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It's a coping mechanism. They want to believe solar and wind will solve all the problems because it is comforting. Of course, it also totally ignores how renewa

It's a coping mechanism. They want to believe solar and wind will solve all the problems because it is comforting. Of course, it also totally ignores how renewables are enabled by peaker plants burning natural gas. And that renewables generate less electricity as a percentage of total usage now than in the 1950s. But somehow batteries are going to solve that problem. Of course, they haven't calculated how large the battery would need to be for that scenario to work out either.

dv_dt 6y ago
Renewables + storage is already cheaper than many workloads where natural gas peaker plants applied for short runs. The prices for nat gas plants is basically mature, while renewables and storage are on a manufacturing S-curve cost decline. Basically this means there will be expanding workloads where it makes no financial sense to use natural gas at all, let alone nuclear. It's a matter of when, and we should be accelerating financial threshold to fight the climate crisis.
- jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  I understand what you are saying, but extrapolate out further. If we have 50% renewables how many batteries will be required? It's a lot of batteries. These batteries require lots of material inputs (copper, lithium, lead, cobalt, etc., depending on the chemistry). I did the calculation a while ago and it convinced me that it is not possible to consume as much energy as we currently do and meet the need with battery storage. Edit: You have to be able to handle the worst case. Which means you've maxed what you can get from non-renewables and you have a period where renewables are generating less than normal (e.g. low-wind and or cloudy for a few days). Right now, renewables work because you just fire up your peaker plants when you have no sun or wind, so you also don't need much storage. What happens when you need more storage? You have to build batteries (or pumped-water or whatever).
  - epistasis 6y ago
    Your calculations don't agree with the majority of what gets published in peer reviewed literature. Many different groups have come up with tunable models to match current energy consumption with renewable build from 80% to 100%, with tunable parameters to cost optimize. General consensus is that nuclear at a small percentage would help greatly. However these models tend to use cost curve estimates from 5 years ago, so they assume that nuclear is far cheaper than reality, and meanwhile wind solar and storage have been ourperforming their predicted cost curves. I would be willing to bet a dollar that for 95% of the earth, a wind/solar/storage/hydro grid will be cheaper, use fewer toxic resources, and produce more excess energy than one that includes nuclear. Because once you don't plan for that baseload, you start overbuilding cheap solar and wind to give excess capacity. A renewables-based grid is one with excess unused capacity nearly all the time, and one that is right at capacity for ~week per year.
    - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
      Can you provide a link to some of that research, I'm not familiar with it, but am interested in reading it. Edit: I think solar/wind prices are artificially low because they exist in a system with peaker plants. When you remove the peaker plants the solar/wind utilities have to internalize the cost of storage, which is currently being externalized on natural gas peaker plants.
      - epistasis 6y ago
        I'm having trouble finding the time for a proper literature cull (this is now area of research so I don't keep these articles in my bibliography...), but here's a few: Very old article about using HVDC to drop prices (still assumes coal is viable, because it uses old tech prices) https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/making-a-single-us-electrical-system-boosts-renewables-lowers-costs/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/making-a-single-us-e... The more publicized papers are those from Clack and Jacobson in PNAS arguing about whether nuclear/storage would be needed or not; both situations assumed that renewables would be far above 50%. There was a really silly lawsuit even, which is pretty awful: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/100-percent-renewables-plan-has-significant-shortcomings-say-experts https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/100-percent-ren... So even in the case of bad modeling for 100% renewables, the critics are mostly people who think that 80% renewables is quite achievable with our current tech curves, and with building more nuclear. Apologies again for not being more specific, but hopefully the papers in these press articles will help follow the citation chain to even better modeling. Both spatial and temporal modeling are important for both weather and electricity demand, so it's not an easy thing to get right. And I suspect that the market will find minimums that are quite different than anything these programs will find, due to political and other social factors nor modeled. But the models do show that a different future is possible, at least.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    UK is already at about 40% renewables right this second with only a very small amount of storage.
    - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
      Sorry, should have been clearer. I meant 50% solar/wind. It is because of peaker plants and because their renewables are often biomass, which just gets burned, so effectively functions as a peaker plant. Edit: On reflection though, you may be right. I might have gone too low. The problem I'm trying to point out occurs when you don't have access to peaker plants. As long as there is enough peaker plant capacity you do not need much storage.

dv_dt 6y ago

Renewables + storage is already cheaper than many workloads where natural gas peaker plants applied for short runs. The prices for nat gas plants is basically mature, while renewables and storage are on a manufacturing S-curve cost decline. Basically this means there will be expanding workloads where it makes no financial sense to use natural gas at all, let alone nuclear. It's a matter of when, and we should be accelerating financial threshold to fight the climate crisis.

jeffreyrogers 6y ago
I understand what you are saying, but extrapolate out further. If we have 50% renewables how many batteries will be required? It's a lot of batteries. These batteries require lots of material inputs (copper, lithium, lead, cobalt, etc., depending on the chemistry). I did the calculation a while ago and it convinced me that it is not possible to consume as much energy as we currently do and meet the need with battery storage. Edit: You have to be able to handle the worst case. Which means you've maxed what you can get from non-renewables and you have a period where renewables are generating less than normal (e.g. low-wind and or cloudy for a few days). Right now, renewables work because you just fire up your peaker plants when you have no sun or wind, so you also don't need much storage. What happens when you need more storage? You have to build batteries (or pumped-water or whatever).
- epistasis 6y ago
  Your calculations don't agree with the majority of what gets published in peer reviewed literature. Many different groups have come up with tunable models to match current energy consumption with renewable build from 80% to 100%, with tunable parameters to cost optimize. General consensus is that nuclear at a small percentage would help greatly. However these models tend to use cost curve estimates from 5 years ago, so they assume that nuclear is far cheaper than reality, and meanwhile wind solar and storage have been ourperforming their predicted cost curves. I would be willing to bet a dollar that for 95% of the earth, a wind/solar/storage/hydro grid will be cheaper, use fewer toxic resources, and produce more excess energy than one that includes nuclear. Because once you don't plan for that baseload, you start overbuilding cheap solar and wind to give excess capacity. A renewables-based grid is one with excess unused capacity nearly all the time, and one that is right at capacity for ~week per year.
  - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
    Can you provide a link to some of that research, I'm not familiar with it, but am interested in reading it. Edit: I think solar/wind prices are artificially low because they exist in a system with peaker plants. When you remove the peaker plants the solar/wind utilities have to internalize the cost of storage, which is currently being externalized on natural gas peaker plants.
    - epistasis 6y ago
      I'm having trouble finding the time for a proper literature cull (this is now area of research so I don't keep these articles in my bibliography...), but here's a few: Very old article about using HVDC to drop prices (still assumes coal is viable, because it uses old tech prices) https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/making-a-single-us-electrical-system-boosts-renewables-lowers-costs/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/making-a-single-us-e... The more publicized papers are those from Clack and Jacobson in PNAS arguing about whether nuclear/storage would be needed or not; both situations assumed that renewables would be far above 50%. There was a really silly lawsuit even, which is pretty awful: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/100-percent-renewables-plan-has-significant-shortcomings-say-experts https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/100-percent-ren... So even in the case of bad modeling for 100% renewables, the critics are mostly people who think that 80% renewables is quite achievable with our current tech curves, and with building more nuclear. Apologies again for not being more specific, but hopefully the papers in these press articles will help follow the citation chain to even better modeling. Both spatial and temporal modeling are important for both weather and electricity demand, so it's not an easy thing to get right. And I suspect that the market will find minimums that are quite different than anything these programs will find, due to political and other social factors nor modeled. But the models do show that a different future is possible, at least.
- pjc50 6y ago
  UK is already at about 40% renewables right this second with only a very small amount of storage.
  - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
    Sorry, should have been clearer. I meant 50% solar/wind. It is because of peaker plants and because their renewables are often biomass, which just gets burned, so effectively functions as a peaker plant. Edit: On reflection though, you may be right. I might have gone too low. The problem I'm trying to point out occurs when you don't have access to peaker plants. As long as there is enough peaker plant capacity you do not need much storage.