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It's obviously great that renewables are getting better and cheaper. But, what energy source will we use when the sun is not up and there's no wind? They're no

It's obviously great that renewables are getting better and cheaper. But, what energy source will we use when the sun is not up and there's no wind? They're not producing all of the time. Renewable power production vary greatly: it's actually problematic that they produce way too much at peak hours, while none at all on windless nights. You need a stable base production. What better to replace coal and natural gas than nuclear?

Krasnol 6y ago
https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=374 https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=374
- belorn 6y ago
  To read the summery: "The intermittency of other sources such as wind and solar photovoltaic can be addressed by interconnecting power plants which are widely geographically distributed, and by coupling them with peak-load plants such as gas turbines fueled by biofuels or natural gas which can quickly be switched on to fill in gaps of low wind or solar production." So we can burn the fossil fuel natural gas or a similar gas generated by decomposing bio material. That seems a bit of an odd proof. It seems pretty obvious that burning fuels that releases carbon into the air solves the issue of providing a baseload for renewables, but it has the general problem of releasing carbon into the air. Biofuels are also pretty controversial since they take up a lot of land and fertilizers are not themselves carbon neutral, and current methods for both creating the fuel and the fertilizers has shown to be a major contributor of methane leaking into the air. As I like to say in this kind of threads, lets ban the act of burning fossil fuels for power. If the market can manage the energy grid without fossil fuels then let the market do that. Which ever technology comes out on top is less important than the fact that we can purge fossil fuels from being used when there is a cleaner alternative.
  - jabl 6y ago
    > As I like to say in this kind of threads, lets ban the act of burning fossil fuels for power. That's most likely too drastic, leading to a massive immediate economic crash. That being said, what could be done is to start a massive society-wide decarbonization program (think WWII style industrial mobilization), which would start with a few years of building up industrial capacity, followed by a ban on building any new fossil infrastructure or equipment. See e.g. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21349200/climate-change-fossil-fuels-rewiring-america-electrify https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21349200/climate-... If we are to take climate change seriously, it's too late to waffle around the margins with carbon taxes etc. and expect that the free market will take care of it all.
    - belorn 6y ago
      > That's most likely too drastic, leading to a massive immediate economic crash. I have heard this argument before but not much evidence to support it. There was identical arguments here where I live when they decided to phase out nuclear, and in fairness to the politicians back then, it did not cause an immediate economic crash. Just stopping the production of new plants and letting existing plants operate until they reach their expected operation life time span works pretty well. The energy markets adapts and there are instead an renewed interest to invest as people know that in the future there will be a vacant spot in the market when those plants get decommissioned. Some even argued that it caused stability in the energy market. The major problem right now is that for the last 10 years, for every extra 1 WGh of new renewable being consumed the fossil based energy also expand by 10 WGh. Looking at world politics and right now there is a lot of focus on expanding fossil fuel extracting and exporting, especially for natural gas. In the EU there are military right now being mobilized because of interest to drill for more natural gas. Investment into new fossil fuel infrastructure has not slowed down but is rather picking up speed. Massive society-wide decarbonization program where we turn existing fossil fuel plant into carbonfree alternatives are needed, but we should stop people from furthering investing into fossil fuels when there exist a purpose serving alternative. I don't see any good reason to wait.
      - jabl 6y ago
        Seems we're in violent agreement then. I misunderstood your point to mean an immediate ban on burning any fossil fuel.
  - Krasnol 6y ago
    This article is 9 years old. No nuclear plant would have been build in that time, no significant development in this technology happened but the development of renewable energy sources and batteries has progressed rapidly. We've witnessed Elon Musk's battery farm, ideas like floatovoltaics, Building-integrated photovoltaics, stuff around hydrogen storage, etc. There are also grids like in Europe where even when there is no sun shining and no wind blowing (never happens), there is always a dam in the Alps or Scandinavia. If you have to depend on gas for the next decade and abolish coal for that, it's still a huge win and progress with an outcome that looks much brighter than this of building a single new nuclear plant or even drowning even more money into research of something that may or may not become realistic in many decades (like fusion). @the market: if we've learned something in the recent decades than it is that "the market" can't do shit without rules and regulations. Literally. They'll mess up everything they get into their hands and bring out the worse of it. PS. you are aware that there are already uses for Methane and that there is even P2G generation going on where you gather CO2 from the atmosphere to generate Methane which is than burned afterwards to generate energy.
    - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
      That's the most frustrating thing about these debates. The innovation momentum is clearly with renewables. There's been huge positive change over the last decade against huge resistance. If that resistance disappeared - even if it was just lessened significantly because of policy - storage, local grid, state grid, national grid and even international grid solutions would all start taking huge leaps forward. At this point nuclear is for technological nostalgics. There's no role for it, and no need for it. It's an overcomplicated, fragile, dirty, high risk technology which requires strict political, financial, and operational oversight. And when TCO is calculated - something nuke proponents seem to avoid - it isn't even particularly cheap.
    - belorn 6y ago
      > there is always a dam in the Alps or Scandinavia Speaking as someone from Sweden, we have already reached maximum exploitation of rivers for hydropower, and it is barely managing to maintain the grid in the winter when the wind is laying low. Expanding it more is not seen as an option, and when the few nuclear plants that is still operational goes offline there are claims that we will need to start import fossil fueled energy during some days of the year.
pydry 6y ago
>But, what energy source will we use when the sun is not up and there's no wind? A combination of storage, demand shifting and gas. In a well managed system the gas could be used spasparingl
- ewendel 6y ago
  What storage systems exist today that are capable of storing the amounts of energy we're talking about here?
  - skitout 6y ago
    First thing is generally to avoid storage (diversified electric mixed,interconnection, big demand response market, and things like solar not optimized for the maximum kwh generation but for generating kwh when needed possibly...) Then you have thermal storage ; a big share of the electricity we use is to generate cold and heat, and there are a lot of cheap technology out there for thermal storage. It used to be at the clients place for short duration storage(typically storage eater, and now some ice aircon, but there are much more technologies and innovation, at all scales, which include seasonal storage. Most of those tech use thermal storage then to directly use the heat/cold, few use it to generate back some electricity and then could be part of the next paragraph too... And there are many different technologies taking electricity (or heat that could had generate electricity) and giving back electricity... Pumped hydro is the biggest and oldest player here, but with some innovation coming... There are also different batteries technologies, and many other more exotic possibilities including piling up some concrete blocs... Lasard Bank write every year a report monitoring the price of the leading technologies. Greentechmedia is a good source to learn more about the development of these technologies and of the market
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Power-to-Gas is in the "works but is not economical" phase of development right now. Pilot plants are up, it's a matter of scaling and optimizing cost. The advantage is that every country already has infrastructure for strategic gas reserves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas

Krasnol 6y ago

https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=374 https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=374

belorn 6y ago
To read the summery: "The intermittency of other sources such as wind and solar photovoltaic can be addressed by interconnecting power plants which are widely geographically distributed, and by coupling them with peak-load plants such as gas turbines fueled by biofuels or natural gas which can quickly be switched on to fill in gaps of low wind or solar production." So we can burn the fossil fuel natural gas or a similar gas generated by decomposing bio material. That seems a bit of an odd proof. It seems pretty obvious that burning fuels that releases carbon into the air solves the issue of providing a baseload for renewables, but it has the general problem of releasing carbon into the air. Biofuels are also pretty controversial since they take up a lot of land and fertilizers are not themselves carbon neutral, and current methods for both creating the fuel and the fertilizers has shown to be a major contributor of methane leaking into the air. As I like to say in this kind of threads, lets ban the act of burning fossil fuels for power. If the market can manage the energy grid without fossil fuels then let the market do that. Which ever technology comes out on top is less important than the fact that we can purge fossil fuels from being used when there is a cleaner alternative.
- jabl 6y ago
  > As I like to say in this kind of threads, lets ban the act of burning fossil fuels for power. That's most likely too drastic, leading to a massive immediate economic crash. That being said, what could be done is to start a massive society-wide decarbonization program (think WWII style industrial mobilization), which would start with a few years of building up industrial capacity, followed by a ban on building any new fossil infrastructure or equipment. See e.g. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21349200/climate-change-fossil-fuels-rewiring-america-electrify https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21349200/climate-... If we are to take climate change seriously, it's too late to waffle around the margins with carbon taxes etc. and expect that the free market will take care of it all.
  - belorn 6y ago
    > That's most likely too drastic, leading to a massive immediate economic crash. I have heard this argument before but not much evidence to support it. There was identical arguments here where I live when they decided to phase out nuclear, and in fairness to the politicians back then, it did not cause an immediate economic crash. Just stopping the production of new plants and letting existing plants operate until they reach their expected operation life time span works pretty well. The energy markets adapts and there are instead an renewed interest to invest as people know that in the future there will be a vacant spot in the market when those plants get decommissioned. Some even argued that it caused stability in the energy market. The major problem right now is that for the last 10 years, for every extra 1 WGh of new renewable being consumed the fossil based energy also expand by 10 WGh. Looking at world politics and right now there is a lot of focus on expanding fossil fuel extracting and exporting, especially for natural gas. In the EU there are military right now being mobilized because of interest to drill for more natural gas. Investment into new fossil fuel infrastructure has not slowed down but is rather picking up speed. Massive society-wide decarbonization program where we turn existing fossil fuel plant into carbonfree alternatives are needed, but we should stop people from furthering investing into fossil fuels when there exist a purpose serving alternative. I don't see any good reason to wait.
    - jabl 6y ago
      Seems we're in violent agreement then. I misunderstood your point to mean an immediate ban on burning any fossil fuel.
- Krasnol 6y ago
  This article is 9 years old. No nuclear plant would have been build in that time, no significant development in this technology happened but the development of renewable energy sources and batteries has progressed rapidly. We've witnessed Elon Musk's battery farm, ideas like floatovoltaics, Building-integrated photovoltaics, stuff around hydrogen storage, etc. There are also grids like in Europe where even when there is no sun shining and no wind blowing (never happens), there is always a dam in the Alps or Scandinavia. If you have to depend on gas for the next decade and abolish coal for that, it's still a huge win and progress with an outcome that looks much brighter than this of building a single new nuclear plant or even drowning even more money into research of something that may or may not become realistic in many decades (like fusion). @the market: if we've learned something in the recent decades than it is that "the market" can't do shit without rules and regulations. Literally. They'll mess up everything they get into their hands and bring out the worse of it. PS. you are aware that there are already uses for Methane and that there is even P2G generation going on where you gather CO2 from the atmosphere to generate Methane which is than burned afterwards to generate energy.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    That's the most frustrating thing about these debates. The innovation momentum is clearly with renewables. There's been huge positive change over the last decade against huge resistance. If that resistance disappeared - even if it was just lessened significantly because of policy - storage, local grid, state grid, national grid and even international grid solutions would all start taking huge leaps forward. At this point nuclear is for technological nostalgics. There's no role for it, and no need for it. It's an overcomplicated, fragile, dirty, high risk technology which requires strict political, financial, and operational oversight. And when TCO is calculated - something nuke proponents seem to avoid - it isn't even particularly cheap.
  - belorn 6y ago
    > there is always a dam in the Alps or Scandinavia Speaking as someone from Sweden, we have already reached maximum exploitation of rivers for hydropower, and it is barely managing to maintain the grid in the winter when the wind is laying low. Expanding it more is not seen as an option, and when the few nuclear plants that is still operational goes offline there are claims that we will need to start import fossil fueled energy during some days of the year.

pydry 6y ago

>But, what energy source will we use when the sun is not up and there's no wind? A combination of storage, demand shifting and gas. In a well managed system the gas could be used spasparingl

ewendel 6y ago
What storage systems exist today that are capable of storing the amounts of energy we're talking about here?
- skitout 6y ago
  First thing is generally to avoid storage (diversified electric mixed,interconnection, big demand response market, and things like solar not optimized for the maximum kwh generation but for generating kwh when needed possibly...) Then you have thermal storage ; a big share of the electricity we use is to generate cold and heat, and there are a lot of cheap technology out there for thermal storage. It used to be at the clients place for short duration storage(typically storage eater, and now some ice aircon, but there are much more technologies and innovation, at all scales, which include seasonal storage. Most of those tech use thermal storage then to directly use the heat/cold, few use it to generate back some electricity and then could be part of the next paragraph too... And there are many different technologies taking electricity (or heat that could had generate electricity) and giving back electricity... Pumped hydro is the biggest and oldest player here, but with some innovation coming... There are also different batteries technologies, and many other more exotic possibilities including piling up some concrete blocs... Lasard Bank write every year a report monitoring the price of the leading technologies. Greentechmedia is a good source to learn more about the development of these technologies and of the market
- adrianN 6y ago
  Power-to-Gas is in the "works but is not economical" phase of development right now. Pilot plants are up, it's a matter of scaling and optimizing cost. The advantage is that every country already has infrastructure for strategic gas reserves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas