4 ms·

Capacity factor is bounded by limited demand. You can't put power on the grid that no one wants. So for an all nuclear grid you end up with a capacity factor th

by jerven 6y ago

Capacity factor is bounded by limited demand. You can't put power on the grid that no one wants. So for an all nuclear grid you end up with a capacity factor that is around 60-70%. (note: France exports/imports a lot so capacity factor is higher than if it was an isolated grid). For wind, if there is storage capacity factor goes up. Basically, if it can produce and there is a consumer (the battery) then the wind mill will turn. If there is no consumer it shut's off even if there is wind. Windmills have a guarantee for 20 years (in common contracts, sometimes 25). Included in the above prices. Nuclear island lasts 60 years, but will be refurbished and it's power island is not guaranteed for 60 years (turbines). Solar panels guarantees are heading towards the 40 year mark (inverters not yet). The law of large numbers favor's wind and solar for reliability at scale. It's not about feelings, it's about hard economic reality. That even with massive economic subsidies very few modern nuclear plants are viable. With the problem, that the scale up period of Nuclear is too slow. Even successes take decades to build. And are limited by sites/foundery's that themselves takes years to build.

Manfredo_1 6y ago
History demonstrates otherwise. Not one country generates the majoirty of their power from solar or wind. By comparison, France and Belgium generate the majority of their electricity from nuclear power. Similarly the claim that nuclear is too slow to build is false. France constructed the majority of their reactor fleet over the course of 15 years. Solar and wind are only viable with storage. Hydroelectric storage is currently the most popular, but it's geographically limited. Batteries don't provide anywhere near the scale of storage requires. The US would need 12 hours of storage to reach 80% renewable generation and 3 weeks of storage to reach 100% renewable generation [1]. The US consumes 11.5 TWh of electricity daily. But global lithium ion battery production is only 300 GWh per year [2]. Even if we contributed 100% of global battery production to grid storage in the US, it would take 800 years to fulfill 3 weeks of storage. Sure, battery production is set to increase to 2,000 GWh per year some time in 2030, but that only brings this time down to 120 years. And remember, this is just the storage demands for the United States. If we're worried about the time it takes to decarbonize, then solar and wind are very poor choices. 1. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-storage-80-percent-wind-solar/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora... 2. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-battery-planned-capacity-update-9-growth-in-a-single-month-march-charts/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-batt...
- choeger 6y ago
  You are really jumping through the scales there. But using your numbers, right now it would take about 15 years of battery production to provide the storage for that 80% target. That is, empirically, the same order of time it takes to commission a new nuclear power plant. Add to that the fact that this battery production capacity itself is comparatively young (less then a decade, mostly) and very much scalable and you come to the conclusion that, right now, it is more efficient to achieve that 80% target by batteries vs. nuclear power. If the US signals to the world market that there is a demand of about 1TWh of storage per year, the production capacity will explode.
  - Manfredo_1 6y ago
    You missed a huge part of my comment: it would take 20 (not 15) years of global battery production to get the United States to have enough storage to reach 80% renewables generation. As in, if we stopped manufacturing smart phones and electric vehicles and dedicated all batteries produced in the entire world, then it'd take 20 years to fulfill the storage required to reach 80% renewables for just the United States. We would still need to build storage for the rest of the world! And that still leaves us with 20% of our power coming from fossil fuels. To get to 0% we need 3 weeks of storage not 12 hours. Even if battery production increased tenfold, it'd take 80 years of global battery production to fulfill the storage demand to get only the United States to 100% renewables. And the US only makes up ~1/5th of the world's energy consumption. To get the entire world to 100% renewables it would take 4,000 years at current levels of battery production. Even if battery production increases tenfold, or one-hundredfold it would still take much longer than the 15 years it takes to set up a nuclear power plant. Like I said, if you're worried about how long it would take to decarbonize, stay well away from intermittent sources of power. Nuclear power plant construction has high latency, but you can build multiple plants at once: France took about 15 years to bring it's nuclear power generation from 10% to over 80%. Each individual plant took year to builds but in aggregate France built a nuclear plant every 100 days.

by jerven 6y ago

Manfredo_1 6y ago

History demonstrates otherwise. Not one country generates the majoirty of their power from solar or wind. By comparison, France and Belgium generate the majority of their electricity from nuclear power. Similarly the claim that nuclear is too slow to build is false. France constructed the majority of their reactor fleet over the course of 15 years. Solar and wind are only viable with storage. Hydroelectric storage is currently the most popular, but it's geographically limited. Batteries don't provide anywhere near the scale of storage requires. The US would need 12 hours of storage to reach 80% renewable generation and 3 weeks of storage to reach 100% renewable generation [1]. The US consumes 11.5 TWh of electricity daily. But global lithium ion battery production is only 300 GWh per year [2]. Even if we contributed 100% of global battery production to grid storage in the US, it would take 800 years to fulfill 3 weeks of storage. Sure, battery production is set to increase to 2,000 GWh per year some time in 2030, but that only brings this time down to 120 years. And remember, this is just the storage demands for the United States. If we're worried about the time it takes to decarbonize, then solar and wind are very poor choices. 1. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-storage-80-percent-wind-solar/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora... 2. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-battery-planned-capacity-update-9-growth-in-a-single-month-march-charts/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-batt...

choeger 6y ago
You are really jumping through the scales there. But using your numbers, right now it would take about 15 years of battery production to provide the storage for that 80% target. That is, empirically, the same order of time it takes to commission a new nuclear power plant. Add to that the fact that this battery production capacity itself is comparatively young (less then a decade, mostly) and very much scalable and you come to the conclusion that, right now, it is more efficient to achieve that 80% target by batteries vs. nuclear power. If the US signals to the world market that there is a demand of about 1TWh of storage per year, the production capacity will explode.
- Manfredo_1 6y ago
  You missed a huge part of my comment: it would take 20 (not 15) years of global battery production to get the United States to have enough storage to reach 80% renewables generation. As in, if we stopped manufacturing smart phones and electric vehicles and dedicated all batteries produced in the entire world, then it'd take 20 years to fulfill the storage required to reach 80% renewables for just the United States. We would still need to build storage for the rest of the world! And that still leaves us with 20% of our power coming from fossil fuels. To get to 0% we need 3 weeks of storage not 12 hours. Even if battery production increased tenfold, it'd take 80 years of global battery production to fulfill the storage demand to get only the United States to 100% renewables. And the US only makes up ~1/5th of the world's energy consumption. To get the entire world to 100% renewables it would take 4,000 years at current levels of battery production. Even if battery production increases tenfold, or one-hundredfold it would still take much longer than the 15 years it takes to set up a nuclear power plant. Like I said, if you're worried about how long it would take to decarbonize, stay well away from intermittent sources of power. Nuclear power plant construction has high latency, but you can build multiple plants at once: France took about 15 years to bring it's nuclear power generation from 10% to over 80%. Each individual plant took year to builds but in aggregate France built a nuclear plant every 100 days.