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This says that if you take free (see edit) energy, store it in batteries, and pull it back out later, you will have to pay $187/MWh. Meanwhile natural gas

This says that if you take ~~free~~ (see edit) energy, store it in batteries, and pull it back out later, you will have to pay $187/MWh. Meanwhile natural gas turbines cost $40/MWh to generate power whenever, wherever. To say batteries are competing with gas in the US is very misleading. Reliable electricity is worth an incredible amount to customers. Unfortunately natural gas is very high carbon and cannot continue in a carbon-constrained world. In any case, it's obviously time to roll back tax incentives on wind and solar generating capacity alone. They worked perfectly, bringing prices of advanced tech down near market levels. Now let's incentivise deep decarbonization schemes that can handle seasonal intermittency and decarbonize the heating, industrial, and transportation sectors. Edit: The $187/MWh number includes an extremely low battery charging cost of around $0.033/kWh (it's reasonably assumed that charging will occur during energy oversupplies, so it's nearly free).

beefield 8y ago
> This says that if you take free energy, store it in batteries, and pull it back out later, you will have to pay $187/MWh. Yes, but with that cost you can repeat that thousands of times instead of just once.
- CompelTechnic 8y ago
  Capex for lithium batteries is on the order of $100/kWh (kilo- not mega-). Other battery technologies will not be much better. You are confusing amortized cycle costs for capex costs.
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  Nope. That's capital cost, which is closer to $800/MWh. See page 11 of Lazard for details. https://www.lazard.com/media/450774/lazards-levelized-cost-of-storage-version-40-vfinal.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/450774/lazards-levelized-cost-o...
  - beefield 8y ago
    sorry, that was a brainfart from me.
TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
The article says, at last paragraph: LCOE measures the all-in expense of producing a MWh of electricity from a new project, taking into account the costs of development, construction and equipment, financing, feedstock, operation and maintenance. Is the power to charge the batteries not feedstock?
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  It actually is. See edit. Lazards latest has it charging for a nearly-free 3.3 cents/kWh (assumption is that it's charged when the sun is out and there's a glut of solar, which makes sense).
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    Ah right, yep, thanks for clearing that up.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
_bxg1 8y ago
There could also be a network effect at play; electric cars have done a great deal to progress battery technology, and China, India, and much of Europe have made fossil-fuel cars illegal a few decades from now. Between that and other regulatory measures pushing for renewable energy, investors may be coming to the conclusion that gas is a sinking ship.
ddingus 8y ago
The cost of gas does not include the now massive externalities. If it did, the financial case would already favor a mix of more planet friendly, renewable energy. People are going to be living very differently 50 years from now, maybe sooner.
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  Excellent point. What's the insurance policy for global warming look like? I'd say the favor would be towards planet friendly, low-carbon energy. Biomass is renewable but high carbon while nuclear fission is low-carbon but not considered* renewable. Is nuclear fusion considered renewable? Renewability doesn't matter in itself. It's anything that's long-term sustainable given our current understanding of the world. *though known resources will last at world-scale for at least 10s of thousands of years, and more likely billions of years.
  - ddingus 8y ago
    It has gotta be very expensive. Yeah, known resources are still very significant compared to our use profile. And that means we have them for necessary uses. Too much consumption is bad. We know that now. Good news is we did bootstrap appropriate tech. No reason not to use it, and frankly the cost does not concern me. (Those externalities are simply huge) What I see is another bootstrap effort. Lots of jobs, economic activity. Many people need that too. Game on.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > though known resources will last at world-scale for at least 10s of thousands of years, and more likely billions of years. "Billions of years" is about how long before the sun burns out, so in that sense solar wouldn't be renewable either.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  Looks like vaguely around $50 per MWh to capture the carbon coming out of a natural gas plant. That cost would shift the balance but it wouldn't push base loads onto renewables just yet.
danmaz74 8y ago
A comment on a different thread pointed out that 40/kwh is the price for combined cycle gas, not for peaker plants, which is what batteries are substitute for. And only a part of the renewable energy needs to be stored in batteries, not all of it.
WhompingWindows 8y ago
You're incorrect on the cost of gas, you can not spin up any natural gas turbine "whenever, wherever" for $40/MWh. As another comment has stated, there are multiple kinds of turbines with different and more expensive costs than $40 ranging up to $200+/MWh. Behind the scenes, there is the task of actually getting the LNG to the turbine, which is a variable cost commodity and transportation is tricky. This fluctuation may be damaging to utilities, who would prefer stable prices over time to balance their books. Compare these variables in the cost of natural gas electricity to the price stability of batteries+renewables over time, and you've neglected some of the main reasons batteries+renewables will become increasingly attractive over time, especially vs the much more expensive+dirty coal sources in the 2020's, and even to the cheaper but still dirty natural gas in the 2030's and 2040's. Be careful with your errors and oversights. With the climate on the line for 1000's of years, we can not afford sloppy argumentation, even on HN comments. We need to accurately assess the strengths and weaknesses of the energy sources so we can best navigate towards a healthy society and planet.
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  My comment was motivated by my desire for us to avoid oversights for the same reason you list. If everyone thinks that batteries are competing with natural gas on the whole, then they are being grossly, grossly misled. CCGTs are by far the most common "gas" out there, and they're getting built today, as we speak, and they are the ones that are the price I quoted. You're right that wherever, whenever is an overstatement, but I disagree that it's overly sloppy in this context. A revised statement may be "CCGTs can be very flexibly sighted and can ramp up and down relatively quickly" Stability of renewable cost may not be so solid when hurricanes come by and rip panels off roofs, or polar vortices ice up all your turbines. Even natural gas had pressure lows in the last polar vortex, my mom was asked via emergency alert to turn down her heat so the system pressure could keep up. Most of the heavily-armored nukes powered through, but one of them had ice in the intake and had to clear that out. Everything will see fairly unpredictable variability in the carbon-constrained future. Diversity is probably our safest bet. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34172 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34172 https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....
pdonis 8y ago
There is no such thing as "free" energy. The technology you use to capture the energy costs something. The cost of getting energy out of batteries has to be added to the cost of generating the energy that gets put into them in the first place to get a number that makes sense.
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  Yeah. That's included. It's 3.3 cents/kWh. Electricity prices go negative in some regions when it's really windy and sunny as people try to deal with having so much renewable generation, and they offload it to whoever can take it at pennies or less. So it kind of is free. This study included very cheap electricity on the assumption that the batteries would be filled during these peaks in renewable generation, which always coincide with cheap electricity prices on the auctions.
  - pdonis 8y ago
    > This study included very cheap electricity on the assumption that the batteries would be filled during these peaks in renewable generation Ah, ok. I think that's an optimistic assumption, but I see where it comes from.

This says that if you take ~~free~~ (see edit) energy, store it in batteries, and pull it back out later, you will have to pay $187/MWh. Meanwhile natural gas

beefield 8y ago

> This says that if you take free energy, store it in batteries, and pull it back out later, you will have to pay $187/MWh. Yes, but with that cost you can repeat that thousands of times instead of just once.

CompelTechnic 8y ago
Capex for lithium batteries is on the order of $100/kWh (kilo- not mega-). Other battery technologies will not be much better. You are confusing amortized cycle costs for capex costs.
acidburnNSA 8y ago
Nope. That's capital cost, which is closer to $800/MWh. See page 11 of Lazard for details. https://www.lazard.com/media/450774/lazards-levelized-cost-of-storage-version-40-vfinal.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/450774/lazards-levelized-cost-o...
- beefield 8y ago
  sorry, that was a brainfart from me.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago

The article says, at last paragraph: LCOE measures the all-in expense of producing a MWh of electricity from a new project, taking into account the costs of development, construction and equipment, financing, feedstock, operation and maintenance. Is the power to charge the batteries not feedstock?

acidburnNSA 8y ago
It actually is. See edit. Lazards latest has it charging for a nearly-free 3.3 cents/kWh (assumption is that it's charged when the sun is out and there's a glut of solar, which makes sense).
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  Ah right, yep, thanks for clearing that up.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

_bxg1 8y ago

There could also be a network effect at play; electric cars have done a great deal to progress battery technology, and China, India, and much of Europe have made fossil-fuel cars illegal a few decades from now. Between that and other regulatory measures pushing for renewable energy, investors may be coming to the conclusion that gas is a sinking ship.

ddingus 8y ago

The cost of gas does not include the now massive externalities. If it did, the financial case would already favor a mix of more planet friendly, renewable energy. People are going to be living very differently 50 years from now, maybe sooner.

acidburnNSA 8y ago
Excellent point. What's the insurance policy for global warming look like? I'd say the favor would be towards planet friendly, low-carbon energy. Biomass is renewable but high carbon while nuclear fission is low-carbon but not considered* renewable. Is nuclear fusion considered renewable? Renewability doesn't matter in itself. It's anything that's long-term sustainable given our current understanding of the world. *though known resources will last at world-scale for at least 10s of thousands of years, and more likely billions of years.
- ddingus 8y ago
  It has gotta be very expensive. Yeah, known resources are still very significant compared to our use profile. And that means we have them for necessary uses. Too much consumption is bad. We know that now. Good news is we did bootstrap appropriate tech. No reason not to use it, and frankly the cost does not concern me. (Those externalities are simply huge) What I see is another bootstrap effort. Lots of jobs, economic activity. Many people need that too. Game on.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > though known resources will last at world-scale for at least 10s of thousands of years, and more likely billions of years. "Billions of years" is about how long before the sun burns out, so in that sense solar wouldn't be renewable either.
Dylan16807 8y ago
Looks like vaguely around $50 per MWh to capture the carbon coming out of a natural gas plant. That cost would shift the balance but it wouldn't push base loads onto renewables just yet.

danmaz74 8y ago

A comment on a different thread pointed out that 40/kwh is the price for combined cycle gas, not for peaker plants, which is what batteries are substitute for. And only a part of the renewable energy needs to be stored in batteries, not all of it.

WhompingWindows 8y ago

You're incorrect on the cost of gas, you can not spin up any natural gas turbine "whenever, wherever" for $40/MWh. As another comment has stated, there are multiple kinds of turbines with different and more expensive costs than $40 ranging up to $200+/MWh. Behind the scenes, there is the task of actually getting the LNG to the turbine, which is a variable cost commodity and transportation is tricky. This fluctuation may be damaging to utilities, who would prefer stable prices over time to balance their books. Compare these variables in the cost of natural gas electricity to the price stability of batteries+renewables over time, and you've neglected some of the main reasons batteries+renewables will become increasingly attractive over time, especially vs the much more expensive+dirty coal sources in the 2020's, and even to the cheaper but still dirty natural gas in the 2030's and 2040's. Be careful with your errors and oversights. With the climate on the line for 1000's of years, we can not afford sloppy argumentation, even on HN comments. We need to accurately assess the strengths and weaknesses of the energy sources so we can best navigate towards a healthy society and planet.

acidburnNSA 8y ago
My comment was motivated by my desire for us to avoid oversights for the same reason you list. If everyone thinks that batteries are competing with natural gas on the whole, then they are being grossly, grossly misled. CCGTs are by far the most common "gas" out there, and they're getting built today, as we speak, and they are the ones that are the price I quoted. You're right that wherever, whenever is an overstatement, but I disagree that it's overly sloppy in this context. A revised statement may be "CCGTs can be very flexibly sighted and can ramp up and down relatively quickly" Stability of renewable cost may not be so solid when hurricanes come by and rip panels off roofs, or polar vortices ice up all your turbines. Even natural gas had pressure lows in the last polar vortex, my mom was asked via emergency alert to turn down her heat so the system pressure could keep up. Most of the heavily-armored nukes powered through, but one of them had ice in the intake and had to clear that out. Everything will see fairly unpredictable variability in the carbon-constrained future. Diversity is probably our safest bet. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34172 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34172 https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....

pdonis 8y ago

There is no such thing as "free" energy. The technology you use to capture the energy costs something. The cost of getting energy out of batteries has to be added to the cost of generating the energy that gets put into them in the first place to get a number that makes sense.

acidburnNSA 8y ago
Yeah. That's included. It's 3.3 cents/kWh. Electricity prices go negative in some regions when it's really windy and sunny as people try to deal with having so much renewable generation, and they offload it to whoever can take it at pennies or less. So it kind of is free. This study included very cheap electricity on the assumption that the batteries would be filled during these peaks in renewable generation, which always coincide with cheap electricity prices on the auctions.
- pdonis 8y ago
  > This study included very cheap electricity on the assumption that the batteries would be filled during these peaks in renewable generation Ah, ok. I think that's an optimistic assumption, but I see where it comes from.