7 ms·

I'm a big fan of renewables, solar/wind/hydro. But we still need that baseline generating capacity for these dark icy winter days. It's clear now that coal/oi

by lsllc 6y ago

I'm a big fan of renewables, solar/wind/hydro. But we still need that baseline generating capacity for these dark icy winter days. It's clear now that coal/oil isn't it (pollution) and we should reserve natural gas supply for home heating (because it's efficient and "relatively" clean) and spot-demand generators. So that leaves Nuclear. But we just need to get it right this time -- i.e. don't build them near earthquake/tsunami zones, don't play games with the control rods and these days we've gotten pretty good at control systems. I think it's about time to look at it again.

rtpg 6y ago
Gas-based electrical generation is what are failing right now! They are failing left and right! If 100% was gas there would be more problems, not less. Wind and Solar is pulling above planned generation right now. If you believe your logic, time to go all-in on wind + solar.
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  Wind and solar are above planned generation right now, which was 0. In ERCOT wind has been making less than 6 GW out of 33 GW installed for over 7 days straight [1]. Natural gas is pulling almost all the weight right now, as you can see. So no, not time to go all in on wind + solar. [1] https://i.imgur.com/EEbf5lM.png https://i.imgur.com/EEbf5lM.png (screenshot from EIA, original data here: https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/balancing_authority/ERCO https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/e...) Your first statement is partially true. The ERCOT "planners" expected their gas capacity to basically always be there, and the fact that 30 GW of thermal capacity is offline for various weather-related reasons is the primary reason the power is out. But the remaining gas is pulling almost all the weight keeping people alive so we shouldn't neglect that.
  - mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago
    You're correct that, "30 GW of thermal capacity is offline for various weather-related reasons is the primary reason the power is out." I think wind can play a huge role in fixing this. Check out: https://www.windy.com/?37.539,-94.134,4 https://www.windy.com/?37.539,-94.134,4 And you've got plenty of massive offshore wind resources on both sides of the continent that are blowing right now (Feb 17th 7:49pm PDT) if we had installed capacity. We need to keep our nuclear fleet (20% of electrical generation) and invest in a TON of transmission. If we had this electrical grid, we'd be doing far better: https://twitter.com/Sammy_Roth/status/1356442256866037766 https://twitter.com/Sammy_Roth/status/1356442256866037766
    - lsllc 6y ago
      Transmission lines aren't so easy, for example the Northern Pass project to bring power from Quebec Hydro into New England failed due to local opposition: https://www.vnews.com/northern-pass-eversource-hydroquebec-27298583 https://www.vnews.com/northern-pass-eversource-hydroquebec-2... I do like the idea (from the linked tweet) of underground transmission lines (underground alongside railroads is probably mitigates the NIMBY objections): https://www.volts.wtf/p/transmission-fortnight-burying-power https://www.volts.wtf/p/transmission-fortnight-burying-power
    - acidburnNSA 6y ago
      Ask anyone who has planned and installed a long-haul transmission line in the past 40 years and they'll tell you that that's gonna be extremely hard. It's simple technically, as is building a lot of a standardized nuclear plant, but it's not easy and will be hit by massive amounts of NIMBY.
      - mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago
        Yes, the regulatory and NIMBY challenges are extreme. Best way to do it is to go: 1. All underground transmission. 2. Expand the natural gas pipeline permitting process (which is controlled at the Federal level and already overrides state's jurisdiction) to include underground electrical transmission.
  - rtpg 6y ago
    Isn't gas also at like 50% production as well? It's also heavily knocked out? Like it's pulling a lot of weight because it's 80% of the capacity if nothing's going wrong! If it was 100% then maybe 40 GW of thermal capacity would _also_ be offline. ERCOT assumed 0% from Wind. Instead we're getting 25% They assumed 100% from gas. Instead we're getting 50% (or 70% or whatever). You look at that and tell me gas is what's performing well here, and the segment that should be expanded. (EDIT: Sorry, I think your original thing was "all in nuclear." I think I read nuclear was also having some issues but it's at least not the "more gas is the solution for a situation where gas is failing" narrative) I get that wind + solar can't cover everything, but right now what we're seeing is massive failures from gas. In a universe where we had more wind + solar, there could likely be more energy going around right now.
    - cbmuser 6y ago
      South Texas Project 1 was already fixed and should be back online: > https://twitter.com/Beazy_Rampezy/status/1362043827800977414 https://twitter.com/Beazy_Rampezy/status/1362043827800977414
    - vancan1ty 6y ago
      It is simple to see what energy source is pulling above its weight and what energy source is pulling below its weight. Go to here: https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/expanded-view/electric_overview/balancing_authority/ERCO/GenerationByEnergySource-14/edit https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/expanded-vi... , select "daily" view and put in 60 days to get a more representative sample. on 12/19/2020 -- looks to be a fairly typical Texas winter day natural gas production was 331660 megawatthours wind was 191415 megawatthours for a ratio of 1.73 gas/wind this appears to be fairly typical numbers on a daily basis over the winter -- actually on a number of days wind surpasses gas on 2/16/2021 natural gas 692091 wind 90087 for a ratio of 7.68 gas/wind natural gas 2/16 vs natural gas 12/19 is ratio 2.09 wind 2/16 vs wind 12/19 is ratio 0.47 so as expected during an inclement weather event natural gas ramped up and wind ramped down. natural gas just didn't ramp up enough to pick up all the slack from increased demand and ramped down renewables. "I get that wind + solar can't cover everything, but right now what we're seeing is massive failures from gas. In a universe where we had more wind + solar, there could likely be more energy going around right now." -- Wind is failing much worse than gas from an objective power generation standpoint. All wind has going for it is the tyranny of low expectations.
  - cbmuser 6y ago
    And nuclear is providing 100% of its installed capacity after South Texas Project 1 was offline for some hours.
- lsllc 6y ago
  Take the North East of the US, there's not enough solar year round, nor is it generally windy enough of the time to generate power for a densely populated region & power hungry growing region. So my logic is go Nuclear, like France. Keep the natural gas for heating (since it's relatively efficient and cleaner than other fossil fuels). Supplement with solar/wind where & when available.
  - jasonjayr 6y ago
    https://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/web/charts https://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/web/charts North East US is running about 28% nuclear at the time I viewed the fuel mix chart.
- cbmuser 6y ago
  Wind and solar heavily depend on the weather. They cannot therefore produce any sufficient amounts of electricity during a blizzard. And the blame doesn’t lie on natural gas but on the idea of shutting down baseload-capable sources like nuclear in favor of renewables.
  - jussij 6y ago
    Except it was natural gas generators that caused the system to fail: As Princeton engineering professor Jesse Jenkins points out, the real primary culprit was the mass failure of nuclear, coal, and natural gas (or "thermal") power plants. At the peak of the blackout something like 27,000 megawatts of thermal capacity were offline — or nearly 40 percent of Texas's entire thermal capacity. https://theweek.com/articles/967062/what-texas-blackout-reveals-about-americas-climate-vulnerability https://theweek.com/articles/967062/what-texas-blackout-reve...
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    And the blame doesn’t lie on natural gas but on the idea of shutting down baseload-capable sources like nuclear in favor of renewables. What nuclear has been shut down in Texas?
photoGrant 6y ago
Yep, we definitely have learned from all our mistakes. Bad actors and the internet of things won’t come close. Right?
mnklo 6y ago
Renewables are more than capable of supplying "base load". What you're referring to is a fallacy.
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  I'm sorry but it's not that simple, as you can see clearly right now. Between Feb 9 and Feb 17th wind and solar energy delivery has been a very small fraction of capacity, less than 10%. To do baseload over a period of 8 days with that kind of resource would require roughly a 20x capacity overbuild and some kind of ridiculous battery. It's just not practical. Most realistic scenarios these days have lots of wind and solar and some overnight batteries, and rely on large mostly-idled capacity of gas to get through the black-swan events like this. Though obviously this approach has challenges as well.
  - mnklo 6y ago
    I think you're overcomplicating the situation. A mix of renewable sources is quite stable, and there are more ways to store energy than just batteries. Here's a paper debunking the baseload myth. http://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/MarkBaseloadFallacyANZSEE.pdf http://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/publ... A 10GW solar farm is already in the pipeline for northern Australia: https://amp.abc.net.au/article/12785256 https://amp.abc.net.au/article/12785256
    - snowwindwaves 6y ago
      The paper suggests solar thermal and wind plus gas peakers. So the overbuilt point from the parent stands.
- lsllc 6y ago
  All I'm saying is we need a mix of generation, including guaranteed baseline generating capacity. A typical nuclear plant puts out 1GW, that's pretty substantial. Take a look at France: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr... They generated 71% of their 582 TWh in 2018 from Nuclear, with the bulk of the remainder coming from Hydro (12%) Natural Gas (5%), Wind (5%) ... (solar was only 2%, same as coal). They are a net exporter of power and that generates about €3 billion/year of revenue.
TeeMassive 6y ago
Hydro is pretty much safe from winter temperatures. Ice will only freeze about 50cm max during a cold winter on a still lake. Source: I'm from Québec, we heat our homes with electricity, our barrage are in the far North.
telchar 6y ago
Baseload + peakers is one concept that allows a grid to meet demand. But it's not the only way - decorrelated intermittent generation + peakers could work too. But what doesn't work well so well is baseload + intermittent generation. If you must have baseload (i.e. nuclear) as the foundation of the grid, intermittent renewables (solar/wind) aren't going to have much of a place because you need dispatchable power generation to fill in the demand peaks. As long as we need peakers or other dispatchable powers supply, I like solar and wind over nuclear to provide the main quantity of generation vs nuclear. I don't see nuclear catching up to renewables on cost terms at this point.
- konjin 6y ago
  Saying solar is cheap when the sun shines is like saying coal is cheap at the mine. You need electricity produced at the right time as well as the right place. I don't understand how people can get that producing electricity in the middle of the Sahara is useless, but producing it at 12pm on June 15th when you need it today isn't.
AntonyGarand 6y ago
Renewables are very reliable if you winter-proof them, the same as other sources. The problem at the moment is that none of the sources for Texas was prepared for a cold winter, renewable or otherwise. Quebec is 99% renewable[0] (95% hydro, 4% wind) and runs through the coldest of winter just fine! > With over 40 853 MW of installed capacity, hydroelectric stations generate about 95% of Quebec’s electricity. > Wind is the 2nd largest source of electricity generation in Quebec. In 2018, wind capacity reached 4 096 MW and accounted for 4% of the province’s generating capacity [0] https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles-quebec.html https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/pr...
- jorblumesea 6y ago
  Also fair to note that fossil fuel plants also froze and were unable to operate. It's not even a renewable or not question. It's just whether your grid has been properly hardened against the elements.
  - cbmuser 6y ago
    Nuclear works under nearly all environmental conditions. Heck, we have nuclear powered energy sources in space. Russia built a floating nuclear power plant in the remote city of Pevek in the polar circle where hardly any wind turbine or solar panel will be able to generate sufficient amounts of electricity.
    - akvadrako 6y ago
      I didn't check but I did read somewhere that one nuclear plant also shutdown in texas because a sensor froze. The issue isn't about the type of fuel, it's planning for cold weather events.
- pstrateman 6y ago
  >Quebec is 99% renewable[0] (95% hydro, 4% wind) and runs through the coldest of winter just fine! Comparing hydro to wind and solar is unreasonable. Hydro is a battery, wind and solar are not.
hristov 6y ago
I don't see why we need this so called baseline. It is an outdated concept pushed by the nuclear industry. We need (i) to harness the cheap energy coming from the sun and the wind and (ii) another source of energy to make up shortages when solar and wind are unavailable. The source (ii) should be able to be ramped up and shut down quickly, which is a requirement where nuclear flat out fails. The baseline concept of a power source that is steady and cannot be quickly shut down or ramped up (i.e., nuclear or coal) really does not make sense in a world where you have access to very cheap but somewhat unpredictable sources of energy. Ideally, source (ii) would be electricity storage. This is not available now at the necessary scale (but it is getting closer and closer to reality). So the other alternatives are hydro (ideal if available in your environment, but not always available) and gas. Nuclear doesn't enter into it. Starting up and stopping nuclear reactors is a difficult time consuming process that cannot be done on demand. And yes Gas is falling on its face right now, but that is not due to any fundamental limitations of gas. It is because a lot of the US nat gas is mined and transported in Texas and the Texans did not winterize their equipment. I expect renewables will keep increasing in combination with gas, until power storage becomes available.
- lsllc 6y ago
  The UK has Dinorwig Power Station which is a pumped storage hydro station to supply spot demand when it's time for tea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station But at the end of the day, it uses more energy than it generates due to the inefficiencies of pumping water up to the top of the mountain (basically, it's playing arbitrage with spot electricity pricing & demand).
  - hristov 6y ago
    By hydro i did not mean pumped storage hydro but ordinary dam hydro. It does not technically store energy but it is a very effective on demand power producer because you can turn it on or off at will (provided there is enough water in the reservoir). Also, it is very good for intermittent generation, because when you stop it, you can fill up the water in the reservoir and give yourself potential energy for the next time you start it up. It does in a way store energy, it stores the energy of rivers, not of electricity. Of course whether you can access it depends on your environment. You have to have convenient rivers to dam up, and you have to have no water shortages. In a case of water shortage the decision to let water out or not is usually made based on water needs, not electricity needs.
cma 6y ago
With nuclear we also would need to solve proliferation issues.
cbozeman 6y ago
I feel like what we need to do is dump $50 to $100 billion per year into nuclear fusion reactor research, then get them online around the world as soon as possible. If the patents are to be believed, then Lockheed-Martin's Skunkworks has developed a portable fusion reactor the size of an intermodal shipping container. I'd like to see those scaled up significantly for usage around the world, for a variety of reasons... extraordinarily cheap power for one, but far more manageable nuclear waste storage for another, and more important, reason.
- TylerE 6y ago
  Uh, last time I checked we weren't able to do above-unity sustained fusion even at the mega-project level. Source?
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    The United States Patent Office. And https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-fusion.html https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-fusion... I admit I myself am highly skeptical of this project... but I welcome it with open arms if its true.
  - FuckButtons 6y ago
    There are companies and research groups in a number of countries currently experimenting with next generation fusion devices which have a new class of superconductor in them as compared to ITER (in essence, they run at a higher cryogenic temperature so need less exotic refrigeration to operate). None have as yet proved their work to be commercially viable (to my knowledge) but there is real work being done.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Even if we already new how to do fusion we couldn't build fusion plants quickly enough to prevent catastrophic warming. Arguably we can't even build fission plants quickly enough for that. The window for fusion has closed, we should've invested forty years ago. Hoping for some breakthrough that allows us to build these fifty times faster than we currently believe we might be able to build them is a very risky maneuver.
cbmuser 6y ago
Nuclear has killed less people per TWh than any other form of electricity generation, despite Fukushima and Chernobyl.
- mcv 6y ago
  But it has probably caused more birth defects because of Fukushima and Chernobyl. Death is just one statistic. Though it wouldn't surprise me if deaths+birth defects+other health problems was still a lot lower for nuclear than for coal and oil.
jillesvangurp 6y ago
That "but" is demonstrably wrong. There are lots of places that are heading towards relying exclusively on renewables where nuclear, coal, and gas plants are basically shrinking in use as the grid expands to shift to being exclusively powered by renewables. Most of those places are not affected by blackouts being a regular thing. I can't remember the last one in Germany, which has lots of wind. I can't remember a single power outage lasting more than a few minutes/seconds, ever. I'm 46 and I only experienced only a handful of those. Just not a thing in Northern Europe. We have interconnected grids and coal/nuclear are basically disappearing rapidly. I believe the UK had an interesting cascading failure on its grid last year and that was big news because it is so unusual. That only lasted for a few hours. If you look at the economics, it's pretty straightforward. Texas was an early adopter of wind because it's a cheap option for generating power and it takes power to produce power. So a lot of that Texan wind power is actually used for oil and gas production and was installed primarily for that purpose and payed for by very much for profit oil companies. Probably with the help of a lot of tax money because big oil basically owns the local politicians. Ironically, the thing that's currently driving up the prices of gas in the US, is basically oil and gas production being affected by the sudden demand for gas for heating. As demand spiked, gas production capacity started dropping because the electrical grid got disrupted (which is of course about 50% powered by gas plants in Texas). Probably Texas is more reliant on gas now than in the past, which is probably a big reason for the current issues. Yes, some older wind turbines are not capable of dealing with cold weather. Texas of course has lots of those as it was an early adopter and is not commonly affected by cold weather like this. But there are lots of regions with extreme weather that have large deployments of wind turbines that reliably produce power through very extreme conditions. E.g. Antarctica has wind power. So does Iceland, Norway, or Alaska. Ice proof wind turbines is a high tech business and a fairly recent development. So, wind is basically part of the solution here and not part of the problem.
jussij 6y ago
What is happening in Texas has very little to do with baseline power generation and more to do with an electricity network not designed to handle cold weather. In this current Texas disaster those base line thermal generators like coal, gas and nuclear have also fallen victim to these low temperatures.

by lsllc 6y ago

rtpg 6y ago

Gas-based electrical generation is what are failing right now! They are failing left and right! If 100% was gas there would be more problems, not less. Wind and Solar is pulling above planned generation right now. If you believe your logic, time to go all-in on wind + solar.

acidburnNSA 6y ago
Wind and solar are above planned generation right now, which was 0. In ERCOT wind has been making less than 6 GW out of 33 GW installed for over 7 days straight [1]. Natural gas is pulling almost all the weight right now, as you can see. So no, not time to go all in on wind + solar. [1] https://i.imgur.com/EEbf5lM.png https://i.imgur.com/EEbf5lM.png (screenshot from EIA, original data here: https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/balancing_authority/ERCO https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/e...) Your first statement is partially true. The ERCOT "planners" expected their gas capacity to basically always be there, and the fact that 30 GW of thermal capacity is offline for various weather-related reasons is the primary reason the power is out. But the remaining gas is pulling almost all the weight keeping people alive so we shouldn't neglect that.
- mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago
  You're correct that, "30 GW of thermal capacity is offline for various weather-related reasons is the primary reason the power is out." I think wind can play a huge role in fixing this. Check out: https://www.windy.com/?37.539,-94.134,4 https://www.windy.com/?37.539,-94.134,4 And you've got plenty of massive offshore wind resources on both sides of the continent that are blowing right now (Feb 17th 7:49pm PDT) if we had installed capacity. We need to keep our nuclear fleet (20% of electrical generation) and invest in a TON of transmission. If we had this electrical grid, we'd be doing far better: https://twitter.com/Sammy_Roth/status/1356442256866037766 https://twitter.com/Sammy_Roth/status/1356442256866037766
  - lsllc 6y ago
    Transmission lines aren't so easy, for example the Northern Pass project to bring power from Quebec Hydro into New England failed due to local opposition: https://www.vnews.com/northern-pass-eversource-hydroquebec-27298583 https://www.vnews.com/northern-pass-eversource-hydroquebec-2... I do like the idea (from the linked tweet) of underground transmission lines (underground alongside railroads is probably mitigates the NIMBY objections): https://www.volts.wtf/p/transmission-fortnight-burying-power https://www.volts.wtf/p/transmission-fortnight-burying-power
  - acidburnNSA 6y ago
    Ask anyone who has planned and installed a long-haul transmission line in the past 40 years and they'll tell you that that's gonna be extremely hard. It's simple technically, as is building a lot of a standardized nuclear plant, but it's not easy and will be hit by massive amounts of NIMBY.
    - mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago
      Yes, the regulatory and NIMBY challenges are extreme. Best way to do it is to go: 1. All underground transmission. 2. Expand the natural gas pipeline permitting process (which is controlled at the Federal level and already overrides state's jurisdiction) to include underground electrical transmission.
- rtpg 6y ago
  Isn't gas also at like 50% production as well? It's also heavily knocked out? Like it's pulling a lot of weight because it's 80% of the capacity if nothing's going wrong! If it was 100% then maybe 40 GW of thermal capacity would _also_ be offline. ERCOT assumed 0% from Wind. Instead we're getting 25% They assumed 100% from gas. Instead we're getting 50% (or 70% or whatever). You look at that and tell me gas is what's performing well here, and the segment that should be expanded. (EDIT: Sorry, I think your original thing was "all in nuclear." I think I read nuclear was also having some issues but it's at least not the "more gas is the solution for a situation where gas is failing" narrative) I get that wind + solar can't cover everything, but right now what we're seeing is massive failures from gas. In a universe where we had more wind + solar, there could likely be more energy going around right now.
  - cbmuser 6y ago
    South Texas Project 1 was already fixed and should be back online: > https://twitter.com/Beazy_Rampezy/status/1362043827800977414 https://twitter.com/Beazy_Rampezy/status/1362043827800977414
  - vancan1ty 6y ago
    It is simple to see what energy source is pulling above its weight and what energy source is pulling below its weight. Go to here: https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/expanded-view/electric_overview/balancing_authority/ERCO/GenerationByEnergySource-14/edit https://www.eia.gov/beta/electricity/gridmonitor/expanded-vi... , select "daily" view and put in 60 days to get a more representative sample. on 12/19/2020 -- looks to be a fairly typical Texas winter day natural gas production was 331660 megawatthours wind was 191415 megawatthours for a ratio of 1.73 gas/wind this appears to be fairly typical numbers on a daily basis over the winter -- actually on a number of days wind surpasses gas on 2/16/2021 natural gas 692091 wind 90087 for a ratio of 7.68 gas/wind natural gas 2/16 vs natural gas 12/19 is ratio 2.09 wind 2/16 vs wind 12/19 is ratio 0.47 so as expected during an inclement weather event natural gas ramped up and wind ramped down. natural gas just didn't ramp up enough to pick up all the slack from increased demand and ramped down renewables. "I get that wind + solar can't cover everything, but right now what we're seeing is massive failures from gas. In a universe where we had more wind + solar, there could likely be more energy going around right now." -- Wind is failing much worse than gas from an objective power generation standpoint. All wind has going for it is the tyranny of low expectations.
- cbmuser 6y ago
  And nuclear is providing 100% of its installed capacity after South Texas Project 1 was offline for some hours.
lsllc 6y ago
Take the North East of the US, there's not enough solar year round, nor is it generally windy enough of the time to generate power for a densely populated region & power hungry growing region. So my logic is go Nuclear, like France. Keep the natural gas for heating (since it's relatively efficient and cleaner than other fossil fuels). Supplement with solar/wind where & when available.
- jasonjayr 6y ago
  https://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/web/charts https://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/web/charts North East US is running about 28% nuclear at the time I viewed the fuel mix chart.
cbmuser 6y ago
Wind and solar heavily depend on the weather. They cannot therefore produce any sufficient amounts of electricity during a blizzard. And the blame doesn’t lie on natural gas but on the idea of shutting down baseload-capable sources like nuclear in favor of renewables.
- jussij 6y ago
  Except it was natural gas generators that caused the system to fail: As Princeton engineering professor Jesse Jenkins points out, the real primary culprit was the mass failure of nuclear, coal, and natural gas (or "thermal") power plants. At the peak of the blackout something like 27,000 megawatts of thermal capacity were offline — or nearly 40 percent of Texas's entire thermal capacity. https://theweek.com/articles/967062/what-texas-blackout-reveals-about-americas-climate-vulnerability https://theweek.com/articles/967062/what-texas-blackout-reve...
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  And the blame doesn’t lie on natural gas but on the idea of shutting down baseload-capable sources like nuclear in favor of renewables. What nuclear has been shut down in Texas?

photoGrant 6y ago

Yep, we definitely have learned from all our mistakes. Bad actors and the internet of things won’t come close. Right?

mnklo 6y ago

Renewables are more than capable of supplying "base load". What you're referring to is a fallacy.

acidburnNSA 6y ago
I'm sorry but it's not that simple, as you can see clearly right now. Between Feb 9 and Feb 17th wind and solar energy delivery has been a very small fraction of capacity, less than 10%. To do baseload over a period of 8 days with that kind of resource would require roughly a 20x capacity overbuild and some kind of ridiculous battery. It's just not practical. Most realistic scenarios these days have lots of wind and solar and some overnight batteries, and rely on large mostly-idled capacity of gas to get through the black-swan events like this. Though obviously this approach has challenges as well.
- mnklo 6y ago
  I think you're overcomplicating the situation. A mix of renewable sources is quite stable, and there are more ways to store energy than just batteries. Here's a paper debunking the baseload myth. http://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/MarkBaseloadFallacyANZSEE.pdf http://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/publ... A 10GW solar farm is already in the pipeline for northern Australia: https://amp.abc.net.au/article/12785256 https://amp.abc.net.au/article/12785256
  - snowwindwaves 6y ago
    The paper suggests solar thermal and wind plus gas peakers. So the overbuilt point from the parent stands.
lsllc 6y ago
All I'm saying is we need a mix of generation, including guaranteed baseline generating capacity. A typical nuclear plant puts out 1GW, that's pretty substantial. Take a look at France: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr... They generated 71% of their 582 TWh in 2018 from Nuclear, with the bulk of the remainder coming from Hydro (12%) Natural Gas (5%), Wind (5%) ... (solar was only 2%, same as coal). They are a net exporter of power and that generates about €3 billion/year of revenue.

TeeMassive 6y ago

Hydro is pretty much safe from winter temperatures. Ice will only freeze about 50cm max during a cold winter on a still lake. Source: I'm from Québec, we heat our homes with electricity, our barrage are in the far North.

telchar 6y ago

Baseload + peakers is one concept that allows a grid to meet demand. But it's not the only way - decorrelated intermittent generation + peakers could work too. But what doesn't work well so well is baseload + intermittent generation. If you must have baseload (i.e. nuclear) as the foundation of the grid, intermittent renewables (solar/wind) aren't going to have much of a place because you need dispatchable power generation to fill in the demand peaks. As long as we need peakers or other dispatchable powers supply, I like solar and wind over nuclear to provide the main quantity of generation vs nuclear. I don't see nuclear catching up to renewables on cost terms at this point.

konjin 6y ago
Saying solar is cheap when the sun shines is like saying coal is cheap at the mine. You need electricity produced at the right time as well as the right place. I don't understand how people can get that producing electricity in the middle of the Sahara is useless, but producing it at 12pm on June 15th when you need it today isn't.

AntonyGarand 6y ago

Renewables are very reliable if you winter-proof them, the same as other sources. The problem at the moment is that none of the sources for Texas was prepared for a cold winter, renewable or otherwise. Quebec is 99% renewable[0] (95% hydro, 4% wind) and runs through the coldest of winter just fine! > With over 40 853 MW of installed capacity, hydroelectric stations generate about 95% of Quebec’s electricity. > Wind is the 2nd largest source of electricity generation in Quebec. In 2018, wind capacity reached 4 096 MW and accounted for 4% of the province’s generating capacity [0] https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles-quebec.html https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/pr...

jorblumesea 6y ago
Also fair to note that fossil fuel plants also froze and were unable to operate. It's not even a renewable or not question. It's just whether your grid has been properly hardened against the elements.
- cbmuser 6y ago
  Nuclear works under nearly all environmental conditions. Heck, we have nuclear powered energy sources in space. Russia built a floating nuclear power plant in the remote city of Pevek in the polar circle where hardly any wind turbine or solar panel will be able to generate sufficient amounts of electricity.
  - akvadrako 6y ago
    I didn't check but I did read somewhere that one nuclear plant also shutdown in texas because a sensor froze. The issue isn't about the type of fuel, it's planning for cold weather events.
pstrateman 6y ago
>Quebec is 99% renewable[0] (95% hydro, 4% wind) and runs through the coldest of winter just fine! Comparing hydro to wind and solar is unreasonable. Hydro is a battery, wind and solar are not.

hristov 6y ago

I don't see why we need this so called baseline. It is an outdated concept pushed by the nuclear industry. We need (i) to harness the cheap energy coming from the sun and the wind and (ii) another source of energy to make up shortages when solar and wind are unavailable. The source (ii) should be able to be ramped up and shut down quickly, which is a requirement where nuclear flat out fails. The baseline concept of a power source that is steady and cannot be quickly shut down or ramped up (i.e., nuclear or coal) really does not make sense in a world where you have access to very cheap but somewhat unpredictable sources of energy. Ideally, source (ii) would be electricity storage. This is not available now at the necessary scale (but it is getting closer and closer to reality). So the other alternatives are hydro (ideal if available in your environment, but not always available) and gas. Nuclear doesn't enter into it. Starting up and stopping nuclear reactors is a difficult time consuming process that cannot be done on demand. And yes Gas is falling on its face right now, but that is not due to any fundamental limitations of gas. It is because a lot of the US nat gas is mined and transported in Texas and the Texans did not winterize their equipment. I expect renewables will keep increasing in combination with gas, until power storage becomes available.

lsllc 6y ago
The UK has Dinorwig Power Station which is a pumped storage hydro station to supply spot demand when it's time for tea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station But at the end of the day, it uses more energy than it generates due to the inefficiencies of pumping water up to the top of the mountain (basically, it's playing arbitrage with spot electricity pricing & demand).
- hristov 6y ago
  By hydro i did not mean pumped storage hydro but ordinary dam hydro. It does not technically store energy but it is a very effective on demand power producer because you can turn it on or off at will (provided there is enough water in the reservoir). Also, it is very good for intermittent generation, because when you stop it, you can fill up the water in the reservoir and give yourself potential energy for the next time you start it up. It does in a way store energy, it stores the energy of rivers, not of electricity. Of course whether you can access it depends on your environment. You have to have convenient rivers to dam up, and you have to have no water shortages. In a case of water shortage the decision to let water out or not is usually made based on water needs, not electricity needs.

cma 6y ago

With nuclear we also would need to solve proliferation issues.

cbozeman 6y ago

I feel like what we need to do is dump $50 to $100 billion per year into nuclear fusion reactor research, then get them online around the world as soon as possible. If the patents are to be believed, then Lockheed-Martin's Skunkworks has developed a portable fusion reactor the size of an intermodal shipping container. I'd like to see those scaled up significantly for usage around the world, for a variety of reasons... extraordinarily cheap power for one, but far more manageable nuclear waste storage for another, and more important, reason.

TylerE 6y ago
Uh, last time I checked we weren't able to do above-unity sustained fusion even at the mega-project level. Source?
- cbozeman 6y ago
  The United States Patent Office. And https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-fusion.html https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-fusion... I admit I myself am highly skeptical of this project... but I welcome it with open arms if its true.
- FuckButtons 6y ago
  There are companies and research groups in a number of countries currently experimenting with next generation fusion devices which have a new class of superconductor in them as compared to ITER (in essence, they run at a higher cryogenic temperature so need less exotic refrigeration to operate). None have as yet proved their work to be commercially viable (to my knowledge) but there is real work being done.
adrianN 6y ago
Even if we already new how to do fusion we couldn't build fusion plants quickly enough to prevent catastrophic warming. Arguably we can't even build fission plants quickly enough for that. The window for fusion has closed, we should've invested forty years ago. Hoping for some breakthrough that allows us to build these fifty times faster than we currently believe we might be able to build them is a very risky maneuver.

cbmuser 6y ago

Nuclear has killed less people per TWh than any other form of electricity generation, despite Fukushima and Chernobyl.

mcv 6y ago
But it has probably caused more birth defects because of Fukushima and Chernobyl. Death is just one statistic. Though it wouldn't surprise me if deaths+birth defects+other health problems was still a lot lower for nuclear than for coal and oil.

jillesvangurp 6y ago

That "but" is demonstrably wrong. There are lots of places that are heading towards relying exclusively on renewables where nuclear, coal, and gas plants are basically shrinking in use as the grid expands to shift to being exclusively powered by renewables. Most of those places are not affected by blackouts being a regular thing. I can't remember the last one in Germany, which has lots of wind. I can't remember a single power outage lasting more than a few minutes/seconds, ever. I'm 46 and I only experienced only a handful of those. Just not a thing in Northern Europe. We have interconnected grids and coal/nuclear are basically disappearing rapidly. I believe the UK had an interesting cascading failure on its grid last year and that was big news because it is so unusual. That only lasted for a few hours. If you look at the economics, it's pretty straightforward. Texas was an early adopter of wind because it's a cheap option for generating power and it takes power to produce power. So a lot of that Texan wind power is actually used for oil and gas production and was installed primarily for that purpose and payed for by very much for profit oil companies. Probably with the help of a lot of tax money because big oil basically owns the local politicians. Ironically, the thing that's currently driving up the prices of gas in the US, is basically oil and gas production being affected by the sudden demand for gas for heating. As demand spiked, gas production capacity started dropping because the electrical grid got disrupted (which is of course about 50% powered by gas plants in Texas). Probably Texas is more reliant on gas now than in the past, which is probably a big reason for the current issues. Yes, some older wind turbines are not capable of dealing with cold weather. Texas of course has lots of those as it was an early adopter and is not commonly affected by cold weather like this. But there are lots of regions with extreme weather that have large deployments of wind turbines that reliably produce power through very extreme conditions. E.g. Antarctica has wind power. So does Iceland, Norway, or Alaska. Ice proof wind turbines is a high tech business and a fairly recent development. So, wind is basically part of the solution here and not part of the problem.

jussij 6y ago

What is happening in Texas has very little to do with baseline power generation and more to do with an electricity network not designed to handle cold weather. In this current Texas disaster those base line thermal generators like coal, gas and nuclear have also fallen victim to these low temperatures.