worth recycling. 00:20:32.660 --> 00:20:37.000 align:middle line:84% The silver content was, but as the over content shrinks, 00:20:37.000 --> 00:20:39.540 align:middle line:84% that becomes less interesting to recycle. 00:20:39.540 --> 00:20:42.940 align:middle line:84% And so for now, in most markets, it's 00:20:42.940 --> 00:20:49.060 align:middle line:84% much more economic to just trash these panels after you rip off 00:20:49.060 --> 00:20:52.380 align:middle line:90% the aluminum in the glass. 00:20:52.380 --> 00:20:55.780 align:middle line:84% There are programs out there to deal with this. 00:20:55.780 --> 00:20:59.220 align:middle line:84% And Europe has a collection and recycling 00:20:59.220 --> 00:21:01.525 align:middle line:90% program for solar panels. 00:21:01.525 --> 00:21:02.900 align:middle line:84% A company called First Solar here 00:21:02.900 --> 00:21:05.600 align:middle line:84% in the US, which doesn't use silicon, 00:21:05.600 --> 00:21:07.420 align:middle line:84% they use cadmium telluride panels, 00:21:07.420 --> 00:21:10.920 align:middle line:84% they have a closed-loop recycling plant. 00:21:10.920 --> 00:21:13.140 align:middle line:84% There are new recycling plants in France 00:21:13.140 --> 00:21:17.620 align:middle line:84% as well to do the silicon recovery at scale. 00:21:17.620 --> 00:21:22.100 align:middle line:84% What's missing is really policy that 00:21:22.100 --> 00:21:25.530 align:middle line:90% will make this economic to do. 00:21:25.530 --> 00:21:28.650 align:middle line:84% And we have a similar problem with dealing 00:21:28.650 --> 00:21:31.370 align:middle line:90% with the waste from nuclear. 00:21:31.370 --> 00:21:34.850 align:middle line:84% It's there and it can sit in canisters 00:21:34.850 --> 00:21:39.010 align:middle line:84% and it's not economically favorable to do anything 00:21:39.010 --> 00:21:40.610 align:middle line:90% with that waste. 00:21:40.610 --> 00:21:44.330 align:middle line:84% So in the US, what we did is we taxed 00:21:44.330 --> 00:21:50.970 align:middle line:84% nuclear power 0.1 cents per kilowatt hour 00:21:50.970 --> 00:21:53.970 align:middle line:90% is a tax for dealing with waste. 00:21:53.970 --> 00:21:56.770 align:middle line:84% And we could, in principle do the same for solar. 00:21:56.770 --> 00:21:59.830 align:middle line:84% And that would solve this waste panel problem. 00:21:59.830 --> 00:22:02.650 align:middle line:90% 00:22:02.650 --> 00:22:07.770 align:middle line:84% For solar, resources or waste do not 00:22:07.770 --> 00:22:10.210 align:middle line:84% appear to be a serious bottleneck. 00:22:10.210 --> 00:22:10.710 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:22:10.710 --> 00:22:12.730 align:middle line:90% Let's talk about wind. 00:22:12.730 --> 00:22:17.810 align:middle line:84% So wind is more tricky because there are density limitations. 00:22:17.810 --> 00:22:22.650 align:middle line:84% You can at most fill about 1% of your area with wind turbines 00:22:22.650 --> 00:22:28.640 align:middle line:84% before you drag out too much energy from the air currents. 00:22:28.640 --> 00:22:32.495 align:middle line:84% Still, even with that constraint, the United States, 00:22:32.495 --> 00:22:34.120 align:middle line:84% cover the whole United States with wind 00:22:34.120 --> 00:22:39.580 align:middle line:84% farms would support 17 times total electricity consumption. 00:22:39.580 --> 00:22:45.320 align:middle line:90% 00:22:45.320 --> 00:22:46.920 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:22:46.920 --> 00:22:49.260 align:middle line:84% And turbines are getting bigger and much more efficient. 00:22:49.260 --> 00:22:51.920 align:middle line:90% OK, fine. 00:22:51.920 --> 00:22:56.720 align:middle line:84% It's interesting to ask, what would wind do to-- 00:22:56.720 --> 00:22:58.760 align:middle line:84% OK, it's one thing to talk about, OK, you're 00:22:58.760 --> 00:23:00.720 align:middle line:84% slowing down the wind and the zone 00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:02.220 align:middle line:84% has only so much extractable energy. 00:23:02.220 --> 00:23:03.800 align:middle line:90% That's talking about. 00:23:03.800 --> 00:23:06.800 align:middle line:84% But what is wind doing to our climate? 00:23:06.800 --> 00:23:12.360 align:middle line:84% Like if we do extract energy from the air movements, 00:23:12.360 --> 00:23:13.657 align:middle line:90% does that affect climate? 00:23:13.657 --> 00:23:15.240 align:middle line:84% So there have been a number of studies 00:23:15.240 --> 00:23:17.440 align:middle line:90% that have looked at this. 00:23:17.440 --> 00:23:19.640 align:middle line:84% There are studies that they start out 00:23:19.640 --> 00:23:22.830 align:middle line:84% with just a gigantic idealized arrays, 00:23:22.830 --> 00:23:25.230 align:middle line:84% and what they see is a temperature 00:23:25.230 --> 00:23:28.650 align:middle line:90% effect on the order of 1%. 00:23:28.650 --> 00:23:30.870 align:middle line:84% And what do I mean by a temperature effect? 00:23:30.870 --> 00:23:35.510 align:middle line:84% Essentially, what happens is that there's 00:23:35.510 --> 00:23:40.090 align:middle line:84% mixing between the cold upper troposphere and the warmer, 00:23:40.090 --> 00:23:42.030 align:middle line:90% lower troposphere. 00:23:42.030 --> 00:23:47.030 align:middle line:84% And the result is that the nighttime-daytime temperatures 00:23:47.030 --> 00:23:48.750 align:middle line:90% get closer together. 00:23:48.750 --> 00:23:53.550 align:middle line:84% That, on average, the air is more uniform in temperature. 00:23:53.550 --> 00:23:56.713 align:middle line:84% It also pushes around the precipitation a little bit. 00:23:56.713 --> 00:23:58.630 align:middle line:84% So there are some places that get a little bit 00:23:58.630 --> 00:24:00.838 align:middle line:84% more precipitation, some places that get a little bit 00:24:00.838 --> 00:24:01.990 align:middle line:90% less precipitation. 00:24:01.990 --> 00:24:05.790 align:middle line:84% And those changes tend to be on the order of 10%. 00:24:05.790 --> 00:24:10.250 align:middle line:84% So let's just look at some studies in high resolution. 00:24:10.250 --> 00:24:14.710 align:middle line:84% This is a regional climate model that is probably 00:24:14.710 --> 00:24:17.230 align:middle line:90% the best one I've seen. 00:24:17.230 --> 00:24:20.660 align:middle line:84% These dots indicate the locations of wind farms. 00:24:20.660 --> 00:24:24.203 align:middle line:84% And so instead of just having wind across the whole US 00:24:24.203 --> 00:24:26.620 align:middle line:84% uniformly, they're trying to say, where would you actually 00:24:26.620 --> 00:24:27.680 align:middle line:90% build these wind farms? 00:24:27.680 --> 00:24:29.860 align:middle line:84% How big would they be realistically? 00:24:29.860 --> 00:24:34.260 align:middle line:84% And this is the result of that model. 00:24:34.260 --> 00:24:41.040 align:middle line:84% And in this model, the wind farm, 00:24:41.040 --> 00:24:43.420 align:middle line:84% the cumulative size of the wind farms 00:24:43.420 --> 00:24:48.540 align:middle line:84% is enough to provide 100% of the electricity to the United States 00:24:48.540 --> 00:24:52.280 align:middle line:84% in terms of total production and total consumption. 00:24:52.280 --> 00:24:55.940 align:middle line:84% So it's not balanced, so that you would need 00:24:55.940 --> 00:24:58.080 align:middle line:90% a lot of batteries to do this. 00:24:58.080 --> 00:25:00.000 align:middle line:84% But that's just to give you a sense of scale. 00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:01.820 align:middle line:90% It's just a scale. 00:25:01.820 --> 00:25:04.580 align:middle line:84% And so you can see that they see temperature perturbations 00:25:04.580 --> 00:25:06.980 align:middle line:84% of up to 1 degree, which is consistent 00:25:06.980 --> 00:25:11.260 align:middle line:84% with the large primitive studies, right in the middle. 00:25:11.260 --> 00:25:13.780 align:middle line:84% But most of the regions have perturbations 00:25:13.780 --> 00:25:17.840 align:middle line:90% on order of about 0.3 degrees. 00:25:17.840 --> 00:25:20.210 align:middle line:84% I think the technical average across the United States 00:25:20.210 --> 00:25:24.290 align:middle line:84% is 0.2, plus or minus 0.2 fluctuation. 00:25:24.290 --> 00:25:28.210 align:middle line:90% 00:25:28.210 --> 00:25:30.950 align:middle line:84% In all the studies that have looked at this, 00:25:30.950 --> 00:25:33.390 align:middle line:84% the authors always note a couple of things. 00:25:33.390 --> 00:25:38.130 align:middle line:84% They say that the changes are well 00:25:38.130 --> 00:25:43.330 align:middle line:84% below the average or interannual variability. 00:25:43.330 --> 00:25:45.938 align:middle line:84% So one year, you're going to be a little warmer. 00:25:45.938 --> 00:25:47.730 align:middle line:84% One year, it's going to be a little cooler. 00:25:47.730 --> 00:25:51.353 align:middle line:84% These changes are smaller than that. 00:25:51.353 --> 00:25:52.770 align:middle line:84% And the other thing they point out 00:25:52.770 --> 00:25:58.090 align:middle line:84% is that these changes are way smaller than not doing anything 00:25:58.090 --> 00:25:59.890 align:middle line:90% from greenhouse gases. 00:25:59.890 --> 00:26:06.570 align:middle line:84% So their view is, yeah, there are some changes. 00:26:06.570 --> 00:26:12.490 align:middle line:84% They are detectable but not disruptive. 00:26:12.490 --> 00:26:14.490 align:middle line:84% And indeed, the largest changes tend 00:26:14.490 --> 00:26:15.970 align:middle line:84% to be immediately in the vicinity 00:26:15.970 --> 00:26:20.840 align:middle line:84% and downwind of the wind farms, as you can see here. 00:26:20.840 --> 00:26:23.800 align:middle line:84% And if you put these wind farms like in croplands, 00:26:23.800 --> 00:26:25.400 align:middle line:84% these changes regionally are actually 00:26:25.400 --> 00:26:30.280 align:middle line:84% favorable because it prevents your crops from freezing 00:26:30.280 --> 00:26:31.400 align:middle line:90% overnight. 00:26:31.400 --> 00:26:36.740 align:middle line:84% So people will continue to look at this as wind farms get built. 00:26:36.740 --> 00:26:38.520 align:middle line:84% People will be doing studies to make sure 00:26:38.520 --> 00:26:41.000 align:middle line:84% that these predictions are correct because I 00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:43.080 align:middle line:84% they're just predictions, we really don't know. 00:26:43.080 --> 00:26:45.280 align:middle line:84% And it's important to keep tracking this. 00:26:45.280 --> 00:26:48.960 align:middle line:84% So there is a non-zero but probably negligible, 00:26:48.960 --> 00:26:54.160 align:middle line:84% I guess, is the conclusion effect on the climate. 00:26:54.160 --> 00:26:57.220 align:middle line:84% What about these mineral constraints? 00:26:57.220 --> 00:27:01.800 align:middle line:84% So yeah, there are some concerns about mineral constraints 00:27:01.800 --> 00:27:04.280 align:middle line:90% for making the magnets. 00:27:04.280 --> 00:27:06.840 align:middle line:90% These magnets use rare earths. 00:27:06.840 --> 00:27:09.520 align:middle line:84% Particularly neodymium and praseodymium 00:27:09.520 --> 00:27:12.540 align:middle line:90% are the two big bottlenecks. 00:27:12.540 --> 00:27:14.240 align:middle line:90% There's also some ytterbium. 00:27:14.240 --> 00:27:19.130 align:middle line:84% And I forget, what is it, Dy, does anyone remember? 00:27:19.130 --> 00:27:22.150 align:middle line:90% 00:27:22.150 --> 00:27:25.810 align:middle line:84% I think it's like [INAUDIBLE] or something. 00:27:25.810 --> 00:27:27.750 align:middle line:90% Anyway, I don't remember. 00:27:27.750 --> 00:27:29.890 align:middle line:84% So for one, terawatts of installed capacity, 00:27:29.890 --> 00:27:32.350 align:middle line:84% which is approximately the total which is what was actually 00:27:32.350 --> 00:27:33.690 align:middle line:90% shown on the previous plot. 00:27:33.690 --> 00:27:40.270 align:middle line:90% 00:27:40.270 --> 00:27:48.390 align:middle line:84% Total US consumption is about half a terawatt year, per year. 00:27:48.390 --> 00:27:50.730 align:middle line:84% And given the capacity factor for wind, 00:27:50.730 --> 00:27:53.510 align:middle line:84% you would need to build about 1 terawatt of wind 00:27:53.510 --> 00:27:55.470 align:middle line:90% to get there roughly. 00:27:55.470 --> 00:27:58.430 align:middle line:84% This is the amount of minerals that you would need. 00:27:58.430 --> 00:28:00.470 align:middle line:84% If you want the global number, you 00:28:00.470 --> 00:28:02.810 align:middle line:84% should multiply this by a factor of 6, 00:28:02.810 --> 00:28:04.990 align:middle line:84% because the United States consumes about one sixth 00:28:04.990 --> 00:28:07.710 align:middle line:90% of the global electricity. 00:28:07.710 --> 00:28:09.770 align:middle line:84% So according to the US Geological Survey, 00:28:09.770 --> 00:28:14.580 align:middle line:84% this is about 0.7% of known global reserves. 00:28:14.580 --> 00:28:16.500 align:middle line:84% Known reserves used to be underlying, 00:28:16.500 --> 00:28:19.420 align:middle line:84% because there's always more than we don't know about. 00:28:19.420 --> 00:28:24.780 align:middle line:90% So it's not a huge amount. 00:28:24.780 --> 00:28:26.980 align:middle line:84% If you did wind for the whole world, 00:28:26.980 --> 00:28:30.620 align:middle line:84% that would be 4% of known global reserves. 00:28:30.620 --> 00:28:35.300 align:middle line:84% So it will make a dent, but whether it's 00:28:35.300 --> 00:28:43.460 align:middle line:84% in terms of being like an actual bottleneck, I don't see it yet. 00:28:43.460 --> 00:28:47.060 align:middle line:84% Some more issues with blade waste, 00:28:47.060 --> 00:28:50.260 align:middle line:84% it was mentioned earlier by someone a couple of weeks ago 00:28:50.260 --> 00:28:52.060 align:middle line:90% in this class. 00:28:52.060 --> 00:28:55.460 align:middle line:84% A lot of the existing blades are glass fiber 00:28:55.460 --> 00:28:59.540 align:middle line:84% set in thermo, in epoxy, fiberglass, fiber-reinforced 00:28:59.540 --> 00:29:00.620 align:middle line:90% epoxy. 00:29:00.620 --> 00:29:02.920 align:middle line:84% The glass is in principle recyclable, 00:29:02.920 --> 00:29:07.040 align:middle line:84% but the problem is that the entropy of the mix is obnoxious. 00:29:07.040 --> 00:29:09.220 align:middle line:84% You can't get the glass fibers out. 00:29:09.220 --> 00:29:12.450 align:middle line:84% And these epoxies are not re-meltable. 00:29:12.450 --> 00:29:16.930 align:middle line:84% So for existing blades, mostly what they do 00:29:16.930 --> 00:29:19.930 align:middle line:84% is they just grind them up and put them into asphalt 00:29:19.930 --> 00:29:23.610 align:middle line:90% or concrete as filler. 00:29:23.610 --> 00:29:25.370 align:middle line:84% But there are a bunch of proposals 00:29:25.370 --> 00:29:30.570 align:middle line:90% for making recyclable blades. 00:29:30.570 --> 00:29:35.170 align:middle line:90% So where are they? 00:29:35.170 --> 00:29:38.090 align:middle line:84% Yeah, they have either moved to do 00:29:38.090 --> 00:29:40.090 align:middle line:84% some research in fundamental chemistry 00:29:40.090 --> 00:29:43.770 align:middle line:84% to find solvents that can depolymerize these epoxies 00:29:43.770 --> 00:29:46.390 align:middle line:90% or just use different materials. 00:29:46.390 --> 00:29:49.890 align:middle line:84% And so there are things like that 00:29:49.890 --> 00:29:52.188 align:middle line:84% have been called recyclomine and others 00:29:52.188 --> 00:29:53.730 align:middle line:84% that have been developed specifically 00:29:53.730 --> 00:29:55.930 align:middle line:90% to make wind turbine blades. 00:29:55.930 --> 00:29:57.850 align:middle line:90% I don't know how good they are. 00:29:57.850 --> 00:30:02.330 align:middle line:84% They have been used in turbines now since 2021, 00:30:02.330 --> 00:30:06.230 align:middle line:84% and whether they have the same lifetime or the same economics, 00:30:06.230 --> 00:30:08.030 align:middle line:84% I actually couldn't really tell you. 00:30:08.030 --> 00:30:09.890 align:middle line:90% But it is an issue. 00:30:09.890 --> 00:30:13.620 align:middle line:90% People are working on it. 00:30:13.620 --> 00:30:16.880 align:middle line:84% It would be bad if wind turbines was a major source 00:30:16.880 --> 00:30:18.760 align:middle line:90% of microplastics. 00:30:18.760 --> 00:30:21.046 align:middle line:90% Right? 00:30:21.046 --> 00:30:24.000 align:middle line:84% So engineering is being done and there does 00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:25.880 align:middle line:90% appear to be some path forward. 00:30:25.880 --> 00:30:27.440 align:middle line:84% But I think, again, something else 00:30:27.440 --> 00:30:29.480 align:middle line:90% that ought to be understood. 00:30:29.480 --> 00:30:33.600 align:middle line:84% There are a bunch of other aspects about wind and solar 00:30:33.600 --> 00:30:40.340 align:middle line:84% in terms of externalities, like impact on how useful land is, 00:30:40.340 --> 00:30:44.360 align:middle line:84% or whether it's killing birds, or whether it's making noise. 00:30:44.360 --> 00:30:47.180 align:middle line:84% And we will look at those, not today, 00:30:47.180 --> 00:30:48.940 align:middle line:84% but when we do the externalities lecture, 00:30:48.940 --> 00:30:50.920 align:middle line:84% we're going to add those all up and see how 00:30:50.920 --> 00:30:53.800 align:middle line:90% that affects wind and solar. 00:30:53.800 --> 00:31:01.440 align:middle line:84% So for both wind and solar, there are no showstoppers yet. 00:31:01.440 --> 00:31:03.400 align:middle line:84% Let's talk a little bit about geothermal. 00:31:03.400 --> 00:31:05.520 align:middle line:84% I call it a semi-renewable resource 00:31:05.520 --> 00:31:08.800 align:middle line:84% because you're digging a hole into the ground. 00:31:08.800 --> 00:31:11.830 align:middle line:84% You're sucking heat out of it and it cools off. 00:31:11.830 --> 00:31:13.790 align:middle line:84% And the way it warms up again is you 00:31:13.790 --> 00:31:20.330 align:middle line:84% have to have, essentially churn from the magma in the Earth, 00:31:20.330 --> 00:31:22.070 align:middle line:90% and that takes time. 00:31:22.070 --> 00:31:25.390 align:middle line:84% So they tend to recharge themselves on 100-year 00:31:25.390 --> 00:31:27.670 align:middle line:90% timescales. 00:31:27.670 --> 00:31:32.710 align:middle line:84% But we have something like an estimated 1,000 times US 00:31:32.710 --> 00:31:36.390 align:middle line:84% consumption in extractable renewable heat. 00:31:36.390 --> 00:31:40.270 align:middle line:84% So as long as this number divided by 100 00:31:40.270 --> 00:31:43.430 align:middle line:84% is greater than 1, we can probably 00:31:43.430 --> 00:31:47.390 align:middle line:84% call it a renewable resource, something like that. 00:31:47.390 --> 00:31:48.130 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:31:48.130 --> 00:31:56.030 align:middle line:84% So then the obvious question is, if this is so great 00:31:56.030 --> 00:32:01.230 align:middle line:84% and it's dispatchable and there's plenty of it, 00:32:01.230 --> 00:32:02.410 align:middle line:90% where is it? 00:32:02.410 --> 00:32:05.190 align:middle line:90% 00:32:05.190 --> 00:32:11.140 align:middle line:84% So it turns out issues faced by geothermal 00:32:11.140 --> 00:32:13.740 align:middle line:84% are not actually that different from the issues faced 00:32:13.740 --> 00:32:15.120 align:middle line:90% by the nuclear community. 00:32:15.120 --> 00:32:19.020 align:middle line:90% It's one of finance. 00:32:19.020 --> 00:32:21.940 align:middle line:90% So here's how geothermal works. 00:32:21.940 --> 00:32:24.820 align:middle line:84% You go somewhere where you think there's a good place 00:32:24.820 --> 00:32:29.460 align:middle line:84% to drill a well, but the well that you have to drill 00:32:29.460 --> 00:32:32.820 align:middle line:84% is about 2 to 3 kilometers underground, 00:32:32.820 --> 00:32:36.800 align:middle line:84% and you're not really sure what is beneath you 00:32:36.800 --> 00:32:38.500 align:middle line:90% 3 kilometers underground. 00:32:38.500 --> 00:32:41.380 align:middle line:84% So you spend a lot of money, essentially all the upfront 00:32:41.380 --> 00:32:44.860 align:middle line:84% costs, just like building nuclear, all the upfront costs, 00:32:44.860 --> 00:32:46.240 align:middle line:90% drilling a hole in the ground. 00:32:46.240 --> 00:32:48.440 align:middle line:84% And you might find that the well is good, 00:32:48.440 --> 00:32:50.520 align:middle line:84% or you might find that the well is not good. 00:32:50.520 --> 00:32:54.780 align:middle line:90% 00:32:54.780 --> 00:32:59.660 align:middle line:84% And it's expensive to drill hot, hard rock very deep. 00:32:59.660 --> 00:33:03.260 align:middle line:84% So investors who are looking at projects, they're saying, 00:33:03.260 --> 00:33:05.860 align:middle line:84% we want to invest in energy for private capital, 00:33:05.860 --> 00:33:07.850 align:middle line:90% for someone's retirement fund. 00:33:07.850 --> 00:33:11.250 align:middle line:84% We're going to invest in some energy projects. 00:33:11.250 --> 00:33:15.050 align:middle line:84% Would you invest in wind, or would you invest in geothermal? 00:33:15.050 --> 00:33:17.810 align:middle line:84% They invest in wind because they know it can be built 00:33:17.810 --> 00:33:22.690 align:middle line:84% and there's a lower risk of the individual investors losing 00:33:22.690 --> 00:33:24.770 align:middle line:90% their money on a project. 00:33:24.770 --> 00:33:28.530 align:middle line:84% And so this has basically slowed interest in geothermal. 00:33:28.530 --> 00:33:31.550 align:middle line:84% It's also what slows interest in nuclear. 00:33:31.550 --> 00:33:36.650 align:middle line:84% Because if you think back to 2005, 00:33:36.650 --> 00:33:42.370 align:middle line:84% 29 nuclear plants were going to be built in the United States. 00:33:42.370 --> 00:33:44.930 align:middle line:90% License applications were filed. 00:33:44.930 --> 00:33:47.390 align:middle line:84% And of those, two got built, right? 00:33:47.390 --> 00:33:52.430 align:middle line:84% So imagine you were an investor trying to invest in nuclear, 00:33:52.430 --> 00:33:58.130 align:middle line:84% and on average, you have a one-in-15 chance of actually 00:33:58.130 --> 00:34:02.650 align:middle line:84% making money, and a 14 out of 15 chance of losing your money. 00:34:02.650 --> 00:34:05.360 align:middle line:84% You probably wouldn't invest in nuclear. 00:34:05.360 --> 00:34:07.880 align:middle line:84% And the way we've solved that in nuclear 00:34:07.880 --> 00:34:10.100 align:middle line:84% is to have federal loan guarantees. 00:34:10.100 --> 00:34:13.040 align:middle line:84% And if we had a similar basically saying, 00:34:13.040 --> 00:34:15.960 align:middle line:84% we guarantee that you'll be able to pay your investors back, 00:34:15.960 --> 00:34:18.100 align:middle line:84% and if they did something similar with geothermal, 00:34:18.100 --> 00:34:22.719 align:middle line:84% I think we would see a lot more geothermal. 00:34:22.719 --> 00:34:26.080 align:middle line:84% There's some other stuff related to permitting. 00:34:26.080 --> 00:34:28.800 align:middle line:84% It slows it down and makes these projects take a long time 00:34:28.800 --> 00:34:31.320 align:middle line:84% because you have to deal with a lot of groundwater issues 00:34:31.320 --> 00:34:32.920 align:middle line:90% and so on. 00:34:32.920 --> 00:34:36.699 align:middle line:84% But those are delay factors more than anything. 00:34:36.699 --> 00:34:39.400 align:middle line:90% 00:34:39.400 --> 00:34:41.260 align:middle line:84% I had one more point I wanted to make here, 00:34:41.260 --> 00:34:42.580 align:middle line:90% and it just slipped my mind. 00:34:42.580 --> 00:34:48.080 align:middle line:90% 00:34:48.080 --> 00:34:49.880 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:34:49.880 --> 00:34:54.199 align:middle line:84% Oh, the point was that investors' decision 00:34:54.199 --> 00:34:58.240 align:middle line:84% to invest in wind and solar, which is obvious given like I 00:34:58.240 --> 00:35:00.800 align:middle line:84% showed you these charts of how much is actually being built, 00:35:00.800 --> 00:35:05.180 align:middle line:84% that's all being paid for by private capital or mostly 00:35:05.180 --> 00:35:07.780 align:middle line:90% private capital. 00:35:07.780 --> 00:35:12.380 align:middle line:84% There will come a point where the value 00:35:12.380 --> 00:35:17.140 align:middle line:84% of building the next wind or solar farm 00:35:17.140 --> 00:35:21.860 align:middle line:84% decreases because of so much capacity already on the grid, 00:35:21.860 --> 00:35:24.000 align:middle line:84% that these projects, these geothermal projects, 00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:26.500 align:middle line:84% will start to look more attractive. 00:35:26.500 --> 00:35:31.100 align:middle line:84% So it's exactly what the economics predicts. 00:35:31.100 --> 00:35:36.620 align:middle line:84% You're going to see basically natural gas and wind and solar. 00:35:36.620 --> 00:35:38.140 align:middle line:84% And that's what you're going to see. 00:35:38.140 --> 00:35:40.620 align:middle line:84% And then at some point, you're going 00:35:40.620 --> 00:35:43.740 align:middle line:84% to see these dispatchable technologies show up 00:35:43.740 --> 00:35:47.998 align:middle line:84% because the economics force the situation to go there. 00:35:47.998 --> 00:35:50.040 align:middle line:84% So that's when we're going to see the geothermal. 00:35:50.040 --> 00:35:52.860 align:middle line:90% 00:35:52.860 --> 00:35:53.400 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:35:53.400 --> 00:36:03.370 align:middle line:84% So how much can we do or how much will be done on the grid? 00:36:03.370 --> 00:36:06.750 align:middle line:84% I guess the answer is it appears from what I just showed you, 00:36:06.750 --> 00:36:09.630 align:middle line:84% that wind and solar can heavily decarbonize the grid. 00:36:09.630 --> 00:36:11.810 align:middle line:90% It's cheap. 00:36:11.810 --> 00:36:13.910 align:middle line:84% Why aren't we decarbonized already? 00:36:13.910 --> 00:36:16.010 align:middle line:90% It's cheaper than natural gas. 00:36:16.010 --> 00:36:19.130 align:middle line:84% Why hasn't it displaced natural gas? 00:36:19.130 --> 00:36:22.610 align:middle line:84% The answer is it's doing so, but it's 00:36:22.610 --> 00:36:25.730 align:middle line:84% rate limited by something exogenous. 00:36:25.730 --> 00:36:30.570 align:middle line:84% And what's rate limiting the deployment of wind and solar 00:36:30.570 --> 00:36:33.470 align:middle line:84% in the United States, is not economics. 00:36:33.470 --> 00:36:37.050 align:middle line:84% It's actually connecting to the grid. 00:36:37.050 --> 00:36:43.890 align:middle line:84% So this is a plot which I've extended for two more years, 00:36:43.890 --> 00:36:48.730 align:middle line:84% showing you the total amount of generation capacity from wind 00:36:48.730 --> 00:36:51.890 align:middle line:84% and solar waiting to be connected 00:36:51.890 --> 00:36:54.570 align:middle line:90% to the grid every year. 00:36:54.570 --> 00:37:00.440 align:middle line:84% And you can see that by 2023, the amount waiting 00:37:00.440 --> 00:37:05.360 align:middle line:84% to be connected to the grid is twice the amount of electricity 00:37:05.360 --> 00:37:09.160 align:middle line:90% that we actually use. 00:37:09.160 --> 00:37:10.400 align:middle line:90% That's the black line. 00:37:10.400 --> 00:37:14.280 align:middle line:84% That's the existing generating capacity. 00:37:14.280 --> 00:37:20.160 align:middle line:84% Now remember, this stuff has 30% to 40% availability capacity 00:37:20.160 --> 00:37:20.700 align:middle line:90% factor. 00:37:20.700 --> 00:37:25.060 align:middle line:84% And this stuff has closer to 100% capacity factor. 00:37:25.060 --> 00:37:34.320 align:middle line:84% So this amount of capacity waiting to connect still it's 00:37:34.320 --> 00:37:36.220 align:middle line:84% not going to provide all the electricity, 00:37:36.220 --> 00:37:39.580 align:middle line:84% but it's getting close to providing all the electricity. 00:37:39.580 --> 00:37:42.240 align:middle line:90% 00:37:42.240 --> 00:37:46.040 align:middle line:84% It's a really staggering amount, 2.7 terawatts 00:37:46.040 --> 00:37:48.720 align:middle line:90% of capacity in 2023. 00:37:48.720 --> 00:37:53.200 align:middle line:84% It's down a little bit since then. 00:37:53.200 --> 00:37:56.760 align:middle line:84% So the bottleneck is basically getting access 00:37:56.760 --> 00:38:00.350 align:middle line:84% to the grid and the average time that you 00:38:00.350 --> 00:38:05.590 align:middle line:84% are stuck in this queue is about five years right now. 00:38:05.590 --> 00:38:13.630 align:middle line:84% And there's an order from the Federal Energy Regulatory 00:38:13.630 --> 00:38:15.790 align:middle line:84% Commission, I guess, that says that it's 00:38:15.790 --> 00:38:17.510 align:middle line:90% a first-in, first-out queue. 00:38:17.510 --> 00:38:19.950 align:middle line:84% So the people who signed up first 00:38:19.950 --> 00:38:21.530 align:middle line:90% will come out first and so on. 00:38:21.530 --> 00:38:25.390 align:middle line:90% 00:38:25.390 --> 00:38:29.390 align:middle line:84% So why are these things taking so long to connect? 00:38:29.390 --> 00:38:32.850 align:middle line:84% Well, if you just dump all this generation on the grid, 00:38:32.850 --> 00:38:35.550 align:middle line:84% that is variable, the people who run 00:38:35.550 --> 00:38:37.890 align:middle line:84% the grid won't be able to keep running the grid, 00:38:37.890 --> 00:38:41.310 align:middle line:84% because the grid is not designed to handle 00:38:41.310 --> 00:38:43.990 align:middle line:90% all of this variability. 00:38:43.990 --> 00:38:46.710 align:middle line:84% And there's a couple of different problems with it. 00:38:46.710 --> 00:38:52.030 align:middle line:84% So one is related to predictability 00:38:52.030 --> 00:38:53.050 align:middle line:90% and controllability. 00:38:53.050 --> 00:38:53.963 align:middle line:90% Yeah? 00:38:53.963 --> 00:38:55.130 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: I have a question. 00:38:55.130 --> 00:38:59.120 align:middle line:84% So about what you mentioned that the queue is first-in, 00:38:59.120 --> 00:39:02.240 align:middle line:84% first-out, I heard this a few times, 00:39:02.240 --> 00:39:04.140 align:middle line:84% but I haven't looked into it a lot 00:39:04.140 --> 00:39:08.238 align:middle line:84% myself, is that developers will put projects in, 00:39:08.238 --> 00:39:10.780 align:middle line:84% even though they're not really sure if they're actually going 00:39:10.780 --> 00:39:13.740 align:middle line:84% to follow through because of the queue, so they might as well put 00:39:13.740 --> 00:39:16.660 align:middle line:84% it in and that the actual percentage, so let's say 00:39:16.660 --> 00:39:20.360 align:middle line:84% commitment on what's in the queue, is relatively low. 00:39:20.360 --> 00:39:23.248 align:middle line:84% If you have an idea of how low that is-- 00:39:23.248 --> 00:39:25.040 align:middle line:84% PROFESSOR: That's a very interesting point. 00:39:25.040 --> 00:39:28.220 align:middle line:90% I don't. 00:39:28.220 --> 00:39:30.440 align:middle line:84% That would be a really good thing to look into. 00:39:30.440 --> 00:39:37.420 align:middle line:84% I am aware of the alternative situation where essentially 00:39:37.420 --> 00:39:41.900 align:middle line:84% people have made real investments in projects, 00:39:41.900 --> 00:39:45.740 align:middle line:84% and the grid operator has basically denied them access, 00:39:45.740 --> 00:39:50.420 align:middle line:84% and they start suing for access and so on. 00:39:50.420 --> 00:39:52.020 align:middle line:90% I really don't know. 00:39:52.020 --> 00:39:55.790 align:middle line:84% Yeah, that's probably a hard number to come across, 00:39:55.790 --> 00:39:58.230 align:middle line:84% but something worth looking into for sure. 00:39:58.230 --> 00:39:58.730 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:39:58.730 --> 00:40:09.210 align:middle line:90% 00:40:09.210 --> 00:40:13.770 align:middle line:84% Yeah, I guess we can't really tell anything from this data. 00:40:13.770 --> 00:40:14.990 align:middle line:90% Yeah, I will look into that. 00:40:14.990 --> 00:40:16.730 align:middle line:90% That's a very good point. 00:40:16.730 --> 00:40:20.130 align:middle line:90% Let me just make a note here. 00:40:20.130 --> 00:40:22.810 align:middle line:84% We might not really be able to tell. 00:40:22.810 --> 00:40:30.570 align:middle line:84% I mean, I guess if people put in connection orders, 00:40:30.570 --> 00:40:36.110 align:middle line:84% they're not going to say publicly, 00:40:36.110 --> 00:40:37.910 align:middle line:84% we don't really have the money to do this, 00:40:37.910 --> 00:40:41.195 align:middle line:84% but we're just putting in a connection order just in case. 00:40:41.195 --> 00:40:42.570 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: Yeah, I mean, it sounds 00:40:42.570 --> 00:40:46.410 align:middle line:84% from when I was talking to people from the MIT Energy 00:40:46.410 --> 00:40:48.290 align:middle line:84% Initiative, et cetera, that in more of the, 00:40:48.290 --> 00:40:51.810 align:middle line:84% let's say grid modeling community, 00:40:51.810 --> 00:40:53.430 align:middle line:84% this is somewhat of a known thing. 00:40:53.430 --> 00:40:56.560 align:middle line:84% But I never heard them mention any numbers 00:40:56.560 --> 00:40:59.800 align:middle line:84% about oh, we think half of them are fake, 00:40:59.800 --> 00:41:04.480 align:middle line:84% but it seems to be a somewhat known thing. 00:41:04.480 --> 00:41:05.520 align:middle line:90% PROFESSOR: Interesting. 00:41:05.520 --> 00:41:07.460 align:middle line:84% I had never heard of this, but I will look. 00:41:07.460 --> 00:41:10.880 align:middle line:84% It makes sense that this would be done. 00:41:10.880 --> 00:41:14.280 align:middle line:84% So OK, even if we say half of them are fake, 00:41:14.280 --> 00:41:18.840 align:middle line:90% that's still a lot. 00:41:18.840 --> 00:41:19.380 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:41:19.380 --> 00:41:23.040 align:middle line:84% So, let's just talk about the problems, why these things can't 00:41:23.040 --> 00:41:25.360 align:middle line:84% be connected right away, which, despite whether they're 00:41:25.360 --> 00:41:29.760 align:middle line:84% real or fake, I think are our real problems. 00:41:29.760 --> 00:41:35.040 align:middle line:84% So one is this forecasting what is 00:41:35.040 --> 00:41:37.880 align:middle line:84% going to be actually available, how much wind 00:41:37.880 --> 00:41:40.560 align:middle line:84% you're going to have, how much sun, you're going to have. 00:41:40.560 --> 00:41:42.960 align:middle line:84% And the weather models and ability 00:41:42.960 --> 00:41:46.000 align:middle line:84% to do that forecasting has gotten a lot better, 00:41:46.000 --> 00:41:48.440 align:middle line:84% but the integration of that information 00:41:48.440 --> 00:41:53.570 align:middle line:84% into the running of the grid has not yet happened. 00:41:53.570 --> 00:42:00.070 align:middle line:84% Traditionally, the grid was designed to basically dispatch 00:42:00.070 --> 00:42:02.070 align:middle line:84% most of your generation, and then you 00:42:02.070 --> 00:42:05.910 align:middle line:84% would have these small, tiny, near-term capacity markets 00:42:05.910 --> 00:42:08.230 align:middle line:90% to do the little adjustments. 00:42:08.230 --> 00:42:13.770 align:middle line:84% And now we would need to redesign how that happens, 00:42:13.770 --> 00:42:17.150 align:middle line:84% so that the dispatch is more just in time 00:42:17.150 --> 00:42:19.830 align:middle line:84% to deal with the large amount of wind and solar. 00:42:19.830 --> 00:42:25.110 align:middle line:84% So basically it's a control theory and software problem. 00:42:25.110 --> 00:42:29.230 align:middle line:84% And there are people working on this. 00:42:29.230 --> 00:42:31.910 align:middle line:90% But it is a major limitation. 00:42:31.910 --> 00:42:35.590 align:middle line:84% The other thing that has been raised is ancillary services. 00:42:35.590 --> 00:42:39.430 align:middle line:84% So traditionally you have one thing 00:42:39.430 --> 00:42:41.030 align:middle line:84% is just putting watts on the grid. 00:42:41.030 --> 00:42:45.010 align:middle line:84% But the other thing is that you need to do voltage control. 00:42:45.010 --> 00:42:48.190 align:middle line:84% You need to have regular up and down regulation, frequency 00:42:48.190 --> 00:42:49.940 align:middle line:90% stability. 00:42:49.940 --> 00:42:55.720 align:middle line:84% These things come generally from synchronous spinning generators, 00:42:55.720 --> 00:43:01.060 align:middle line:84% which are basically large moving masses that are synchronously 00:43:01.060 --> 00:43:03.160 align:middle line:90% linked to the grid. 00:43:03.160 --> 00:43:06.140 align:middle line:84% And they provide an inertia against unwanted change 00:43:06.140 --> 00:43:09.860 align:middle line:84% and they stabilize the frequency, and so on. 00:43:09.860 --> 00:43:12.260 align:middle line:84% Traditionally, the inverters used for wind and solar 00:43:12.260 --> 00:43:15.340 align:middle line:84% or particularly for solar, don't do that. 00:43:15.340 --> 00:43:18.300 align:middle line:84% However, there are now fancier inverters 00:43:18.300 --> 00:43:21.420 align:middle line:84% called smart inverters, that have 00:43:21.420 --> 00:43:26.860 align:middle line:84% software to simulate the effects of being a rotating machine. 00:43:26.860 --> 00:43:30.880 align:middle line:84% And I think it was this last year, CAISO, 00:43:30.880 --> 00:43:36.140 align:middle line:84% the California grid operator, gave a large-scale test of these 00:43:36.140 --> 00:43:41.860 align:middle line:84% smart inverters, a 300-megawatt megawatt electric solar farm, 00:43:41.860 --> 00:43:45.660 align:middle line:84% using them and to see what they could actually do on a real grid 00:43:45.660 --> 00:43:48.260 align:middle line:84% in terms of providing these ancillary services. 00:43:48.260 --> 00:43:50.810 align:middle line:84% And according to their report, they 00:43:50.810 --> 00:43:54.690 align:middle line:84% performed comparable to or better than conventional units. 00:43:54.690 --> 00:43:58.450 align:middle line:84% So it looks like the smart inverter technology will solve 00:43:58.450 --> 00:44:03.730 align:middle line:90% the ancillary services problem. 00:44:03.730 --> 00:44:07.070 align:middle line:84% So in short, it's basically software electrical engineering, 00:44:07.070 --> 00:44:10.730 align:middle line:84% grid permitting, and software and software and software 00:44:10.730 --> 00:44:13.610 align:middle line:84% that basically has to be worked out 00:44:13.610 --> 00:44:15.230 align:middle line:90% to get large amounts of solar. 00:44:15.230 --> 00:44:17.070 align:middle line:90% And it's coming. 00:44:17.070 --> 00:44:21.210 align:middle line:84% A of people are working on these problems. 00:44:21.210 --> 00:44:22.210 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:44:22.210 --> 00:44:34.690 align:middle line:84% So I just thought to go back to our first slide or early slide, 00:44:34.690 --> 00:44:39.330 align:middle line:84% there doesn't appear to be issues in category 1. 00:44:39.330 --> 00:44:42.730 align:middle line:84% So let's just look a little bit at category 2. 00:44:42.730 --> 00:44:49.160 align:middle line:84% Now, we saw something that looks like a category 2 00:44:49.160 --> 00:44:54.700 align:middle line:84% result with this, which just says for localized grids, 00:44:54.700 --> 00:44:56.600 align:middle line:90% this is the answer. 00:44:56.600 --> 00:44:59.260 align:middle line:84% But what is the situation, if we really said, 00:44:59.260 --> 00:45:03.280 align:middle line:84% let's look at across the whole United States? 00:45:03.280 --> 00:45:06.340 align:middle line:84% We might also be interested in let's look at all across Europe. 00:45:06.340 --> 00:45:09.100 align:middle line:84% So I wrote a paper on across Europe. 00:45:09.100 --> 00:45:10.960 align:middle line:90% It's in the readings. 00:45:10.960 --> 00:45:15.000 align:middle line:84% There's another group, Shaner, who's the author of the paper. 00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:21.560 align:middle line:84% They wrote one on across the United States. 00:45:21.560 --> 00:45:23.880 align:middle line:84% Theirs is a little bit different than mine 00:45:23.880 --> 00:45:30.440 align:middle line:84% in that they don't have particular technologies 00:45:30.440 --> 00:45:31.460 align:middle line:90% substituting. 00:45:31.460 --> 00:45:37.680 align:middle line:84% But I thought, who read Shaner's paper? 00:45:37.680 --> 00:45:39.283 align:middle line:84% Not many people actually read it yet. 00:45:39.283 --> 00:45:41.700 align:middle line:84% A lot of people in nuclear love it because if you read it, 00:45:41.700 --> 00:45:45.950 align:middle line:84% it sounds like wind and solar are really going to fail. 00:45:45.950 --> 00:45:51.470 align:middle line:84% But I think it's just worth like looking at it carefully. 00:45:51.470 --> 00:45:53.770 align:middle line:90% So let me just walk you through. 00:45:53.770 --> 00:45:57.470 align:middle line:84% These are the solution sets from their model. 00:45:57.470 --> 00:46:02.570 align:middle line:84% So what this plots is on the left axis, 00:46:02.570 --> 00:46:04.150 align:middle line:84% the mean solar and wind generation 00:46:04.150 --> 00:46:07.590 align:middle line:84% normalized by the electricity demand. 00:46:07.590 --> 00:46:11.550 align:middle line:84% And so one indicates that the wind and solar 00:46:11.550 --> 00:46:14.910 align:middle line:84% is providing exactly the same amount of electricity 00:46:14.910 --> 00:46:16.630 align:middle line:90% as demanded. 00:46:16.630 --> 00:46:19.310 align:middle line:84% But, of course, because it doesn't produce electricity 00:46:19.310 --> 00:46:23.010 align:middle line:84% at the right moment in time, that's not enough. 00:46:23.010 --> 00:46:27.170 align:middle line:84% You need to build more wind and solar to deal with that, 00:46:27.170 --> 00:46:31.390 align:middle line:84% or you need to load shift it with storage, one of the two. 00:46:31.390 --> 00:46:35.150 align:middle line:84% So if storage were free, then you could just build this, 00:46:35.150 --> 00:46:35.770 align:middle line:90% right? 00:46:35.770 --> 00:46:37.750 align:middle line:90% But storage is not free. 00:46:37.750 --> 00:46:41.870 align:middle line:84% And so this is a fraction of the electricity demand that is met 00:46:41.870 --> 00:46:44.940 align:middle line:84% with wind and solar plus storage, 00:46:44.940 --> 00:46:49.840 align:middle line:84% and they have zero storage model, 12-hour storage model, 00:46:49.840 --> 00:46:54.460 align:middle line:84% four-day storage model, and a 32-day storage model. 00:46:54.460 --> 00:46:57.900 align:middle line:84% Four days and 32 days of storage is awfully expensive. 00:46:57.900 --> 00:47:01.380 align:middle line:84% I don't consider those things to be viable. 00:47:01.380 --> 00:47:04.840 align:middle line:84% So I'm only interested in the 12 hours of storage model. 00:47:04.840 --> 00:47:07.420 align:middle line:84% So we're only going to look at this light green curve 00:47:07.420 --> 00:47:10.620 align:middle line:90% here, light green curve. 00:47:10.620 --> 00:47:15.060 align:middle line:84% This graph and this graph is the exact same graph. 00:47:15.060 --> 00:47:17.740 align:middle line:84% It's just that this goes from 0 to 20. 00:47:17.740 --> 00:47:23.740 align:middle line:84% And this graph is rescaled to go from 0 to 99.99/ 00:47:23.740 --> 00:47:26.680 align:middle line:84% So it's focusing on what's happening here, 00:47:26.680 --> 00:47:30.660 align:middle line:84% which is the area of interest because we're interested 00:47:30.660 --> 00:47:36.220 align:middle line:84% in questions of can you produce 99% of the energy from wind 00:47:36.220 --> 00:47:37.420 align:middle line:90% and solar? 00:47:37.420 --> 00:47:43.090 align:middle line:84% So if you are interested in running the entire grid just off 00:47:43.090 --> 00:47:47.410 align:middle line:84% of wind and solar, and have the same grid reliability that we 00:47:47.410 --> 00:47:53.330 align:middle line:84% have today, you would be somewhere around here, 99.9, 00:47:53.330 --> 00:47:58.570 align:middle line:84% maybe in here, depending on how many hours of blackout 00:47:58.570 --> 00:48:01.170 align:middle line:84% you're willing to tolerate a year. 00:48:01.170 --> 00:48:03.690 align:middle line:84% So what my proposal is, we'll just 00:48:03.690 --> 00:48:07.850 align:middle line:84% look at the 12 hours of storage, and we'll 00:48:07.850 --> 00:48:12.650 align:middle line:84% look at 99.9% of electricity demand being 00:48:12.650 --> 00:48:14.470 align:middle line:84% met by wind and solar, which is to say, 00:48:14.470 --> 00:48:17.250 align:middle line:84% essentially the same reliability, and basically 00:48:17.250 --> 00:48:18.510 align:middle line:90% no other technologies. 00:48:18.510 --> 00:48:21.930 align:middle line:90% This is not an optimal system. 00:48:21.930 --> 00:48:29.530 align:middle line:84% We know from these results, which are optimal systems, 00:48:29.530 --> 00:48:33.170 align:middle line:84% that for a lowest cost system, you 00:48:33.170 --> 00:48:39.090 align:middle line:84% need some kind of dispatchable stuff to make it lowest cost. 00:48:39.090 --> 00:48:41.740 align:middle line:84% But that's not the question we're trying to answer. 00:48:41.740 --> 00:48:43.700 align:middle line:84% We're not asking what is the optimal system. 00:48:43.700 --> 00:48:48.000 align:middle line:84% We're just asking, is it even feasible at a reasonable price? 00:48:48.000 --> 00:48:52.400 align:middle line:84% That's the question I want to answer right now. 00:48:52.400 --> 00:48:55.920 align:middle line:90% So we'll look at these results. 00:48:55.920 --> 00:48:58.280 align:middle line:84% And he has these results that are 00:48:58.280 --> 00:49:06.040 align:middle line:84% 100% wind, 75% wind, 50% wind, 25% wind, 100% solar, 00:49:06.040 --> 00:49:09.000 align:middle line:84% different mixes between these two renewables. 00:49:09.000 --> 00:49:13.320 align:middle line:84% So let's just pick the 50/50 mix, half wind, half solar, 00:49:13.320 --> 00:49:19.760 align:middle line:84% and see what we can do with 50/50 mix and 12 hours 00:49:19.760 --> 00:49:21.280 align:middle line:90% of storage. 00:49:21.280 --> 00:49:30.240 align:middle line:84% So the first thing I want to do is note for you 00:49:30.240 --> 00:49:38.550 align:middle line:84% that if we take the left axis, which is mean solar and wind 00:49:38.550 --> 00:49:48.830 align:middle line:84% generation divided by demand, and we divide 00:49:48.830 --> 00:49:53.270 align:middle line:84% that axis by the right axis, installed 00:49:53.270 --> 00:50:09.150 align:middle line:84% capacity by mean demand, we get generation per unit capacity, 00:50:09.150 --> 00:50:11.470 align:middle line:90% which is capacity factor. 00:50:11.470 --> 00:50:13.190 align:middle line:90% Does that make sense? 00:50:13.190 --> 00:50:19.350 align:middle line:84% So if we look at this intersection here, the 99.9%, 00:50:19.350 --> 00:50:35.950 align:middle line:84% we have 1.7 divided by 6.5, which is about 25%. 00:50:35.950 --> 00:50:37.900 align:middle line:90% Is that right? 00:50:37.900 --> 00:50:42.500 align:middle line:84% So they're basically saying that as you move up 00:50:42.500 --> 00:50:47.180 align:middle line:84% to these very high penetrations, the capacity 00:50:47.180 --> 00:50:51.860 align:middle line:84% factor for the blend will be something like 25%. 00:50:51.860 --> 00:50:55.300 align:middle line:84% And this gets to this earlier question that someone had, 00:50:55.300 --> 00:51:00.700 align:middle line:84% because right now the capacity factors are 41% and 30% 00:51:00.700 --> 00:51:03.740 align:middle line:84% But if you have this much, the average capacity 00:51:03.740 --> 00:51:06.140 align:middle line:90% factor is going to drop. 00:51:06.140 --> 00:51:08.180 align:middle line:90% So that makes sense. 00:51:08.180 --> 00:51:13.660 align:middle line:84% So the first thing we need to do or the next thing we need to do 00:51:13.660 --> 00:51:16.180 align:middle line:90% is to calculate the cost. 00:51:16.180 --> 00:51:19.760 align:middle line:84% So this is now a couple of years out of date, 00:51:19.760 --> 00:51:22.260 align:middle line:84% but the numbers are close to the same. 00:51:22.260 --> 00:51:27.360 align:middle line:84% This is the EIA's table of cost, which remember, 00:51:27.360 --> 00:51:32.120 align:middle line:84% comes from actual survey data of real plants, real installations. 00:51:32.120 --> 00:51:34.220 align:middle line:90% So this is not a forecast. 00:51:34.220 --> 00:51:38.730 align:middle line:84% It is for nuclear, but not for solar and not for wind. 00:51:38.730 --> 00:51:45.930 align:middle line:84% So they have here some prices and they have here a total cost 00:51:45.930 --> 00:51:47.890 align:middle line:90% and a transmission cost. 00:51:47.890 --> 00:51:51.890 align:middle line:84% And so the first thing we want to do is subtract out, 00:51:51.890 --> 00:51:55.010 align:middle line:84% again, I wish I had a laser pointer. 00:51:55.010 --> 00:51:57.410 align:middle line:84% Subtract out the transmission cost just 00:51:57.410 --> 00:52:00.050 align:middle line:84% to get the cost of the generation. 00:52:00.050 --> 00:52:02.610 align:middle line:84% And so if you look here in this top plot, 00:52:02.610 --> 00:52:07.050 align:middle line:84% you'll see I take this top right there, 00:52:07.050 --> 00:52:13.050 align:middle line:84% I take the price of wind, which is $40.23 00:52:13.050 --> 00:52:17.910 align:middle line:84% and I subtract out the transmission component $2.63 00:52:17.910 --> 00:52:21.690 align:middle line:84% That's the cost of the wind farm, not the transmission line. 00:52:21.690 --> 00:52:27.610 align:middle line:84% And then I multiply it by 0.41 divided by 0.25 in order 00:52:27.610 --> 00:52:29.857 align:middle line:84% to rescale the cost for a lower capacity 00:52:29.857 --> 00:52:31.690 align:middle line:84% factor, because the capacity factor is going 00:52:31.690 --> 00:52:34.380 align:middle line:90% to go down from 41 to the 25. 00:52:34.380 --> 00:52:36.680 align:middle line:90% Does that makes sense? 00:52:36.680 --> 00:52:40.500 align:middle line:84% And so that tells me the new, whatever that number is, 00:52:40.500 --> 00:52:44.200 align:middle line:84% that's the new, I guess the $62 per megawatt hour 00:52:44.200 --> 00:52:48.680 align:middle line:84% is the price of the generation at the reduced capacity factor. 00:52:48.680 --> 00:52:53.600 align:middle line:84% Same thing for solar, it's $29 per megawatt hour at the reduced 00:52:53.600 --> 00:52:56.960 align:middle line:90% capacity factor for solar. 00:52:56.960 --> 00:52:59.520 align:middle line:84% Now I need to add the transmission back in. 00:52:59.520 --> 00:53:01.600 align:middle line:84% If we looked at these transmission costs, 00:53:01.600 --> 00:53:08.120 align:middle line:84% they're about 6% and 10% of the total cost. 00:53:08.120 --> 00:53:10.600 align:middle line:84% But I happen to know from other studies 00:53:10.600 --> 00:53:12.380 align:middle line:84% that if you have this much wind and solar, 00:53:12.380 --> 00:53:15.000 align:middle line:84% your transmission costs are going to be higher. 00:53:15.000 --> 00:53:18.920 align:middle line:84% And a reasonable number, which I used to give the grid 00:53:18.920 --> 00:53:21.060 align:middle line:84% lecture first, but now I'm going to give it later. 00:53:21.060 --> 00:53:23.800 align:middle line:84% So you're just going to have to trust me on this for now. 00:53:23.800 --> 00:53:27.840 align:middle line:84% A reasonable number is about 25% of the cost 00:53:27.840 --> 00:53:29.600 align:middle line:90% will be transmission. 00:53:29.600 --> 00:53:32.710 align:middle line:84% So we're going to add 25% to deal with transmission required 00:53:32.710 --> 00:53:33.810 align:middle line:90% for this generation. 00:53:33.810 --> 00:53:36.310 align:middle line:90% That gets us to this number. 00:53:36.310 --> 00:53:38.150 align:middle line:90% Everyone's good so far? 00:53:38.150 --> 00:53:42.150 align:middle line:84% All right, now we need to increase the storage 00:53:42.150 --> 00:53:49.350 align:middle line:84% because Shaner says that we need 12 hours of storage 00:53:49.350 --> 00:53:52.630 align:middle line:84% in order for this green line to be valid. 00:53:52.630 --> 00:53:58.950 align:middle line:84% But this plot is if you read the footnote, footnote C, which 00:53:58.950 --> 00:54:02.390 align:middle line:84% I did not put here, it's four hours of storage. 00:54:02.390 --> 00:54:04.170 align:middle line:84% So we need to rescale the storage. 00:54:04.170 --> 00:54:06.870 align:middle line:90% So how much does storage cost? 00:54:06.870 --> 00:54:15.270 align:middle line:84% So what we do is we say we have to go back here to Sergeant 00:54:15.270 --> 00:54:16.510 align:middle line:90% and Lundy's. 00:54:16.510 --> 00:54:19.430 align:middle line:84% This used to be a part of your homework 00:54:19.430 --> 00:54:20.810 align:middle line:90% which I'm no longer assigning. 00:54:20.810 --> 00:54:23.030 align:middle line:84% So you don't have these numbers in your head. 00:54:23.030 --> 00:54:25.862 align:middle line:84% So we go to the Sergeant Lundy table, which 00:54:25.862 --> 00:54:27.570 align:middle line:84% is produced for the Department of Energy, 00:54:27.570 --> 00:54:28.987 align:middle line:84% and they tell us how much it costs 00:54:28.987 --> 00:54:31.220 align:middle line:84% to build all these different technologies. 00:54:31.220 --> 00:54:38.540 align:middle line:84% And we see here they have solar and solar with storage. 00:54:38.540 --> 00:54:42.380 align:middle line:84% And this is about four hours of storage. 00:54:42.380 --> 00:54:48.780 align:middle line:84% So the capital cost difference is 1755 versus 1313. 00:54:48.780 --> 00:54:54.260 align:middle line:84% So the amount of cost is roughly 25% 00:54:54.260 --> 00:54:58.820 align:middle line:84% of the capital cost of a solar farm with storage, roughly 25% 00:54:58.820 --> 00:55:09.900 align:middle line:84% of that cost, which is to say 1755 divided by 1313, is 25%. 00:55:09.900 --> 00:55:14.580 align:middle line:84% Roughly 25% of that cost is going to be for the battery. 00:55:14.580 --> 00:55:15.120 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:55:15.120 --> 00:55:20.460 align:middle line:84% So 25% of the initial cost of solar, 00:55:20.460 --> 00:55:25.160 align:middle line:84% so it's this number minus the transmission costs, 00:55:25.160 --> 00:55:32.690 align:middle line:84% which is that, gives you $6.70 per megawatt hour for four hours 00:55:32.690 --> 00:55:34.170 align:middle line:90% of storage. 00:55:34.170 --> 00:55:36.090 align:middle line:90% We need 12 hours of storage. 00:55:36.090 --> 00:55:41.690 align:middle line:84% So we're going to multiply that times 3. 00:55:41.690 --> 00:55:45.520 align:middle line:84% And that comes out to $20 per megawatt hour for storage. 00:55:45.520 --> 00:55:47.770 align:middle line:84% And we're going to add that back to not only the solar 00:55:47.770 --> 00:55:49.930 align:middle line:84% but we're also going to add it to the wind. 00:55:49.930 --> 00:55:51.890 align:middle line:90% So we need storage for both. 00:55:51.890 --> 00:55:54.250 align:middle line:84% So here's your wind, plus transmission, 00:55:54.250 --> 00:55:59.250 align:middle line:84% rescaled for lower capacity factor, add back in the storage. 00:55:59.250 --> 00:56:02.110 align:middle line:84% And you get these numbers for each generation technology. 00:56:02.110 --> 00:56:02.610 align:middle line:90% Yep? 00:56:02.610 --> 00:56:05.068 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: Do I need to assume that the cost scales linearly 00:56:05.068 --> 00:56:05.770 align:middle line:90% with storage? 00:56:05.770 --> 00:56:07.810 align:middle line:84% PROFESSOR: It does assume that, yeah, 00:56:07.810 --> 00:56:10.450 align:middle line:84% because this storage is lithium ion battery. 00:56:10.450 --> 00:56:11.330 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:56:11.330 --> 00:56:11.930 align:middle line:90% Yep? 00:56:11.930 --> 00:56:13.097 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: I actually wonder. 00:56:13.097 --> 00:56:16.270 align:middle line:84% I feel like I don't care about wind and storage as much. 00:56:16.270 --> 00:56:18.910 align:middle line:90% Is it equally cheap for solar? 00:56:18.910 --> 00:56:21.190 align:middle line:84% You have one battery pack and it's big, 00:56:21.190 --> 00:56:23.890 align:middle line:84% but all your turbines are kind of scattered around. 00:56:23.890 --> 00:56:25.530 align:middle line:90% PROFESSOR: Is it really cheap? 00:56:25.530 --> 00:56:27.130 align:middle line:90% No, it's the same. 00:56:27.130 --> 00:56:30.280 align:middle line:84% Yeah, and ultimately that all is going back to one node 00:56:30.280 --> 00:56:32.300 align:middle line:84% where you're putting it on the grid. 00:56:32.300 --> 00:56:32.800 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:56:32.800 --> 00:56:36.440 align:middle line:90% 00:56:36.440 --> 00:56:40.620 align:middle line:84% And we need a 50/50 blend of these technologies. 00:56:40.620 --> 00:56:43.420 align:middle line:84% That's what we chose, the 50/50 mix. 00:56:43.420 --> 00:56:46.580 align:middle line:84% So we just average the two together to find the 50/50 mix. 00:56:46.580 --> 00:56:51.000 align:middle line:84% It gets to $77 per megawatt hour. 00:56:51.000 --> 00:56:52.960 align:middle line:90% And we need overbuild. 00:56:52.960 --> 00:56:55.280 align:middle line:90% So I go back to this plot. 00:56:55.280 --> 00:56:57.220 align:middle line:90% We chose the 50/50 mix. 00:56:57.220 --> 00:57:02.040 align:middle line:84% And it says that mean generation divided by mean demand 00:57:02.040 --> 00:57:03.720 align:middle line:84% where it's somewhere here, 1.7, we 00:57:03.720 --> 00:57:07.200 align:middle line:84% have to generate 1.7 times the amount of electricity 00:57:07.200 --> 00:57:09.760 align:middle line:84% in order to deal with the variability. 00:57:09.760 --> 00:57:13.080 align:middle line:84% So we're going to take that number 00:57:13.080 --> 00:57:15.440 align:middle line:84% and multiply it times 1.7 to deal 00:57:15.440 --> 00:57:19.960 align:middle line:84% with the variability, where you get to $131 per megawatt hour. 00:57:19.960 --> 00:57:25.390 align:middle line:84% So this is a grid run entirely by renewables 00:57:25.390 --> 00:57:30.390 align:middle line:84% with 12 hours of storage and excess generation 00:57:30.390 --> 00:57:36.750 align:middle line:84% to deal with the variability that operates 99.9% of the time. 00:57:36.750 --> 00:57:40.870 align:middle line:84% So it's basically just as reliable as the current system. 00:57:40.870 --> 00:57:47.790 align:middle line:84% And the cost is $131, which is essentially 00:57:47.790 --> 00:57:52.790 align:middle line:84% the same price as base load nuclear or much cheaper 00:57:52.790 --> 00:57:54.130 align:middle line:90% than load following nuclear. 00:57:54.130 --> 00:57:56.910 align:middle line:84% So there's the AP1000 load following number. 00:57:56.910 --> 00:57:59.970 align:middle line:90% And there is the MIT. 00:57:59.970 --> 00:58:02.630 align:middle line:90% 00:58:02.630 --> 00:58:08.550 align:middle line:84% future of nuclear nominal cost estimate with 50% load 00:58:08.550 --> 00:58:12.230 align:middle line:90% on schedule at 180 megawatt. 00:58:12.230 --> 00:58:13.910 align:middle line:90% So it's just too cheap. 00:58:13.910 --> 00:58:15.190 align:middle line:90% That's the problem. 00:58:15.190 --> 00:58:18.670 align:middle line:84% If you have good wind and solar, it's 00:58:18.670 --> 00:58:21.670 align:middle line:84% really hard to see how this becomes a problem. 00:58:21.670 --> 00:58:27.350 align:middle line:90% So that's the bottom line. 00:58:27.350 --> 00:58:29.790 align:middle line:84% In order to keep nuclear in the mix, 00:58:29.790 --> 00:58:33.230 align:middle line:84% you have to find a way to get nuclear price way down. 00:58:33.230 --> 00:58:35.712 align:middle line:90% 00:58:35.712 --> 00:58:37.170 align:middle line:84% And there are ideas and we're going 00:58:37.170 --> 00:58:41.970 align:middle line:84% to talk about microreactors next week. 00:58:41.970 --> 00:58:43.610 align:middle line:84% Any questions about wind and solar? 00:58:43.610 --> 00:58:44.390 align:middle line:90% Or microreactors? 00:58:44.390 --> 00:58:45.530 align:middle line:90% Yeah, next week. 00:58:45.530 --> 00:58:47.530 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:58:47.530 --> 00:58:48.890 align:middle line:90% Yeah? 00:58:48.890 --> 00:58:52.610 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: On the study that you assigned talks about the fact 00:58:52.610 --> 00:58:54.890 align:middle line:84% that building this amount of storage 00:58:54.890 --> 00:58:57.770 align:middle line:84% might be unfeasible, at least with the current capacity 00:58:57.770 --> 00:58:59.570 align:middle line:90% that there exists in the US. 00:58:59.570 --> 00:59:03.690 align:middle line:84% Do these prices for storage for $12 storage account for that? 00:59:03.690 --> 00:59:08.112 align:middle line:84% PROFESSOR: So I didn't do anything to account for that. 00:59:08.112 --> 00:59:10.070 align:middle line:84% I don't know what would affect the feasibility. 00:59:10.070 --> 00:59:11.590 align:middle line:90% Was it a lithium resource? 00:59:11.590 --> 00:59:13.530 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: It was just the sheer amount 00:59:13.530 --> 00:59:15.930 align:middle line:84% of batteries that needed to be produced 00:59:15.930 --> 00:59:18.413 align:middle line:90% in order to supply the demand. 00:59:18.413 --> 00:59:19.830 align:middle line:84% They argued that with the current, 00:59:19.830 --> 00:59:22.260 align:middle line:84% for example, like gigafactories, it 00:59:22.260 --> 00:59:23.880 align:middle line:84% would take something like 900 years 00:59:23.880 --> 00:59:26.480 align:middle line:84% to get the amount of energy that they need. 00:59:26.480 --> 00:59:29.720 align:middle line:84% And I'm also wondering, how this accounts 00:59:29.720 --> 00:59:31.920 align:middle line:84% in terms of the laws of capacity over time 00:59:31.920 --> 00:59:33.520 align:middle line:84% for these battery packs, which is what 00:59:33.520 --> 00:59:36.120 align:middle line:90% happens with lithium batteries. 00:59:36.120 --> 00:59:38.040 align:middle line:90% PROFESSOR: Yeah, so I believe-- 00:59:38.040 --> 00:59:42.327 align:middle line:90% 00:59:42.327 --> 00:59:43.660 align:middle line:90% I mean, this is a good question. 00:59:43.660 --> 00:59:48.000 align:middle line:84% So these numbers, they call this four hours of storage. 00:59:48.000 --> 00:59:51.880 align:middle line:84% I don't know how much this declines over the lifetime 00:59:51.880 --> 00:59:53.860 align:middle line:90% of the battery packs. 00:59:53.860 --> 00:59:56.640 align:middle line:84% So if they're calling it four hours of storage, but on average 00:59:56.640 --> 00:59:59.720 align:middle line:84% it's really one hour, then this calculation is not correct. 00:59:59.720 --> 01:00:03.560 align:middle line:84% And I don't have good information about that. 01:00:03.560 --> 01:00:06.640 align:middle line:84% So we'd have to dig into what the EIA assumes 01:00:06.640 --> 01:00:08.840 align:middle line:90% four hours of storage is. 01:00:08.840 --> 01:00:14.040 align:middle line:84% In terms of the making of the batteries, I think first of all, 01:00:14.040 --> 01:00:19.760 align:middle line:84% I would say that using lithium ion is a worst-case scenario. 01:00:19.760 --> 01:00:22.310 align:middle line:84% There are lots of other storage technologies coming. 01:00:22.310 --> 01:00:26.150 align:middle line:84% I think [? mion ?] is here, but it's expensive. 01:00:26.150 --> 01:00:32.030 align:middle line:84% In terms of battery production, if there's a market demand, 01:00:32.030 --> 01:00:34.070 align:middle line:90% capacity will emerge. 01:00:34.070 --> 01:00:36.580 align:middle line:84% That is not something that particularly worries me. 01:00:36.580 --> 01:00:38.830 align:middle line:84% What would worry me is something that I haven't looked 01:00:38.830 --> 01:00:43.830 align:middle line:84% at in this study, which is there a lithium resource constraint? 01:00:43.830 --> 01:00:45.270 align:middle line:84% The reason I didn't look at it is 01:00:45.270 --> 01:00:47.810 align:middle line:84% I'm assuming that we will probably not use lithium. 01:00:47.810 --> 01:00:50.550 align:middle line:84% We will use some kind of flow battery chemistry, 01:00:50.550 --> 01:00:54.790 align:middle line:84% or lead battery, or something else that is cheap and abundant 01:00:54.790 --> 01:00:57.350 align:middle line:90% but is not yet being deployed. 01:00:57.350 --> 01:01:01.310 align:middle line:84% So I assume that this is a conservative calculation 01:01:01.310 --> 01:01:05.510 align:middle line:84% because it uses lithium ion cost numbers. 01:01:05.510 --> 01:01:09.510 align:middle line:84% But to answer these questions in an intelligent way 01:01:09.510 --> 01:01:11.790 align:middle line:84% would require someone to really undertake 01:01:11.790 --> 01:01:14.310 align:middle line:90% a study on battery technology. 01:01:14.310 --> 01:01:19.070 align:middle line:84% I guess my final comment on this is 01:01:19.070 --> 01:01:23.540 align:middle line:84% part of the reason why there is so much storage in Shaner's 01:01:23.540 --> 01:01:29.540 align:middle line:84% model is that he doesn't have anything other than storage. 01:01:29.540 --> 01:01:31.540 align:middle line:84% That's a problem in his model, and that's 01:01:31.540 --> 01:01:33.500 align:middle line:84% why I signed the version that I did 01:01:33.500 --> 01:01:36.080 align:middle line:84% because what we do is we say, OK, well, 01:01:36.080 --> 01:01:39.300 align:middle line:84% why don't we have 1% dispatchable, like we 01:01:39.300 --> 01:01:43.100 align:middle line:84% do natural gas just because it's built and it's there. 01:01:43.100 --> 01:01:46.340 align:middle line:84% And we figure 99% decarbonization is probably 01:01:46.340 --> 01:01:48.980 align:middle line:84% just as good as 100% decarbonization. 01:01:48.980 --> 01:01:52.680 align:middle line:84% But you could also have 1% geothermal, something like that. 01:01:52.680 --> 01:01:55.300 align:middle line:84% And you see the enormous cost reductions 01:01:55.300 --> 01:01:58.140 align:middle line:84% that come about when you substitute battery 01:01:58.140 --> 01:02:00.340 align:middle line:90% for dispatchable generation. 01:02:00.340 --> 01:02:04.040 align:middle line:84% So again, this is not a cost optimized scenario. 01:02:04.040 --> 01:02:06.980 align:middle line:84% This is not how it would actually be built. 01:02:06.980 --> 01:02:11.780 align:middle line:84% This is just saying that wind and solar, in theory, 01:02:11.780 --> 01:02:12.980 align:middle line:90% could do it. 01:02:12.980 --> 01:02:13.560 align:middle line:90% Right? 01:02:13.560 --> 01:02:14.560 align:middle line:90% That's all it's saying. 01:02:14.560 --> 01:02:17.460 align:middle line:90% 01:02:17.460 --> 01:02:19.450 align:middle line:90% You wouldn't do it this way. 01:02:19.450 --> 01:02:22.690 align:middle line:84% It would be foolish to do it this way. 01:02:22.690 --> 01:02:25.710 align:middle line:84% You would much rather do it like this. 01:02:25.710 --> 01:02:29.310 align:middle line:90% 01:02:29.310 --> 01:02:29.810 align:middle line:90% Yep? 01:02:29.810 --> 01:02:31.290 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: When you discuss the rare earth metals as far 01:02:31.290 --> 01:02:32.990 align:middle line:84% as the mineral resources for wind energy, 01:02:32.990 --> 01:02:35.240 align:middle line:84% you mentioned, a total percentage of global resources. 01:02:35.240 --> 01:02:38.400 align:middle line:84% Do you know that percentage of US resources or perhaps not? 01:02:38.400 --> 01:02:40.650 align:middle line:84% PROFESSOR: I was looking for it, but I didn't actually 01:02:40.650 --> 01:02:41.767 align:middle line:90% have time to look it up. 01:02:41.767 --> 01:02:43.850 align:middle line:84% So one of the problems is the US Geological Survey 01:02:43.850 --> 01:02:48.690 align:middle line:84% does not actually import by mineral 01:02:48.690 --> 01:02:53.310 align:middle line:84% or just report total rare earth oxides. 01:02:53.310 --> 01:02:56.290 align:middle line:84% And then you have to break it down by what 01:02:56.290 --> 01:02:58.790 align:middle line:90% the average rare earth ore is. 01:02:58.790 --> 01:03:01.610 align:middle line:84% But then that data is only available for the countries 01:03:01.610 --> 01:03:03.270 align:middle line:84% that currently produce the rare earth. 01:03:03.270 --> 01:03:05.630 align:middle line:84% So it turned out not to be an easy thing to do. 01:03:05.630 --> 01:03:08.190 align:middle line:84% So I didn't have that data for you. 01:03:08.190 --> 01:03:08.690 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 01:03:08.690 --> 01:03:15.290 align:middle line:90% 01:03:15.290 --> 01:03:17.000 align:middle line:90% Anything else? 01:03:17.000 --> 01:03:17.840 align:middle line:90% Yep? 01:03:17.840 --> 01:03:19.215 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: Something really quick, 01:03:19.215 --> 01:03:21.562 align:middle line:84% if you go back to the slide before-- 01:03:21.562 --> 01:03:22.520 align:middle line:90% PROFESSOR: Slide which? 01:03:22.520 --> 01:03:25.040 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: The one with all the transmission costs that you 01:03:25.040 --> 01:03:26.520 align:middle line:90% did the calculation on. 01:03:26.520 --> 01:03:29.200 align:middle line:84% Transmission costs was rather low. 01:03:29.200 --> 01:03:32.680 align:middle line:84% If we were actually to scale up in solar to the levels 01:03:32.680 --> 01:03:37.220 align:middle line:84% that you're describing, wouldn't you expect it to be higher? 01:03:37.220 --> 01:03:41.680 align:middle line:84% I mean, you said that 25% transmission to add. 01:03:41.680 --> 01:03:42.960 align:middle line:90% I guess that kind of answers. 01:03:42.960 --> 01:03:44.210 align:middle line:90% PROFESSOR: That is the answer. 01:03:44.210 --> 01:03:48.360 align:middle line:84% Yeah, so I estimate that for nationwide transmission 01:03:48.360 --> 01:03:51.280 align:middle line:84% that is needed to deal with renewables is about 25% 01:03:51.280 --> 01:03:52.440 align:middle line:90% of the cost. 01:03:52.440 --> 01:03:59.160 align:middle line:84% And that's based on historical transmission project costs. 01:03:59.160 --> 01:04:01.840 align:middle line:84% I'll show you when we get to the grid talk. 01:04:01.840 --> 01:04:04.720 align:middle line:84% I have a little regression model that tells you 01:04:04.720 --> 01:04:06.760 align:middle line:84% how much it costs to build transmission. 01:04:06.760 --> 01:04:09.040 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: And then just one more from before, you 01:04:09.040 --> 01:04:12.600 align:middle line:84% were talking about the case when we had one gigawatt of capacity 01:04:12.600 --> 01:04:15.170 align:middle line:90% of wind for the entire country. 01:04:15.170 --> 01:04:18.190 align:middle line:84% You have an idea of how many wind 01:04:18.190 --> 01:04:20.870 align:middle line:84% turbines that would actually take to do, 01:04:20.870 --> 01:04:22.495 align:middle line:90% the number, just roughly? 01:04:22.495 --> 01:04:23.870 align:middle line:84% PROFESSOR: 1 gigawatt of capacity 01:04:23.870 --> 01:04:26.687 align:middle line:90% in terms of number of turbines? 01:04:26.687 --> 01:04:27.270 align:middle line:90% We'd have to-- 01:04:27.270 --> 01:04:29.570 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: What the typical power of a turbine is. 01:04:29.570 --> 01:04:31.070 align:middle line:84% PROFESSOR: Why don't you just Google 01:04:31.070 --> 01:04:33.710 align:middle line:84% what is the average power of a current turbine? 01:04:33.710 --> 01:04:35.950 align:middle line:84% Yeah, I mean, they've gotten very big 01:04:35.950 --> 01:04:40.950 align:middle line:84% and I don't know enough about the mega-sized turbine turbines, 01:04:40.950 --> 01:04:42.990 align:middle line:84% if they can be deployed anywhere. 01:04:42.990 --> 01:04:45.170 align:middle line:84% So I don't know what the average size is. 01:04:45.170 --> 01:04:46.870 align:middle line:90% But that's a very quick google. 01:04:46.870 --> 01:04:48.550 align:middle line:90% You can do that yourself. 01:04:48.550 --> 01:04:51.110 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 01:04:51.110 --> 01:04:52.670 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: Let me show-- 01:04:52.670 --> 01:04:56.430 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: Could the expansion of solar or wind turbines 01:04:56.430 --> 01:04:58.370 align:middle line:84% lead to deforestation, let's say, 01:04:58.370 --> 01:05:02.350 align:middle line:84% or whatever other similar concerns about this? 01:05:02.350 --> 01:05:05.150 align:middle line:84% PROFESSOR: I think I missed the first part. 01:05:05.150 --> 01:05:06.750 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: The large scale expansion. 01:05:06.750 --> 01:05:07.770 align:middle line:90% PROFESSOR: Of solar? 01:05:07.770 --> 01:05:09.790 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] solar wind designs 01:05:09.790 --> 01:05:12.650 align:middle line:84% of adverse effects on the environment, 01:05:12.650 --> 01:05:14.513 align:middle line:84% for example, deforestation, et cetera. 01:05:14.513 --> 01:05:15.180 align:middle line:90% PROFESSOR: Yeah. 01:05:15.180 --> 01:05:21.940 align:middle line:84% So when I did my preparation for this talk, 01:05:21.940 --> 01:05:24.643 align:middle line:84% I read a whole bunch of papers that have analyzed these things. 01:05:24.643 --> 01:05:26.060 align:middle line:84% And the things that I talked about 01:05:26.060 --> 01:05:30.020 align:middle line:84% are the things that the academics have investigated. 01:05:30.020 --> 01:05:35.660 align:middle line:84% There are also-- and I mentioned these minor issues like noise, 01:05:35.660 --> 01:05:38.540 align:middle line:84% and killing birds, and ecosystem repurposing, 01:05:38.540 --> 01:05:40.620 align:middle line:90% and land use changes. 01:05:40.620 --> 01:05:43.740 align:middle line:84% And there are people who have tried to calculate 01:05:43.740 --> 01:05:46.400 align:middle line:90% the externalities for that. 01:05:46.400 --> 01:05:48.160 align:middle line:84% So the way I think about these things, 01:05:48.160 --> 01:05:50.620 align:middle line:90% and they're not limitations. 01:05:50.620 --> 01:05:52.600 align:middle line:84% They're not technical feasibility limitations, 01:05:52.600 --> 01:05:54.500 align:middle line:84% so I didn't put them in this talk. 01:05:54.500 --> 01:05:59.140 align:middle line:84% But there are things that might raise the effective social cost 01:05:59.140 --> 01:06:00.820 align:middle line:90% of wind and solar. 01:06:00.820 --> 01:06:05.020 align:middle line:84% And so when we get to our talk on externalities, 01:06:05.020 --> 01:06:07.820 align:middle line:84% where we're going to talk about, the safety 01:06:07.820 --> 01:06:11.810 align:middle line:84% externalities from particulates, the safety 01:06:11.810 --> 01:06:13.810 align:middle line:84% externalities from nuclear accidents, the safety 01:06:13.810 --> 01:06:16.970 align:middle line:84% externalities or the social externalities 01:06:16.970 --> 01:06:21.650 align:middle line:84% from noisy wind farms, we will come up 01:06:21.650 --> 01:06:23.730 align:middle line:84% with numbers for all of these things 01:06:23.730 --> 01:06:27.010 align:middle line:84% and see if things change dramatically. 01:06:27.010 --> 01:06:29.650 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 01:06:29.650 --> 01:06:30.730 align:middle line:90% Yep? 01:06:30.730 --> 01:06:35.010 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: Is 12 hours of storage on a massive scale really 01:06:35.010 --> 01:06:37.130 align:middle line:84% feasible, because my understanding is 01:06:37.130 --> 01:06:41.810 align:middle line:84% that it's quite hard to get big batteries to hold a long charge 01:06:41.810 --> 01:06:44.610 align:middle line:84% and discharge them every day without-- 01:06:44.610 --> 01:06:46.610 align:middle line:84% my understanding is 12 hours storage is actually 01:06:46.610 --> 01:06:50.510 align:middle line:84% a pretty difficult technological line for us to get to. 01:06:50.510 --> 01:06:54.402 align:middle line:90% 01:06:54.402 --> 01:06:55.110 align:middle line:90% PROFESSOR: Sorry. 01:06:55.110 --> 01:06:57.130 align:middle line:90% Why would that be? 01:06:57.130 --> 01:07:00.070 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I mean, I don't know too much electrochemistry, 01:07:00.070 --> 01:07:06.810 align:middle line:84% but there are some trade-offs in terms of how big you want 01:07:06.810 --> 01:07:09.370 align:middle line:84% the battery to be, how quickly you want it to discharge, 01:07:09.370 --> 01:07:12.720 align:middle line:84% and how long you want it to hold the charge. 01:07:12.720 --> 01:07:20.280 align:middle line:84% So the longer duration storage battery you want, 01:07:20.280 --> 01:07:22.260 align:middle line:84% it would either degrade very quickly, 01:07:22.260 --> 01:07:25.520 align:middle line:84% if we want it to discharge at 0 to 100 every single night, 01:07:25.520 --> 01:07:28.933 align:middle line:84% or it would be able to dispense energy at a very small-- 01:07:28.933 --> 01:07:30.600 align:middle line:84% PROFESSOR: So first of all, let me first 01:07:30.600 --> 01:07:32.320 align:middle line:84% remind you that 12 hours of storage 01:07:32.320 --> 01:07:35.800 align:middle line:84% is not how it will actually happen. 01:07:35.800 --> 01:07:40.120 align:middle line:84% This is a hypothetical study that 01:07:40.120 --> 01:07:44.380 align:middle line:84% is just to take Shaner's results and do something with them 01:07:44.380 --> 01:07:45.600 align:middle line:90% interesting. 01:07:45.600 --> 01:07:47.720 align:middle line:84% You wouldn't build all that storage. 01:07:47.720 --> 01:07:50.840 align:middle line:84% You also wouldn't necessarily build it out lithium ion, so 01:07:50.840 --> 01:07:54.320 align:middle line:90% those things aside. 01:07:54.320 --> 01:07:56.760 align:middle line:84% So yeah, so the thing you're talking about 01:07:56.760 --> 01:07:59.920 align:middle line:84% is basically a series parallel problem. 01:07:59.920 --> 01:08:02.560 align:middle line:84% How many cells you put in series, how many cells you 01:08:02.560 --> 01:08:03.660 align:middle line:90% put in parallel? 01:08:03.660 --> 01:08:06.160 align:middle line:84% And if you want high intensity discharge, 01:08:06.160 --> 01:08:08.160 align:middle line:84% then you wind up with the scenario where there's 01:08:08.160 --> 01:08:10.470 align:middle line:84% a lot of internal resistance, and you 01:08:10.470 --> 01:08:12.010 align:middle line:90% have more self-discharge. 01:08:12.010 --> 01:08:14.550 align:middle line:84% I still think 12 hours is not that 01:08:14.550 --> 01:08:19.149 align:middle line:84% bad from a self-discharge perspective. 01:08:19.149 --> 01:08:20.609 align:middle line:90% That's my sense of the matter. 01:08:20.609 --> 01:08:23.430 align:middle line:84% I think if you want to store for weeks, yeah, 01:08:23.430 --> 01:08:25.750 align:middle line:90% your self-discharge is an issue. 01:08:25.750 --> 01:08:31.609 align:middle line:84% I mean, this does 12 hours of storage. 01:08:31.609 --> 01:08:38.550 align:middle line:84% But I think this is a niggle on a fake scenario. 01:08:38.550 --> 01:08:41.430 align:middle line:90% So, I'm not worried about it. 01:08:41.430 --> 01:08:43.710 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 01:08:43.710 --> 01:08:44.510 align:middle line:90% All right. 01:08:44.510 --> 01:08:45.670 align:middle line:90% Anything else? 01:08:45.670 --> 01:08:46.290 align:middle line:90% All right. 01:08:46.290 --> 01:08:48.959 align:middle line:90% I will see you Wednesday. 01:08:48.959 --> 01:09:08.000 align:middle line:90%