3 ms·
Just a day ago someone on HM mentioned that the Diablo Canyon plant is being shut down because it would need a 7B USD cooling system (evaporation towers), and b
by pas 6y ago
Just a day ago someone on HM mentioned that the Diablo Canyon plant is being shut down because it would need a 7B USD cooling system (evaporation towers), and building 40 GWh storage would cost less.
(I found this ~400 USD / kWh for 4 hours number, that gives 17.5 GW for 4 hours for 7B. by W Cole at NREL.)
- reincarnate0x14 6y agoI don't doubt that the Diablo Canyon upgrade is expensive, and various interests have been set on killing that plant for decades, but there is no way on earth you're getting 40 GWh of storage in central California at any price within a decade. The total pumped and gas storage capacity of the United States is only like 25 GWh. Building that would require a majority of the total battery production of the entire planet for a year, and most of that wouldn't even be the right kind of batteries regardless of what technology they settled on. Some sort of dream moonshot project to build that would be awesome, but is completely outside the scope of any modern commercial endeavor.