3 ms·

> It never got as cheap as it was claimed it would be, accounting for loan interest or not. I would say "citation needed". France typically had a documented pu

by xroche 5y ago

> It never got as cheap as it was claimed it would be, accounting for loan interest or not. I would say "citation needed". France typically had a documented public investment plan for nuclear energy, and is enjoying one of the cheapest and low-carbon emission electricity in Europe. > And now we have just experienced a decade where intermittent renewables have plummeted in cost to below that of fuel-base energy I still read this here and there, but strangely, solar/wind still need large subsidiaries to exist. How so ? Other renewable such as hydro are fine, though, but they tend to be already at their max everywhere. > And storage is on that trend too, with storage being added to most solar and wind projects these days We don't have real storage solutions for now. Batteries ? Won't scale. Reversible dams ? Doable if you have the chance to have a lot of hydro.

epistasis 5y ago
I would love to see some documented costs for France, so I agree 100% with "citation needed". As for the US, the historical document I read that gave me the impression that it never got as cheap as claimed was this 1985 article in Forbes: https://blowhardwindbag.blogspot.com/2011/04/forbes-article-reference-nuclear.html?m=1 https://blowhardwindbag.blogspot.com/2011/04/forbes-article-... > but strangely, solar/wind still need large subsidies to exist Citation needed here, too! The unsubsidized costs of solar and wind are still the cheapest sources, so they don't "need" subsidies to be deployed. The existence of tax breaks subsidies for wind/solar doesn't mean that the subsidies are needed, any more than the special tax break subsidies for oil/gas/coal are needed for those sources to keep on going. > Batteries? Won't scale This is a very strange claim! Not only do batteries scale beautifully in theory, we already have scaled them for deployment, with GWh grid batteries that can be scaled at the same site to 5-6GWh (Moss Landing, CA). Batteries can be deployed in homes, at distribution substations, underneath utility scale solar or wind farms, at old decommissioned fossil fuel sites so that the transmission capacity can be reused, on one side of a congested transmission line to avoid massive upgrade costs... Batteries are practically defined by their beautiful scalability, a real Swiss Army knife for any grid application Current global production capacity for the lithium ion types of batteries is 285GWh, which on a GW completely dwarfs global nuclear deployment. Projections from the battery industry are for this amount to increase 10x every five years. And though lithium ion tech is by far in the lead, there are many other chemistries perfectly suited to grid use (but perhaps not cars), if lithium ion's improvement pace ever slows to let them catch up. We are in a new era for energy, an era that is far more like tech, and less like the staid commodity industry that energy has been for the past century. Depreciation of grid assets is very slow, far slower than the tech change of energy tech, so we need to start paying very close attention to tech change curves if we don't want to waste massive amounts of money and screw up our fight against climate change.
adrianN 5y ago
Where batteries stop scaling you can produce Hydrogen or Methane. The efficiency sucks, but most countries already have infrastructure to store huge amounts of gas.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  One can also go to alternate battery chemistries optimized for longer term storage. In particular, this means capital cost is more important, but specific power and efficiency are less important. Electrodes optimized for cost rather than ion mobility, for example. Hydrogen would still be hard to beat for seasonal storage, though.

by xroche 5y ago

epistasis 5y ago

I would love to see some documented costs for France, so I agree 100% with "citation needed". As for the US, the historical document I read that gave me the impression that it never got as cheap as claimed was this 1985 article in Forbes: https://blowhardwindbag.blogspot.com/2011/04/forbes-article-reference-nuclear.html?m=1 https://blowhardwindbag.blogspot.com/2011/04/forbes-article-... > but strangely, solar/wind still need large subsidies to exist Citation needed here, too! The unsubsidized costs of solar and wind are still the cheapest sources, so they don't "need" subsidies to be deployed. The existence of tax breaks subsidies for wind/solar doesn't mean that the subsidies are needed, any more than the special tax break subsidies for oil/gas/coal are needed for those sources to keep on going. > Batteries? Won't scale This is a very strange claim! Not only do batteries scale beautifully in theory, we already have scaled them for deployment, with GWh grid batteries that can be scaled at the same site to 5-6GWh (Moss Landing, CA). Batteries can be deployed in homes, at distribution substations, underneath utility scale solar or wind farms, at old decommissioned fossil fuel sites so that the transmission capacity can be reused, on one side of a congested transmission line to avoid massive upgrade costs... Batteries are practically defined by their beautiful scalability, a real Swiss Army knife for any grid application Current global production capacity for the lithium ion types of batteries is 285GWh, which on a GW completely dwarfs global nuclear deployment. Projections from the battery industry are for this amount to increase 10x every five years. And though lithium ion tech is by far in the lead, there are many other chemistries perfectly suited to grid use (but perhaps not cars), if lithium ion's improvement pace ever slows to let them catch up. We are in a new era for energy, an era that is far more like tech, and less like the staid commodity industry that energy has been for the past century. Depreciation of grid assets is very slow, far slower than the tech change of energy tech, so we need to start paying very close attention to tech change curves if we don't want to waste massive amounts of money and screw up our fight against climate change.

adrianN 5y ago

Where batteries stop scaling you can produce Hydrogen or Methane. The efficiency sucks, but most countries already have infrastructure to store huge amounts of gas.

pfdietz 5y ago
One can also go to alternate battery chemistries optimized for longer term storage. In particular, this means capital cost is more important, but specific power and efficiency are less important. Electrodes optimized for cost rather than ion mobility, for example. Hydrogen would still be hard to beat for seasonal storage, though.