Geothermal heat pumps (GSHPs) are generally more efficient than air source heat pumps (ASHPs), offering energy savings of up to 44% compared to ASHPs
3 . GSHPs can achieve efficiencies as high as 600%, meaning they produce six units of heat for every unit of electricity consumed, whereas ASHPs typically achieve around 400% efficiency
2 . This is because GSHPs utilize the stable underground temperature, making them more efficient, especially in colder climates
4 . Although GSHPs have higher upfront costs, they provide long-term energy savings and have a longer lifespan compared to ASHPs
2 .
The dinosaurs are not going pass quietly.
One of the charts above is from the ISE. On their site is this chart; Energy-Charts
Just amazing how fast the growth in renewables has been. This is to everyones benefit and the process has only just started. The immediate supply problems are solvable - at the moment mainly with gas fuelled power stations, i remains to be seen how the energy storage solutions go.
sorry this was meant as a general, not a personal reply.
Nobody sane is against renewables. What is rightly critizized is the fantasy that 100% renewable is possible and that so little attention was paid to how to build a resilient mix. The biggest flaw in the debate has been the focus on LCOE when what matters is system cost.
Not sure i Know what you mean with system cost. the term LCOE was new to me, but I found this comparison revealing: Levelized cost of electricity - Wikipedia.
100% renewables is clearly possible and already practiced to 98.5% by Norway. Not all countries have such a similar abundance of renewable resources but the European network should make such a level a reasonable target for the future.
The backup production costs wether it runs or not, those (mostly front) costs need to be paid for by the consumers. Which in turn drives up the total cost and results largely in a consumer price that is the sum of (fixed cost of backup production)+renewable production.
Using gas, which is far more expensive to store than oil, is outright dumb. Everybody else will also be shouting for gas when you need it (see the self-made crisis due to the Ukraine war) and drive the fuel price through the roof. And you have no choice but pay because this is when you need it the most. It’s much more prudent to use oil, which is easy to store even in multi-month amounts (happens already, see mandatory oil reserves).
I had my focus on Switzerland with that post, sorry. You’re right, Europe has lots of storage but the problem with that is that the need will probably be greatest when they’re already getting emptied, or might even be outright empty. And of course you need the transport capacity in due time, another potential cost block.
My core point is the same as what you mention above, building a robust mix because emergency backups need to be secure. We’ve seen during covid that countries prioritise their own over the others. Even the lower pollution should only be a secondary concern, after all the idea is to use them as little as possible.
That aside, in the context of the German Greens with their arbitrariness the argument on CO2 is void. They didn’t care when they shut down the NPPs and wasted that grey CO2.
If you found this revealing, you have not understood the problem. Yes, solar is the cheapest way to generate when the sun is shining. But what when the sun is not shining? When the wind is not blowing? That is literally the topic of the thread, so may I politely ask you to read up a bit more before telling us that 100% renewable is “clearly possible”?
That is only part of the problem. Another aspect is that the sun shines and the wind blows (or not) but not always where you need it….
Without the south link wind in the North Sea is not being transported to the south and that vital limb has run foul of burocracy and again the greenies.
Worst case (can’t verify) is that the power being produced in the north is wasted because quite a number of the turbines are not connected to the grid.
So how DO you transport the Jiggawatts of north sea power economically to where it is needed?
And buckets don’t work.
Politeness is one thing, understanding what you read is another. Changing the means of electricity production causes winners and losers in a short term economic sense. In the long term there are only winners. The challenges posed by uneven sun/wind are clear but provenly solvable. Geothermal, hydro and tidal are much more reliable. It is a challenge for the supply industry, but it gives a wonderful opportunity both for supplies to small communities to become much more local and to make supply less subject to outside disruption including missile attacks. At the same time renewables can still the the basis of a huge network.
On a side note. NZ built an Aluminium smelter at the bottom of the South Island based on the economics of construction of a hydro plant to supply the energy - the Aluminium comes from Australia. Now the North Island is not so happy about the cheap energy going to an industry with problems, especially as transmission costs have fallen. Instead of opening three mile island up again or building new nuclear plants, the AI companies should look to building their data centres where renewables are on tap - sounds like a good business opportunity for many.
Hydro is great, even though many Greens also oppose it. But there is no meaningful unexploited hydro potential left in Switzerland or Europe.
First, we are not even fully able to cover today’s electricity needs with AI in infancy from renewables. Second, where are renewables “on tap”? Canada, Iceland? Data centers have to be reasonably close to consumption.
I read somewhere that AI could be self limiting by the fact that should AI reach its full potential humanity would be unable to generate the amount of energy needed to run the AI.
Maybe AI then turns us into small little human batteries like in “The Matrix” …
Latest projection I have read for Europe was an overall demand increase of 50%+ by 2035 with data center demand growing 250% to about 6% of total demand.
There is a lot of hydro-potential still available in Europe. Yes, some greens (mistakenly in my view) oppose its expansion. This varies from small scale hydro plants to raising present dams to building new large dams.
Two big mistakes were made. First by Britain when north sea oil came along by neglecting and even hindering the expansion of renewables. Second by Germany when nuclear was first being phased out - choosing gas over renewables. OK, the numbers possibly did not look so good then as now. Part of this is due to the technological advances in renewables, especially wind. Part is due to the misinformation spread by the fossil fuel industry. This latter is not an unfounded conspiracy theory, but substantiated by the facts. A country without sun or wind or rain or tides or geothermal activity is hard to find.
Always tut tutted about the Matrix using humans as batteries, now if the premise of the Matrix universe was to use the human brain as a biological processor that would have made more sense…
And who is to say that this isn´t already happening, are you YOU and is everything you see, feel and touch just an alogrithm in a sophisticated computer?
Everybody has to believe in the great simulation so that we can defeat the purpose of this experiment as it would render it futile. The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks…
As I said, hydro is great and should be used when/where feasible
I am aware of this paper of the hydro association (funny how you are fine quoting them while dismissing the “oil lobby”). It is noteworthy that the vast majority of the “underutilized” 35% potential sits in Norway (presumably far north) and in Turkey, so far from easily useable in Central Europe without additional tens or hunderds of billions of cables
Much of Central and Southern Europe will actually see reduced hydro inflow over the coming decades due to climate change
Climate change also impacts wind speeds across Europe. Some studies predict a 15% reduction of wind generation per MW installed vs initially forecasted due to this
Effective and large scale electricity storage is decades from reality. Yes, batteries will be deployed on scale, but they are only short-term storage. Hydrogen seems ineffcient and lately pilot projects have been cancelled due to hopeless economics
All in all, I fail to see how 100% renewables is feasible anywhere except for particular places like Norway, Iceland, Nepal, Canada where hydro is abundant and demand is relatively small. This means that we will need plenty of gas-fired capacity (with direct CO2 sequestration) and maybe nuclear. Nuclear has its challenges and needs to run baseload which makes it super uneconomic in summer when prices are likely to be depressed due to solar. Gas-fired, apart from the expensive CO2 capture, will also have to be paid for the time when it is not running. All of this and the needed grid expansion costs money, and none of this “system cost” is included in the rosy LCOE pictures for wind and solar. It is total fiction to believe the energy transition somehow pays for itself (“the sun does not send a bill” and other such nonsense). I am all for building a low-carbon system, but we need to be honest about it and avoid ideological traps.