14 ms·

As an observer following the space, it is fascinating to me how everything in a given electricity/energy market changes once a given technology (solar, wind, en

As an observer following the space, it is fascinating to me how everything in a given electricity/energy market changes once a given technology (solar, wind, energy storage) becomes "economic". Or, in other words, the best/cheapest on balance option for delivering electricity or primary energy. Be aware that many current policies in Australia and vested interests are actively AGAINST further development of renewables. So all of this is actually IN SPITE of the regulatory environment, rather than because of it. It will be interesting to see how prices move given all this new volume that will be coming online in the next decade. Note for the curious: The reason the above is even possible is because solar and energy storage prices follow the same kind of principles / learning curve behind the proliferation of the microchip and Moore's law. While the curve and "speed" of cost reductions for renewables are no-where near as fast as MicroChips, I can only hope that this trend continues. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swanson%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swanson%27s_law

cal5k 8y ago
For large-scale solar you need batteries, and batteries do not follow this kind of cost curve. Countries that are truly interested in sustainable energy production should be building nuclear power plants. France & Germany will come to deeply regret their decisions to decommission old reactors and not build new ones, since nuclear is an incredibly safe source of baseline power.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  > For large-scale solar you need batteries, and batteries do not follow this kind of cost curve. Tesla would beg to differ. Their entire EV market is made possible by better, cheaper batteries, and that stems from the popularization of smaller, longer lasting, power sucking smartphones.
  - skellera 8y ago
    That also depends on the availability of resources. Hopefully a battery technology that requires less scarce resources comes about.
    - sgc 8y ago
      That is something that changes every year as well, and Tesla in particular has greatly cut the scarcer materials in the latest iterations of their batteries.
    - SECProto 8y ago
      Presumably you're referring to Lithium or Cobalt - but the supply of these resources really isnt an issue (at worst, it's an issue of timing). Lithium mines in North America are beginning to reopen [1]. Cobalt is a bit trickier, because it's produced as a byproduct - but Panasonic already has cells working at R&D with dramatically less cobalt [2]. [1] https://www.bba.ca/project/north-american-lithium-mine-restart-in-la-corne/ https://www.bba.ca/project/north-american-lithium-mine-resta... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-panasonic-batteries/panasonic-plans-to-halve-cobalt-content-of-car-batteries-in-two-three-years-idUSKBN1K21CK https://www.reuters.com/article/us-panasonic-batteries/panas...
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        Elon Musk has said on Twitter Tesla intends to produce batteries without any cobalt in the future. And lithium is extremely plentiful as you mention. The materials supply is a non-issue.
        SECProto 8y ago
        Yes indeed - I just found a different, primary source. Some people (unfairly, I feel) write off anything he says. I saw a cool graph showing how much cell price would change if different material inputs price changed. Essentially, cobalt or lithium could double in price, and the cost of a battery pack for a car would only increase 5-10%. Can't find the exact graph, but this article has quite a lot of detailed info on battery price constituents. http://thedeepdive.ca/lithium-ion-battery-cells-cathodes-and-costs/ http://thedeepdive.ca/lithium-ion-battery-cells-cathodes-and... edit: oo it actually has forecasts for cobalt production and demand showing demand for cobalt higher than supply by 2025. And forecasts that material costs are not likely to drop. And that manufacturers will work other angles of the price equation to get prices lower.
- the_duke 8y ago
  What is it with nuclear power plant fanboys trying to hijacki almost every renewables thread?
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    Because the main reason for using renewables is to reduce CO2 emissions and Nuclear is a great way to reduce CO2 emissions and it is the safest technology around. (yes, even when accounting for Chernobyl, Three Miles Island and Fukushima).
    - pjc50 8y ago
      I think it's no longer great; it takes too long to build, costs too much, presents a decomissioning problem, and still never quite dealt with weapons proliferation.
      - ekianjo 8y ago
        The weapons proliferation part has already been dealt with, since it depends on the type of nuclear reactor you build. Thorium salt reactors, are non-proliferation by design. > costs too much because we haven't invested in any experimentation in most markets. The US has stopped building new reactors for decades. There's no reason why nuclear reactors can't be made to be cheaper. > I think it's no longer great; This needs a benchmark. Nothing is great in absolute. It's still great vs all the other energy productions methods. Solar need huge surfaces to produce large quantities of energy, and solar panels require very toxic materials for manufacture... nothing's perfect unfortunately.
        jabl 8y ago
        > Thorium salt reactors, are non-proliferation by design. No. In some ways they're much worse, in fact. > Nothing is great in absolute. It's still great vs all the other energy productions methods. Solar need huge surfaces to produce large quantities of energy, and solar panels require very toxic materials for manufacture... nothing's perfect unfortunately. Indeed, by many metrics (deaths per kWh, environmental footprint) nuclear is the best option we have.
- clomond 8y ago
  Sorry, but you are incorrect. Technically, every manufactured good has a learning curve. A very quick google search will show you that there is sizeable documentation out there on the learning curve for li-ion batteries. See: https://www.solarchoice.net.au/wp-content/uploads/Solar-PV-lithium-ion-learning-curve.png https://www.solarchoice.net.au/wp-content/uploads/Solar-PV-l... Additionally, while nuclear is definitely a good option for delivering clean, always on electricity - the reason nuclear power plants aren't being built is because whoever is financing it / coming up with the money has to deal with not only a 5-10 year construction lead time but also a 50 year operating period. Given the cost reductions of renewables, how do you price in the risk that your plant will become completely uneconomic at some point in that time period?
  - jabl 8y ago
    > Sorry, but you are incorrect. Technically, every manufactured good has a learning curve. Sure. But at some point physics limits how far you can go. We had a good run for many decades with micro-electronics because it's possible to cram a huge number of transistors on a tiny microchip. For solar cells and batteries we're not that far away from fundamental physical limits. So even though batteries look poised to replace gas for services like frequency control and some peak shaving, they're still orders of magnitude too expensive to allow us to completely run a grid on wind and solar, with no guarantee they will ever actually hit those price levels required.
    - diafygi 8y ago
      What? Wood Mackenzie is predicting that renewables + batteries will be able to beat both peak and baseload by 2035. https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/batteries-renewables-displacing-gas/ https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/batteries-renewables-...
    - clomond 8y ago
      Totally. And yes, no guarantee that battery storage will reach those price levels needed (i.e. if volume dries up). However, for the last 20 or so years there were chants about the end of Moore's Law. Still appears to be going strong, "somehow". My take on battery storage: several incremental developments coming down the pipeline on the anode and cathode side of li-ion batteries (improved chemistries, less cobalt, increased silicon %, new electrolyte mediums, etc). Combined with the "coming surge" of li-ion batteries and development for upcoming EV models with billions invested in new battery factories, it's hard to not see significant changes to the price within even a decades time.
- matt4077 8y ago
  Two quotes from the article contradicting your outdated talking point: > “The battery pipeline has grown exponentially,” Dixon says > Other projects include the 4GW Walcha project in NSW, proposed by Energy Estate and Mirus Wind, which aims to combine huge amounts of wind, solar and storage for the biggest project proposed so far for the main grid. Battery power has obviously been improving asymptotically towards zero (i. e. the inverse of power growing exponentially): https://www.google.com/search?q=costs+of+lithium+ion+batteries https://www.google.com/search?q=costs+of+lithium+ion+batteri... It's funny how the wider tech community has this obsession with nuclear technology. It's a sort of scientism, where the actual science has long moved on, but a certain group just clings to outdated ideas because they are still invested in a culture clash. It has gotten to the point where I think the potential danger of nuclear technology is actually appreciated, as a sort of sticking-it-to-the-environmentalists feature. Or it's a symptom of people growing up with science fiction culture prominently featuring nuclear power, unwilling to let their ideas of a glorious future go. But the facts have simply moved on, and renewable energy is now winning on economic arguments alone. Thanks to actual scientists, and to a significant degree politicians (especially Germany) offering magnificently effective subsidies, solar, wind, and storage are now competitive even with coal. Nuclear power is big hairy dangerous technology some people somehow adore, but it's also prohibitively expensive.
  - WhompingWindows 8y ago
    People like the idea of nuclear, but none of these pro-nuclear advocates can make it cost-effective in practice. Look at South Carolina, what a debacle and the costs are being thrown onto rate-payers. New-build nuclear is just not working economically in the USA, we'd need a big change in policy, permitting, and willingness of the populace. In many ways, China's nuclear demonstrates the advantages of its authoritarian system; it can get some things done far better than democracies, willingness/permitting/policy being such non-concerns for their governmental system.
    - avmich 8y ago
      We really need lots of good, verifiable data from both sides on comparison of nuclear vs. solar/wind technologies. Absent that, both approaches will probably develop naturally, as technology and political climate allows.
- BLKNSLVR 8y ago
  I've read in various places that nuclear power missed its window of opportunity. It would have been great had they been up and running now. But to start building them now would mean they're up and running after wind and solar and batteries have significantly brought the price of power down to a level that makes nuclear power plants unviable.
  - bjz_ 8y ago
    Yeah - renewables are quicker to bring online, and allow for faster iteration and innovation. If Australia currently had nuclear power plants I definitely wouldn't be in favour of shutting them down, but it seems a better bet to invest in the renewable energy.
    - solarkraft 8y ago
      I's better long-term. Storage of nuclear waste is a close-to-unmanageable risk. Countries that haven't started are lucky because every part of a nuclear power plant is incredibly difficult to get rid of.
      - perilunar 8y ago
        > Storage of nuclear waste is a close-to-unmanageable risk Not in Australia it isn't. We have very large areas of geologically stable, sparsely populated land. Some of it is even already contaminated by nuclear tests in the 50s.
  - perilunar 8y ago
    > nuclear power missed its window of opportunity It didn't 'miss' its window — it was actively shut out by the green movement. One of the great ironies of climate change really.
    - Brakenshire 8y ago
      The green movement does not have that kind of political power, and in any case is split on nuclear. What has stopped nuclear is almost entirely economics.
- Retric 8y ago
  Nuclear power is really expensive even in China and other countries outside of US regulations. This becomes much worse if you can’t run at 100% 24/7 so it effectively needs storage. France got around this by exporting a lot of power, but that only works until everyone tries to go nuclear. Combining wind and solar dramatically changes the numbers, thus making a meaningless argument. They are so cleap you can balance the cost of overproduction and storage to end up with minimal storage. But in such an environment Nuclear is simply more expensive than either extra wind production or storage making it nearly useless.
  - merpnderp 8y ago
    Your reasoning doesn't follow. If France's nuclear power was expensive, how did they export it? They sold it on a market where someone thought it was a better deal than alternatives.
    - Retric 8y ago
      When the value of something is zero for you, making anything from selling it is a net gain. It’s true France needed massive subsidies to get into that place, but by exporting they needed slightly lower subsidies. For a current example, the US loses money by exporting subsidized food. But, they would lose even more money by letting that food rot.
  - gwright 8y ago
    It is not possible (with today's energy tech) to operate a power grid 24x7 on renewables alone (no storage). See https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-3-14-how-much-do-the-climate-crusaders-plan-to-increase-your-costs-of-electricity-part-iv https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-3-14-how-much-... for a good overview
    - Retric 8y ago
      That was written by someone that clearly does not know what they are talking about or was simply lying. Many off grid systems operate by having excess solar and minimal storage. “storage for what could be many days — or even a month or more — of power.“ The only way you get that kind of assumption is to set production at exactly as much energy as you need over the year. If you produce extra power every day then you never need even 1 day of full storage. It’s true wind and solar does not always produce the same amount of power every day, they never produce zero. Thus, it’s a question of what you scale the system around minimum or average production over some time frame. Run the numbers vs. assuming minimum production and some storage is a net gain. But, as Nuclear costs at a minimum twice as much and also needs redundancy, actual storage requirements are fairly low. Those numbers get worse if you need run Nuclear as less than full capacity.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  > and batteries do not follow this kind of cost curve. They do, very much. And that is new batteries, not even taking into account all the used ones that will flood the market in a while.
- glenneroo 8y ago
  I am not against nuclear power, but I am also slightly skeptical of such high praise which seems to appear in every thread related to "green" energy. To refute your comment about batteries, there was an article 2 weeks ago on HN[0] analyzing the significant drop in battery prices over the years. It's not a Moore's law but the present price is also better than some earlier cost-projections[1]. According to Wikipedia's entries about France[2] and Germany[3] neither country is without accidents, albeit not Chernobyl or Fukushima-level incidents. The list of accidents involving Gen-II and Gen-III reactors is quite long[4], with USA leading (of course they have the highest number of reactors worldwide so it makes sense). Please correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I can determine, a majority of operational reactors worldwide are still quite old (1965–1996) Gen-II designs with a smattering of Gen-III and most recently a handful of Gen-III+ upgrades, with most plans to upgrade being put off due to Fukushima. The safest Gen-IV designs are planned to start construction earliest in 2030. I can't find any installations of Gen-III+ reactors anywhere in Europe, they seem to be spread across Asia with a small handful of US installations. Also considering the reality of climate change and the resulting expectations of increasing frequency and strength of weather events, I would think another Fukushima-type event is not far away, especially factoring in the age and possible lack of preparation for such extreme weather events. Also waste management is not a minor issue with no real solution other than "bury it underground and hope nobody digs it up by accident in the future". [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19312154 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19312154 [1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260339436_An_Overview_of_Costs_for_Vehicle_Components_Fuels_and_Greenhouse_Gas_Emissions https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260339436_An_Overvi... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Accide... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Accid... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident...
- perilunar 8y ago
  > For large-scale solar you need batteries No you don't. You need storage, but it can be pumped hydro, hydrogen, ammonia, molten salts, and many other things.
  - anoncake 8y ago
    And that storage does not have to be weight- or space-efficient. It doesnt have to fit into a car, just into Australia.
- GorgeRonde 8y ago
  There are some startups that try to store energy by lifting or spinning concrete (see www.energiestro.fr). Also please note that in case France and Germany electrical grids frie because of a solar storm, cooling down the reactors will be impossibe once the emergency power generators run out of fuel.
- kuzehanka 8y ago
  I'd give this multiple upvotes if I could. I don't know how or why it happened, but solar/wind has become the most prominent notion of sustainable power generation. It isn't. Not by a long shot. We don't even have a workable way to recycle or decommission photovoltaic solar panels after their useful lifespan. Reflector based solar plants and wind plants are causing so much ecological damage that their initial designers and proponents are now advocating against their use. At the same time these plants are consuming huge amounts of land that must be cleared of native flora and fauna. The guys building the Ivanpah solar plant have been walking off their jobs because of the wildlife destruction they were causing[1]. Wind and solar are a feel-good distraction which fall an order of magnitude short of meeting our projected energy demands. I'm not fundamentally against these power sources, but ignoring their limitations and trying to scale them to tackle climate change is absurd. Nuclear is literally the only path forward. Nuclear fusion preferably, but even nuclear fission with all its downsides is currently the lowest deaths per kWh and lowest ecological/climate impact per kWh power source that exists today. Nuclear is also the only power source where we can internalise the waste product and store it in an inert form instead of immediately inflicting it on the environment. It's an order of magnitude better than solar/wind on those metrics. This is not a controversial fringe view. This is what pretty much everyone in the sector has converged on over the last decade. It just hasn't filtered down to become popular opinion for some reason. [1] https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/00000144-0a33-d3cb-a96c-7b3f547d0000 https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/00000144-0a3...
  - sametmax 8y ago
    I'm pro nuclear, but it's hard to be. The communication around the nuclear industry has been anything but honest. Typical nuclear plant costs, when compared to wind power in France, do not include decommissing of the plant or the cost of cabling while it is for wind turbines. Also accidents side effects are downplayed so much it's insulting. According to the french medias, the tchernobyl nuclear cloud never crossed the french border. Yet we know now that thyroid cancer near said border spiked during a decade, and it's impossible to sell nuclear energy to one of my best friend whose life has be shatered it. So the first step to promote nuclear power would be to actually respect people.
- olau 8y ago
  Baseline power is not needed. You need to match the demand. Nuclear is too expensive.
- specialist 8y ago
  I favor traveling wave reactors. To reduce our stockpiles (waste). If we also get some useful energy, terrific. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor
- anoncake 8y ago
  Fossil fuels are safe. They kill people, but they kill a fairly low and most of all predictable number of people. Theyre dangerous for a coal miner, but not for a country. Nuclear power is generally pretty harmless. But when it fails, it has the potential to kill millions and render large parts of the country uninhabitable. That is danger. I still think we should have gotten rid of coal before nuclear. But long-term, nuclear is not an acceptable power source.
- imtringued 8y ago
  >batteries do not follow this kind of cost curve. It's pretty common knowledge that battery capacity at the same prices goes up by 8% per year.
ZeroGravitas 8y ago
Renewables have been the best/cheapest for a while now. What you are talking about is when they become so much cheaper/better that they overcome any subsidies and unaccounted externalities in fossil fuel alternatives. Well run countries take advantage of this to save themselves money (e.g. subsidies to solar have paid for themselves even if you solely count reduced mortality rates from pollution.) Oligarchies use a lack of understanding of this to extract out the last bit of wealth from their citizens that they can before the market comes for them. A recent MIT study examined exactly what contributed to the price declines and government support accounted for the vast majority of the price decline: http://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-1120 http://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-1120
- gwright 8y ago
  Renewables are not the cheapest when you add in the backup base load generation systems that are required to run a grid 24x7. The sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow 24x7.
  - yurishimo 8y ago
    These problems can be solved though with renewable backup/storage sources and increases in efficiency in electricity consuming tech. Pumping water up a hill using solar and harvesting the kinetic energy has been proposed numerous times but it's a matter of social will to build the infrastructure to support such projects. Imagine if we built massive offshore tanks to pump sea water into and released them overnight. Inland areas would need a different solution if they didn't want to modify the landscape too much, but I think we can find a balance between traditional batteries and natural "batteries".
    - gwright 8y ago
      Sure if you imagine some future technology that doesn't exists. We don't have storage mechanisms that have the capacity and are cost efficient.
  - Sabinus 8y ago
spangry 8y ago
Which policies or regulations in Australia are against the development of renewables? The Renewable Energy Target scheme alone provides over $2bn in annual per mw/h subsidies to renewable energy generators, and is legislated to continue until 2030. If renewable energy is truly the cheapest way to generate electricity, would you agree that subsidy schemes like the RET are no longer needed, and should be repealed?
SEJeff 8y ago
South Australia has rolling blackouts in the summers when the coal "peaker plants" come online, and it takes 30-45 minutes in some cases for them to come online during a surge in demand due to blackouts. The government turned to Tesla to install (at the time) the biggest industrial battery in the world at 100MW / 129MWh and it is really working. Here is some info on it with some details (electrek is a Tesla fanboi site, but the reporting is accurate): https://electrek.co/2018/09/24/tesla-powerpack-battery-australia-cost-revenue/ https://electrek.co/2018/09/24/tesla-powerpack-battery-austr...
- SEJeff 8y ago
  Not really sure why something that adds context to the conversation is downvoted.

cal5k 8y ago

For large-scale solar you need batteries, and batteries do not follow this kind of cost curve. Countries that are truly interested in sustainable energy production should be building nuclear power plants. France & Germany will come to deeply regret their decisions to decommission old reactors and not build new ones, since nuclear is an incredibly safe source of baseline power.

ceejayoz 8y ago
> For large-scale solar you need batteries, and batteries do not follow this kind of cost curve. Tesla would beg to differ. Their entire EV market is made possible by better, cheaper batteries, and that stems from the popularization of smaller, longer lasting, power sucking smartphones.
- skellera 8y ago
  That also depends on the availability of resources. Hopefully a battery technology that requires less scarce resources comes about.
  - sgc 8y ago
    That is something that changes every year as well, and Tesla in particular has greatly cut the scarcer materials in the latest iterations of their batteries.
  - SECProto 8y ago
    Presumably you're referring to Lithium or Cobalt - but the supply of these resources really isnt an issue (at worst, it's an issue of timing). Lithium mines in North America are beginning to reopen [1]. Cobalt is a bit trickier, because it's produced as a byproduct - but Panasonic already has cells working at R&D with dramatically less cobalt [2]. [1] https://www.bba.ca/project/north-american-lithium-mine-restart-in-la-corne/ https://www.bba.ca/project/north-american-lithium-mine-resta... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-panasonic-batteries/panasonic-plans-to-halve-cobalt-content-of-car-batteries-in-two-three-years-idUSKBN1K21CK https://www.reuters.com/article/us-panasonic-batteries/panas...
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      Elon Musk has said on Twitter Tesla intends to produce batteries without any cobalt in the future. And lithium is extremely plentiful as you mention. The materials supply is a non-issue.
      - SECProto 8y ago
        Yes indeed - I just found a different, primary source. Some people (unfairly, I feel) write off anything he says. I saw a cool graph showing how much cell price would change if different material inputs price changed. Essentially, cobalt or lithium could double in price, and the cost of a battery pack for a car would only increase 5-10%. Can't find the exact graph, but this article has quite a lot of detailed info on battery price constituents. http://thedeepdive.ca/lithium-ion-battery-cells-cathodes-and-costs/ http://thedeepdive.ca/lithium-ion-battery-cells-cathodes-and... edit: oo it actually has forecasts for cobalt production and demand showing demand for cobalt higher than supply by 2025. And forecasts that material costs are not likely to drop. And that manufacturers will work other angles of the price equation to get prices lower.
the_duke 8y ago
What is it with nuclear power plant fanboys trying to hijacki almost every renewables thread?
- ekianjo 8y ago
  Because the main reason for using renewables is to reduce CO2 emissions and Nuclear is a great way to reduce CO2 emissions and it is the safest technology around. (yes, even when accounting for Chernobyl, Three Miles Island and Fukushima).
  - pjc50 8y ago
    I think it's no longer great; it takes too long to build, costs too much, presents a decomissioning problem, and still never quite dealt with weapons proliferation.
    - ekianjo 8y ago
      The weapons proliferation part has already been dealt with, since it depends on the type of nuclear reactor you build. Thorium salt reactors, are non-proliferation by design. > costs too much because we haven't invested in any experimentation in most markets. The US has stopped building new reactors for decades. There's no reason why nuclear reactors can't be made to be cheaper. > I think it's no longer great; This needs a benchmark. Nothing is great in absolute. It's still great vs all the other energy productions methods. Solar need huge surfaces to produce large quantities of energy, and solar panels require very toxic materials for manufacture... nothing's perfect unfortunately.
      - jabl 8y ago
        > Thorium salt reactors, are non-proliferation by design. No. In some ways they're much worse, in fact. > Nothing is great in absolute. It's still great vs all the other energy productions methods. Solar need huge surfaces to produce large quantities of energy, and solar panels require very toxic materials for manufacture... nothing's perfect unfortunately. Indeed, by many metrics (deaths per kWh, environmental footprint) nuclear is the best option we have.
clomond 8y ago
Sorry, but you are incorrect. Technically, every manufactured good has a learning curve. A very quick google search will show you that there is sizeable documentation out there on the learning curve for li-ion batteries. See: https://www.solarchoice.net.au/wp-content/uploads/Solar-PV-lithium-ion-learning-curve.png https://www.solarchoice.net.au/wp-content/uploads/Solar-PV-l... Additionally, while nuclear is definitely a good option for delivering clean, always on electricity - the reason nuclear power plants aren't being built is because whoever is financing it / coming up with the money has to deal with not only a 5-10 year construction lead time but also a 50 year operating period. Given the cost reductions of renewables, how do you price in the risk that your plant will become completely uneconomic at some point in that time period?
- jabl 8y ago
  > Sorry, but you are incorrect. Technically, every manufactured good has a learning curve. Sure. But at some point physics limits how far you can go. We had a good run for many decades with micro-electronics because it's possible to cram a huge number of transistors on a tiny microchip. For solar cells and batteries we're not that far away from fundamental physical limits. So even though batteries look poised to replace gas for services like frequency control and some peak shaving, they're still orders of magnitude too expensive to allow us to completely run a grid on wind and solar, with no guarantee they will ever actually hit those price levels required.
  - diafygi 8y ago
    What? Wood Mackenzie is predicting that renewables + batteries will be able to beat both peak and baseload by 2035. https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/batteries-renewables-displacing-gas/ https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/batteries-renewables-...
  - clomond 8y ago
    Totally. And yes, no guarantee that battery storage will reach those price levels needed (i.e. if volume dries up). However, for the last 20 or so years there were chants about the end of Moore's Law. Still appears to be going strong, "somehow". My take on battery storage: several incremental developments coming down the pipeline on the anode and cathode side of li-ion batteries (improved chemistries, less cobalt, increased silicon %, new electrolyte mediums, etc). Combined with the "coming surge" of li-ion batteries and development for upcoming EV models with billions invested in new battery factories, it's hard to not see significant changes to the price within even a decades time.
matt4077 8y ago
Two quotes from the article contradicting your outdated talking point: > “The battery pipeline has grown exponentially,” Dixon says > Other projects include the 4GW Walcha project in NSW, proposed by Energy Estate and Mirus Wind, which aims to combine huge amounts of wind, solar and storage for the biggest project proposed so far for the main grid. Battery power has obviously been improving asymptotically towards zero (i. e. the inverse of power growing exponentially): https://www.google.com/search?q=costs+of+lithium+ion+batteries https://www.google.com/search?q=costs+of+lithium+ion+batteri... It's funny how the wider tech community has this obsession with nuclear technology. It's a sort of scientism, where the actual science has long moved on, but a certain group just clings to outdated ideas because they are still invested in a culture clash. It has gotten to the point where I think the potential danger of nuclear technology is actually appreciated, as a sort of sticking-it-to-the-environmentalists feature. Or it's a symptom of people growing up with science fiction culture prominently featuring nuclear power, unwilling to let their ideas of a glorious future go. But the facts have simply moved on, and renewable energy is now winning on economic arguments alone. Thanks to actual scientists, and to a significant degree politicians (especially Germany) offering magnificently effective subsidies, solar, wind, and storage are now competitive even with coal. Nuclear power is big hairy dangerous technology some people somehow adore, but it's also prohibitively expensive.
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
  People like the idea of nuclear, but none of these pro-nuclear advocates can make it cost-effective in practice. Look at South Carolina, what a debacle and the costs are being thrown onto rate-payers. New-build nuclear is just not working economically in the USA, we'd need a big change in policy, permitting, and willingness of the populace. In many ways, China's nuclear demonstrates the advantages of its authoritarian system; it can get some things done far better than democracies, willingness/permitting/policy being such non-concerns for their governmental system.
  - avmich 8y ago
    We really need lots of good, verifiable data from both sides on comparison of nuclear vs. solar/wind technologies. Absent that, both approaches will probably develop naturally, as technology and political climate allows.
BLKNSLVR 8y ago
I've read in various places that nuclear power missed its window of opportunity. It would have been great had they been up and running now. But to start building them now would mean they're up and running after wind and solar and batteries have significantly brought the price of power down to a level that makes nuclear power plants unviable.
- bjz_ 8y ago
  Yeah - renewables are quicker to bring online, and allow for faster iteration and innovation. If Australia currently had nuclear power plants I definitely wouldn't be in favour of shutting them down, but it seems a better bet to invest in the renewable energy.
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    I's better long-term. Storage of nuclear waste is a close-to-unmanageable risk. Countries that haven't started are lucky because every part of a nuclear power plant is incredibly difficult to get rid of.
    - perilunar 8y ago
      > Storage of nuclear waste is a close-to-unmanageable risk Not in Australia it isn't. We have very large areas of geologically stable, sparsely populated land. Some of it is even already contaminated by nuclear tests in the 50s.
- perilunar 8y ago
  > nuclear power missed its window of opportunity It didn't 'miss' its window — it was actively shut out by the green movement. One of the great ironies of climate change really.
  - Brakenshire 8y ago
    The green movement does not have that kind of political power, and in any case is split on nuclear. What has stopped nuclear is almost entirely economics.
Retric 8y ago
Nuclear power is really expensive even in China and other countries outside of US regulations. This becomes much worse if you can’t run at 100% 24/7 so it effectively needs storage. France got around this by exporting a lot of power, but that only works until everyone tries to go nuclear. Combining wind and solar dramatically changes the numbers, thus making a meaningless argument. They are so cleap you can balance the cost of overproduction and storage to end up with minimal storage. But in such an environment Nuclear is simply more expensive than either extra wind production or storage making it nearly useless.
- merpnderp 8y ago
  Your reasoning doesn't follow. If France's nuclear power was expensive, how did they export it? They sold it on a market where someone thought it was a better deal than alternatives.
  - Retric 8y ago
    When the value of something is zero for you, making anything from selling it is a net gain. It’s true France needed massive subsidies to get into that place, but by exporting they needed slightly lower subsidies. For a current example, the US loses money by exporting subsidized food. But, they would lose even more money by letting that food rot.
- gwright 8y ago
  It is not possible (with today's energy tech) to operate a power grid 24x7 on renewables alone (no storage). See https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-3-14-how-much-do-the-climate-crusaders-plan-to-increase-your-costs-of-electricity-part-iv https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-3-14-how-much-... for a good overview
  - Retric 8y ago
    That was written by someone that clearly does not know what they are talking about or was simply lying. Many off grid systems operate by having excess solar and minimal storage. “storage for what could be many days — or even a month or more — of power.“ The only way you get that kind of assumption is to set production at exactly as much energy as you need over the year. If you produce extra power every day then you never need even 1 day of full storage. It’s true wind and solar does not always produce the same amount of power every day, they never produce zero. Thus, it’s a question of what you scale the system around minimum or average production over some time frame. Run the numbers vs. assuming minimum production and some storage is a net gain. But, as Nuclear costs at a minimum twice as much and also needs redundancy, actual storage requirements are fairly low. Those numbers get worse if you need run Nuclear as less than full capacity.
solarkraft 8y ago
> and batteries do not follow this kind of cost curve. They do, very much. And that is new batteries, not even taking into account all the used ones that will flood the market in a while.
glenneroo 8y ago
I am not against nuclear power, but I am also slightly skeptical of such high praise which seems to appear in every thread related to "green" energy. To refute your comment about batteries, there was an article 2 weeks ago on HN[0] analyzing the significant drop in battery prices over the years. It's not a Moore's law but the present price is also better than some earlier cost-projections[1]. According to Wikipedia's entries about France[2] and Germany[3] neither country is without accidents, albeit not Chernobyl or Fukushima-level incidents. The list of accidents involving Gen-II and Gen-III reactors is quite long[4], with USA leading (of course they have the highest number of reactors worldwide so it makes sense). Please correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I can determine, a majority of operational reactors worldwide are still quite old (1965–1996) Gen-II designs with a smattering of Gen-III and most recently a handful of Gen-III+ upgrades, with most plans to upgrade being put off due to Fukushima. The safest Gen-IV designs are planned to start construction earliest in 2030. I can't find any installations of Gen-III+ reactors anywhere in Europe, they seem to be spread across Asia with a small handful of US installations. Also considering the reality of climate change and the resulting expectations of increasing frequency and strength of weather events, I would think another Fukushima-type event is not far away, especially factoring in the age and possible lack of preparation for such extreme weather events. Also waste management is not a minor issue with no real solution other than "bury it underground and hope nobody digs it up by accident in the future". [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19312154 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19312154 [1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260339436_An_Overview_of_Costs_for_Vehicle_Components_Fuels_and_Greenhouse_Gas_Emissions https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260339436_An_Overvi... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Accide... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Accid... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident...
perilunar 8y ago
> For large-scale solar you need batteries No you don't. You need storage, but it can be pumped hydro, hydrogen, ammonia, molten salts, and many other things.
- anoncake 8y ago
  And that storage does not have to be weight- or space-efficient. It doesnt have to fit into a car, just into Australia.
GorgeRonde 8y ago
There are some startups that try to store energy by lifting or spinning concrete (see www.energiestro.fr). Also please note that in case France and Germany electrical grids frie because of a solar storm, cooling down the reactors will be impossibe once the emergency power generators run out of fuel.
kuzehanka 8y ago
I'd give this multiple upvotes if I could. I don't know how or why it happened, but solar/wind has become the most prominent notion of sustainable power generation. It isn't. Not by a long shot. We don't even have a workable way to recycle or decommission photovoltaic solar panels after their useful lifespan. Reflector based solar plants and wind plants are causing so much ecological damage that their initial designers and proponents are now advocating against their use. At the same time these plants are consuming huge amounts of land that must be cleared of native flora and fauna. The guys building the Ivanpah solar plant have been walking off their jobs because of the wildlife destruction they were causing[1]. Wind and solar are a feel-good distraction which fall an order of magnitude short of meeting our projected energy demands. I'm not fundamentally against these power sources, but ignoring their limitations and trying to scale them to tackle climate change is absurd. Nuclear is literally the only path forward. Nuclear fusion preferably, but even nuclear fission with all its downsides is currently the lowest deaths per kWh and lowest ecological/climate impact per kWh power source that exists today. Nuclear is also the only power source where we can internalise the waste product and store it in an inert form instead of immediately inflicting it on the environment. It's an order of magnitude better than solar/wind on those metrics. This is not a controversial fringe view. This is what pretty much everyone in the sector has converged on over the last decade. It just hasn't filtered down to become popular opinion for some reason. [1] https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/00000144-0a33-d3cb-a96c-7b3f547d0000 https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/00000144-0a3...
- sametmax 8y ago
  I'm pro nuclear, but it's hard to be. The communication around the nuclear industry has been anything but honest. Typical nuclear plant costs, when compared to wind power in France, do not include decommissing of the plant or the cost of cabling while it is for wind turbines. Also accidents side effects are downplayed so much it's insulting. According to the french medias, the tchernobyl nuclear cloud never crossed the french border. Yet we know now that thyroid cancer near said border spiked during a decade, and it's impossible to sell nuclear energy to one of my best friend whose life has be shatered it. So the first step to promote nuclear power would be to actually respect people.
olau 8y ago
Baseline power is not needed. You need to match the demand. Nuclear is too expensive.
specialist 8y ago
I favor traveling wave reactors. To reduce our stockpiles (waste). If we also get some useful energy, terrific. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor
anoncake 8y ago
Fossil fuels are safe. They kill people, but they kill a fairly low and most of all predictable number of people. Theyre dangerous for a coal miner, but not for a country. Nuclear power is generally pretty harmless. But when it fails, it has the potential to kill millions and render large parts of the country uninhabitable. That is danger. I still think we should have gotten rid of coal before nuclear. But long-term, nuclear is not an acceptable power source.
imtringued 8y ago
>batteries do not follow this kind of cost curve. It's pretty common knowledge that battery capacity at the same prices goes up by 8% per year.

ZeroGravitas 8y ago

Renewables have been the best/cheapest for a while now. What you are talking about is when they become so much cheaper/better that they overcome any subsidies and unaccounted externalities in fossil fuel alternatives. Well run countries take advantage of this to save themselves money (e.g. subsidies to solar have paid for themselves even if you solely count reduced mortality rates from pollution.) Oligarchies use a lack of understanding of this to extract out the last bit of wealth from their citizens that they can before the market comes for them. A recent MIT study examined exactly what contributed to the price declines and government support accounted for the vast majority of the price decline: http://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-1120 http://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-1120

gwright 8y ago
Renewables are not the cheapest when you add in the backup base load generation systems that are required to run a grid 24x7. The sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow 24x7.
- yurishimo 8y ago
  These problems can be solved though with renewable backup/storage sources and increases in efficiency in electricity consuming tech. Pumping water up a hill using solar and harvesting the kinetic energy has been proposed numerous times but it's a matter of social will to build the infrastructure to support such projects. Imagine if we built massive offshore tanks to pump sea water into and released them overnight. Inland areas would need a different solution if they didn't want to modify the landscape too much, but I think we can find a balance between traditional batteries and natural "batteries".
  - gwright 8y ago
    Sure if you imagine some future technology that doesn't exists. We don't have storage mechanisms that have the capacity and are cost efficient.
- Sabinus 8y ago

spangry 8y ago

Which policies or regulations in Australia are against the development of renewables? The Renewable Energy Target scheme alone provides over $2bn in annual per mw/h subsidies to renewable energy generators, and is legislated to continue until 2030. If renewable energy is truly the cheapest way to generate electricity, would you agree that subsidy schemes like the RET are no longer needed, and should be repealed?

SEJeff 8y ago

South Australia has rolling blackouts in the summers when the coal "peaker plants" come online, and it takes 30-45 minutes in some cases for them to come online during a surge in demand due to blackouts. The government turned to Tesla to install (at the time) the biggest industrial battery in the world at 100MW / 129MWh and it is really working. Here is some info on it with some details (electrek is a Tesla fanboi site, but the reporting is accurate): https://electrek.co/2018/09/24/tesla-powerpack-battery-australia-cost-revenue/ https://electrek.co/2018/09/24/tesla-powerpack-battery-austr...

SEJeff 8y ago
Not really sure why something that adds context to the conversation is downvoted.