3 ms·

1) I think it's certainly possible, but 2035 is still some time out. Extrapolating battery costs 16 years from now is not at all straightforward. 2) The headli

1) I think it's certainly possible, but 2035 is still some time out. Extrapolating battery costs 16 years from now is not at all straightforward. 2) The headline result can be true even if solar/wind/storage have significant annual gaps in availability. If a gas plant was originally built on the assumption that it could run profitably for 5000 hours per year, but in the future there are only 2000 hours a year it can run profitably (due to more solar/wind), it can be financially "crushed." At least in competitive electricity markets. There could be large writedowns as plant load factors decline. Since gas plants are much less labor intensive to keep running than coal plants, I don't expect to see gas plants mothballed and demolished quite the way American coal plants have been over the past 5 years. They may still be profitable to run in the peak-demand season each year even with much more renewable capacity deployed. But they'll make less revenue and profit, burn less fuel, and emit less CO2.

makomk 7y ago
I'd venture a guess that solar/wind/storage would have significant gaps in availability in this scenario. The economics of battery storage solutions scales really badly as the length of the gaps they need to fill increases. Not only does the capital cost of batteries increase in proportion to the runtime required, the utilization plummets due to longer gaps being less common and predictable than shorter ones. I can easily see it becoming uneconomical to provide a reliable electricity grid. Unfortunately, one of the other anti-global-warming measures that's being pushed for in this timescale in at least some European countries is switching to electricity for heating.
- philipkglass 7y ago
  I think that you're probably right about gaps remaining, for basically the reasons you have given. And for that reason I don't expect mass demolition of American gas plants in the 2030s the way there was mass demolition of American coal plants in the 2010s. The growth of gas capacity is alarming to many environmentalists; the phrase is that we're "locking in" decades of high emissions from gas fired electrical generators. But gas plants release the vast majority of their emissions during operation, not construction. Diminishing the plant load factor of gas plants is as good from an emissions-cuts standpoint as tearing them down. What do you do when the wind isn't blowing, the batteries are discharged, and it's night time? Burn gas. But the number of hours per year where at least one of {batteries, wind, solar} can bid below gas will go up year after year, whereas that number was essentially holding steady at zero through the whole 20th century. This brief sketch is most applicable to deregulated electricity markets. In markets with regulated utility monopolies, unfortunately, gas plants will be subject to less competition even if the cost of storage-backed renewables keeps declining steadily. The majority of US electricity consumption now takes place in deregulated states but it's far from universal. https://www.electricchoice.com/map-deregulated-energy-markets/ https://www.electricchoice.com/map-deregulated-energy-market...
- deleted 7y ago
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makomk 7y ago

I'd venture a guess that solar/wind/storage would have significant gaps in availability in this scenario. The economics of battery storage solutions scales really badly as the length of the gaps they need to fill increases. Not only does the capital cost of batteries increase in proportion to the runtime required, the utilization plummets due to longer gaps being less common and predictable than shorter ones. I can easily see it becoming uneconomical to provide a reliable electricity grid. Unfortunately, one of the other anti-global-warming measures that's being pushed for in this timescale in at least some European countries is switching to electricity for heating.

philipkglass 7y ago
I think that you're probably right about gaps remaining, for basically the reasons you have given. And for that reason I don't expect mass demolition of American gas plants in the 2030s the way there was mass demolition of American coal plants in the 2010s. The growth of gas capacity is alarming to many environmentalists; the phrase is that we're "locking in" decades of high emissions from gas fired electrical generators. But gas plants release the vast majority of their emissions during operation, not construction. Diminishing the plant load factor of gas plants is as good from an emissions-cuts standpoint as tearing them down. What do you do when the wind isn't blowing, the batteries are discharged, and it's night time? Burn gas. But the number of hours per year where at least one of {batteries, wind, solar} can bid below gas will go up year after year, whereas that number was essentially holding steady at zero through the whole 20th century. This brief sketch is most applicable to deregulated electricity markets. In markets with regulated utility monopolies, unfortunately, gas plants will be subject to less competition even if the cost of storage-backed renewables keeps declining steadily. The majority of US electricity consumption now takes place in deregulated states but it's far from universal. https://www.electricchoice.com/map-deregulated-energy-markets/ https://www.electricchoice.com/map-deregulated-energy-market...
deleted 7y ago
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