5 ms·

The largest solar battery capacity in the world is filled by less than one hour of production from the smallest of the 52 French nuclear power plants. Guys, tha

by Kydlaw 5y ago

The largest solar battery capacity in the world is filled by less than one hour of production from the smallest of the 52 French nuclear power plants. Guys, that's going to be a lot of batteries. And by a lot I mean a SHIT-TON of batteries.

jusssi 5y ago
Nuclear is not what they're looking to replace with batteries, so comparing to that doesn't make sense. How many hours of smallest French coal power plant?
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  By far the best metric would be "how many minutes or seconds of French (or possibly regional) electricity consumption can this battery cover". This gives you a rough idea of the total bridging capacity for the case of "no sun, no wind" situations. That said, I must admit I am a bit afraid of the huge batteries, at least if they are going to be located close to human dwellings. The videos of fires of vehicle batteries that I have seen so far were pretty bad, and here we are talking about orders of magnitude bigger energy store.
  - datameta 5y ago
    I think a highly useful metric would be how many homes this battery installation could power alone for a one day period.
    - jonfw 5y ago
      Homes are just one thing that consumes energy, and they're no more important than street lights, factories, night clubs, gas stations, electric charging stations, and hotels. there are no bonus points for renewable suburbs
      - datameta 5y ago
        In an excessive heat wave, blizzard/ice storm, other severe inclement weather events being able to power homes directly is frankly all of the points. Out of all the users of energy that you listed perhaps the industrial sector is worth mentioning, otherwise street lights are essentially in the same magnitude of lights-per-capita so that can be a constant tacked onto the # of homes metric. Not to mention the fact that quite a substantial portion of them now use LEDs. The others are a magnitude less significant in comparison to homes, whether those homes are rural through urban.
- datameta 5y ago
  Precisely. New renewable energy installations should replace the worst offenders not the other clean energy generation infrastructure. There was an article on HN a few days ago about how the 5% most polluting power plants pollute as much as 75% of the total.
- Kydlaw 5y ago
  My previous thought provoking argument was to say that if you plan to produce electricity in a developed country using mostly wind turbines and solar panels, you'll need an unreasonable amount of batteries. In that sense, it makes totally sense. If you are Greenpeace (for instance) and argue that all nuclear plants have to be close (for reason X) you need to translate that production with something else. And that amount can't be reasonably replaced by solar + wind + batteries.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > Nuclear is not what they're looking to replace with batteries, so comparing to that doesn't make sense Some people, including many "greens", do want to replace nuclear with renewables + storage (at best, the other day Greenpeace Belgium said that "natural gas is a necessary evil for transitioning away from nuclear and to renewables" (as in, we should retire nuclear ASAP to move to natural gas until renewables are ready), so it does make sense.
ckdarby 5y ago
Thankfully there are places with a "SHIT-TON" of space throughout the USA and Canada.
- Kydlaw 5y ago
  This add to the land competition for farming, solar panels and wind turbines. Also, remember the World is not USA + Canada, and there are plenty of ppl living in the World. The battery solution might likely not be the magic wand to will solve the energy problem as some might think.
  - ckdarby 5y ago
    I haven't forgotten the world is not just USA + Canada. The rest of the world will set up their own primary energy storage providers as well. Imagine each continent had a primary battery hub. Secondary storage can be in the countries that have the space or can afford the additional infrastructure. Also, remember this is how a lot of the world works now with existing energy infrastructure. Don't try to make the simple complex. Solar "tunnels" where existing roads are. Vertical building for batteries in space restricted areas.
thehappypm 5y ago
I don't understand why people see this as a problem. Energy generation being a local thing feels like a good thing -- sure you'll need a lot of batteries, but every city/state/municipality already has power plants, sewage plants, water treatment plants, etc. If we get to the point where energy is just this easy thing where you buy off-the-shelf batteries and have some solar panels or wind turbines that need replacement every now and then, that sounds way better than investing billions over decades to build a centralized fleet of nuclear reactors.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > I don't understand why people see this as a problem. Energy generation being a local thing feels like a good thing -- sure you'll need a lot of batteries, but every city/state/municipality already has power plants, sewage plants, water treatment plants, etc. If we get to the point where energy is just this easy thing where you buy off-the-shelf batteries and have some solar panels or wind turbines that need replacement every now and then, that sounds way better than investing billions over decades to build a centralized fleet of nuclear reactors Not every locality will have the place, budget, geography to enable that. Furthermore, "a lot of batteries". Isn't there a shortage of battery production capacity currently? Isn't there a massive shift to battery electric vehicles which will need multiple times the battery production capacity available today? Wasting enormous amounts of space, money and production capacity to be able to offset a couple of hours of no wind/sun seems wasteful and risky.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    The shift to EVs drives down the cost of batteries and scales up manufacturing capacity. Nuclear is never getting built, takes too long and isn’t cost effective against storage and renewables. There is more than enough unused space worldwide for solar, wind, and batteries without impacting more productive land uses.
    - thehappypm 5y ago
      The only thing holding back renewables is cost -- particularly that there aren't really off-the-shelf battery storage solutions yet, the reason why this article is a headline is in itself indicative that it's still immature as of yet. However, it's obvious that this is going to be solved soon, the actual battery tech is there. and if cost is the main thing holding back renewables, nuclear will never win, because it's an order of magnitude more costly. It takes a LONG time for something that costs a billion dollars to break even versus renewables that cost $100M.

by Kydlaw 5y ago

jusssi 5y ago

Nuclear is not what they're looking to replace with batteries, so comparing to that doesn't make sense. How many hours of smallest French coal power plant?

inglor_cz 5y ago
By far the best metric would be "how many minutes or seconds of French (or possibly regional) electricity consumption can this battery cover". This gives you a rough idea of the total bridging capacity for the case of "no sun, no wind" situations. That said, I must admit I am a bit afraid of the huge batteries, at least if they are going to be located close to human dwellings. The videos of fires of vehicle batteries that I have seen so far were pretty bad, and here we are talking about orders of magnitude bigger energy store.
- datameta 5y ago
  I think a highly useful metric would be how many homes this battery installation could power alone for a one day period.
  - jonfw 5y ago
    Homes are just one thing that consumes energy, and they're no more important than street lights, factories, night clubs, gas stations, electric charging stations, and hotels. there are no bonus points for renewable suburbs
    - datameta 5y ago
      In an excessive heat wave, blizzard/ice storm, other severe inclement weather events being able to power homes directly is frankly all of the points. Out of all the users of energy that you listed perhaps the industrial sector is worth mentioning, otherwise street lights are essentially in the same magnitude of lights-per-capita so that can be a constant tacked onto the # of homes metric. Not to mention the fact that quite a substantial portion of them now use LEDs. The others are a magnitude less significant in comparison to homes, whether those homes are rural through urban.
datameta 5y ago
Precisely. New renewable energy installations should replace the worst offenders not the other clean energy generation infrastructure. There was an article on HN a few days ago about how the 5% most polluting power plants pollute as much as 75% of the total.
Kydlaw 5y ago
My previous thought provoking argument was to say that if you plan to produce electricity in a developed country using mostly wind turbines and solar panels, you'll need an unreasonable amount of batteries. In that sense, it makes totally sense. If you are Greenpeace (for instance) and argue that all nuclear plants have to be close (for reason X) you need to translate that production with something else. And that amount can't be reasonably replaced by solar + wind + batteries.
sofixa 5y ago
> Nuclear is not what they're looking to replace with batteries, so comparing to that doesn't make sense Some people, including many "greens", do want to replace nuclear with renewables + storage (at best, the other day Greenpeace Belgium said that "natural gas is a necessary evil for transitioning away from nuclear and to renewables" (as in, we should retire nuclear ASAP to move to natural gas until renewables are ready), so it does make sense.

ckdarby 5y ago

Thankfully there are places with a "SHIT-TON" of space throughout the USA and Canada.

Kydlaw 5y ago
This add to the land competition for farming, solar panels and wind turbines. Also, remember the World is not USA + Canada, and there are plenty of ppl living in the World. The battery solution might likely not be the magic wand to will solve the energy problem as some might think.
- ckdarby 5y ago
  I haven't forgotten the world is not just USA + Canada. The rest of the world will set up their own primary energy storage providers as well. Imagine each continent had a primary battery hub. Secondary storage can be in the countries that have the space or can afford the additional infrastructure. Also, remember this is how a lot of the world works now with existing energy infrastructure. Don't try to make the simple complex. Solar "tunnels" where existing roads are. Vertical building for batteries in space restricted areas.

thehappypm 5y ago

I don't understand why people see this as a problem. Energy generation being a local thing feels like a good thing -- sure you'll need a lot of batteries, but every city/state/municipality already has power plants, sewage plants, water treatment plants, etc. If we get to the point where energy is just this easy thing where you buy off-the-shelf batteries and have some solar panels or wind turbines that need replacement every now and then, that sounds way better than investing billions over decades to build a centralized fleet of nuclear reactors.

sofixa 5y ago
> I don't understand why people see this as a problem. Energy generation being a local thing feels like a good thing -- sure you'll need a lot of batteries, but every city/state/municipality already has power plants, sewage plants, water treatment plants, etc. If we get to the point where energy is just this easy thing where you buy off-the-shelf batteries and have some solar panels or wind turbines that need replacement every now and then, that sounds way better than investing billions over decades to build a centralized fleet of nuclear reactors Not every locality will have the place, budget, geography to enable that. Furthermore, "a lot of batteries". Isn't there a shortage of battery production capacity currently? Isn't there a massive shift to battery electric vehicles which will need multiple times the battery production capacity available today? Wasting enormous amounts of space, money and production capacity to be able to offset a couple of hours of no wind/sun seems wasteful and risky.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  The shift to EVs drives down the cost of batteries and scales up manufacturing capacity. Nuclear is never getting built, takes too long and isn’t cost effective against storage and renewables. There is more than enough unused space worldwide for solar, wind, and batteries without impacting more productive land uses.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    The only thing holding back renewables is cost -- particularly that there aren't really off-the-shelf battery storage solutions yet, the reason why this article is a headline is in itself indicative that it's still immature as of yet. However, it's obvious that this is going to be solved soon, the actual battery tech is there. and if cost is the main thing holding back renewables, nuclear will never win, because it's an order of magnitude more costly. It takes a LONG time for something that costs a billion dollars to break even versus renewables that cost $100M.