New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) in China

N

Nutrient

Junior Member
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gelgoog said:
Did you even bother to read the article you posted all the way through?

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"Enerland and other bidders are selling Portugal energy at prices as much as five times lower than the cost to generate it, estimates Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). But they are not throwing their money away. They’re betting the superior economics of solar power, and a coveted connection to the country’s crowded electricity grid, will cover any losses over the first 15 years (solar facilities are expected to last about 40 years). After that period, they can sell their power at prevailing market rates (now more than $50/Mwh), and pocket any difference as profits. Their grid connection never expires."

"In a high renewables scenario, energy sector subsidies, now around 1% of global gross domestic product (GDP) would fall to 0.2% by 2050. Solar subsidies should shrink and disappear completely by 2050"

It's an Enron level scam. They get the grid connection to their own facilities by selling energy on the cheap in the start, then they jack up the price.
Click to expand...

Not at all like Enron. Your smear is not appreciated. Enerland and others are actually paying for their grid connection by selling solar energy for 15 years below cost. “'The Portuguese government expected to pay developers,' says Chase, 'and instead developers are paying [for the grid extension]'.”

Did you miss the part where they expect to make hefty profits later? This obviously means they expect the solar energy to cost far less than other ways to generate electricity.
 
N

Nutrient

Junior Member
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Another comment on the article at @AndrewS's link:

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From the article:
But for the first time, renewables are the cheapest source of new electricity in much of the world. At least 80% of new electricity capacity is expected to come from renewables by 2030 with unsubsidized wind and solar starting to compete directly with fossil fuels. [Emphasis added]
Click to expand...

So in just a few more years, the overwhelming majority of new electricity generation is expected to come from renewable sources -- with NO subsidies.

So the world could easily afford to overbuild its solar farms, and use the excess electricity to generate hydrogen.
 
T

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
gelgoog said:
Hydrogen fuel cells are a stupid idea.

You need platinum to build them, most of the progress in reducing the cost for HFCs is reducing the amount of platinum they require.
The article talks about using a constant power draw to increase the lifetime of fuel cells. But think about it, how practical is something like that? It will require the car to have batteries to have a buffer in high power draw situations. And the battery won't work all the time. Make the battery large enough and you're getting a more expensive hybrid car, a PEV, with platinum in it.

Even if you fixed the fuel cells issues somehow, the major issue with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is hydrogen production cost and storage and that hasn't changed. Wasting electricity to make hydrogen is a complete non-starter. There will be more viable uses for the electricity.
Solar electricity is already the most expensive form of electricity we produce, and they want to waste half of it with cracking hydrogen (because that is the efficiency of electrolysis in case you didn't know 50%). Only someone who does not know the physics or economics would propose something stupid like this.

The most cost viable way to manufacture hydrogen today is by steam reforming methane and that generates carbon gas too. It also wastes energy. Why not just directly burn the methane?
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I agree with most of your post about fuel-cell and hydrogen economy except the part in bold texts. It really depends on what you take into your calculation of cost. If you include the cost of pollution by coal and oil burning plant, include the cost of nuclear waste processing and storage etc, solar electricity is probably already much cheaper. Of course like you said, transforming electricity to H2 then back wasting about 30% electricity in the process is absurd.
 
G

gelgoog

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Registered Member
In places like the US and Europe, the price of nuclear electricity already includes the price to process spent fuel and even the cost to decommission the nuclear power plant. If we are going to make that sort of accounting work, might as well cost for building the grid connection to that remote solar power plant site, and the cost for grid storage for generated electricity for an intermittent source. But since the prior talk was about generating hydrogen with it, I won't go into that since it doesn't apply. Here we have other issues like the energy loss with electrolysis (50%), and the energy loss to store the hydrogen (20-30%). You will likely have to compress the hydrogen to use it in a car, and compressing hydrogen requires high-pressure pumps. Long term storage might be in the form of liquid hydrogen, which will need even more energy to liquefy since it boils off at 20K.
 
A

AndrewS

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Registered Member
gelgoog said:
Did you even bother to read the article you posted all the way through?

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

"Enerland and other bidders are selling Portugal energy at prices as much as five times lower than the cost to generate it, estimates Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). But they are not throwing their money away. They’re betting the superior economics of solar power, and a coveted connection to the country’s crowded electricity grid, will cover any losses over the first 15 years (solar facilities are expected to last about 40 years). After that period, they can sell their power at prevailing market rates (now more than $50/Mwh), and pocket any difference as profits. Their grid connection never expires."

"In a high renewables scenario, energy sector subsidies, now around 1% of global gross domestic product (GDP) would fall to 0.2% by 2050. Solar subsidies should shrink and disappear completely by 2050"

It's an Enron level scam. They get the grid connection to their own facilities by selling energy on the cheap in the start, then they jack up the price.
Click to expand...

Of course I did.

The question is, did you analyse the situation?

It's obvious that in this example, the Portuguese government was very generous in terms of support.
But the auction exposed this (and protected the government) because the bidders could see this, and bid accordingly.

Now imagine what will happen when the cost of solar panels drops by half.
That vastly increases the scale of solar electricity projects.
And it also means the grid connection cost drops dramatically as a share of the overall project.

---

And if you want to account for grid connection costs, I can use examples from the UK.

The latest offshore wind projects in the UK include the grid connection cost.
The bidders won at 5.5 US cents per KWh, which is cheaper than coal or gas

Note that the UK has very high construction and engineering costs, compared to other countries.
And that offshore wind power is generally more expensive than onshore wind power.
Plus wind power is still an immature technology which means it is seeing significant improvements every year.
And whilst this example discuss wind, connection costs for solar electricity are generally lower
 
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broadsword

broadsword

Brigadier
With a fossil fuel car, if you run out of gas, you could take a small jerry can and hop on a cab to the nearest petrol station for small fill-up that would last tenths of kms. With an EV, a detachable battery the size of a small briefcase could serve the same purpose. Preferably, the battery is designed to a universal standard so that any passing EV could loan to you as a favor.
 
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