Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Gwypaas 1542 days ago
Look no further than South Australia with a 65.7% renewable utilization for the 2021. Sure you can shift the goal posts to include total energy usage instead of simply electricity, but that also makes it easier since now you have a whole load of possible smart consumers in for example the transportation industry.

https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/resources/record-year-rene...
2 comments
eldaisfish 1541 days ago
South Australia does not scale. It is a region with a tiny population, almost 75% of which lives in a limited area.

South Australia is also incredibly sunny and has the advantage of being an arid desert. Again, that does not scale well.

link
Gwypaas 1541 days ago
With the exponential lowering of the costs of wind power, solar and storage that band should increase every year right?

South Australia sits at 25 to 37 degrees south. The longest HVDC line (in China) is 3300 km, that is 30 degrees.

Based on existing HVDC lines and South Australian circumstances we can say that we should reliably be able to supply somewhere up to 55 to 67 degrees from the equator, in general. Do you know what is at 66 degrees north? The arctic circle. That is how far north we end up.

This is not even considering that closer to the poles the wind resources are much better, especially in winter time.

The 4 million people living north of the Arctic circle might have a harder time. But it would seem that it is a trivially easy to solve edge case when the rest of the world has a solution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Circle#Human_habitation

This of course discounts any geopolitical concerns, which makes it harder. But on a US or EU continental scale we easily have the technology today.

link
Turing_Machine 1542 days ago
South Australia gets rather more sunshine than the regions of the world where people actually live.
link
Gwypaas 1542 days ago
With the exponential lowering of the costs of wind power, solar and storage that band should increase every year right?

South Australia is 25 to 37 degrees south. The longest HVDC line (in China) is 3300 km, that is 30 degrees.

So now based on existing HVDC lines and South Australian circumstances we can say that we should reliably be able to supply somewhere up to 55 to 67 degrees from the equator, in general. Do you know what is at 66 degrees north? The arctic circle. That is how far north we end up.

This is not even considering that closer to the poles have much better wind resources, especially in winter time.

So, the 4 million people living north of the Arctic circle might have a harder time. But it would seem that it is a trivially easy to solve edge case when the rest of the world has a solution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Circle#Human_habitation

This of course discounts any geopolitical concerns, which makes it harder. But on a US or EU continental we easily have the technology today.

link