4 ms·

still not baseload energy and I am still not sure it beats nuclear per co2 spent.

by jokoon 5y ago

asplake 5y ago
No, not baseload energy, but there is presumably an optimum overall mix (ideally one that prices in externalities appropriately, non-negligible in nuclear’s case)
cycomanic 5y ago
Can we just stop the baseload myth?! It's been debunked many times [1]. [1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/dispelling-the-nuclear-baseload-myth-nothing-renewables-cant-do-better-94486/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/dispelling-the-nuclear-baseload-...
- _ph_ 5y ago
  Thanks for the link, it nicely explains what I tried to summarize in my posts about the misconceptions of base load. May be it should be added that of course renewables can be dispatchable if not all of their available capacity is used all the time. The typical gas peaker plans are idle 90% of the time. But people complain less about that, as gas plans consume gas to run, while e.g. solar cells don't have any additional costs for producing electricity vs. not producing electricity. So it seems like a waste to not operate them at full capacity. Yet, the situation isn't that different from a gas plant idling most of the time. Annectodal, the French grid is mostly nuclear and they of course face the problems with running a varying grid load with "base load" power plants. The solution is, to run their nuclear power plants at an average of 75% of their full power, this gives them more ability to regulate the output, but of course it means, that the cost per energy produced raises, as they usually are not fully utilized. Which probably is the reason, why France is exporting a lot of electricity - with the European grid it is cheaper to have a varying export than a variable production.
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    I think we will see much more integration across the European electricity grid in the near future, which makes production fluctuations less and less relevant (they just average out over a large grid). I didn't know how many impediments still existed for an integrated european grid. I only found out when reading up on things today, that Scandinavia operates on a different frequency to mainland Europe, which has been an obstacle for Norway to sell their surplus to the rest of Europe (they are now building a connection to Germany and are bridging the operating frequency so that should be better in the future). Here is an interesting article about this: https://www.power-technology.com/features/how-norway-became-europes-biggest-power-exporter/ https://www.power-technology.com/features/how-norway-became-...
    - _ph_ 5y ago
      The first DC connection between Germany and Norway has been put into operations some months ago. Which also solves all frequency problems :). If you look on www.electricitymap.org, you can see how much electricity is already shifted around in Europe. Like with car traffic, Germany is a country which distributes electricity across Europe. Especially France often exports to many European countries, a lot through Germany. (Which creates an inflated impression about how much French electrictiy is exported to Germany, because it is often overlooked that at the same time Germany exports the same amount or even more to neighboring countries).
    - bluGill 5y ago
      Frequency doesn't matter because at a large scale you can't match AC frequencies anyway so you go to DC for transmissions. There are other advantages to high voltage DC over AC as well that I don't remember.
      - Symbiote 5y ago
        What is a large scale? The Continental European grid covers 400 million people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    You will not have operational grid scalw storage for a days worth of output any time soon, the only way to compensate for intermittency of renewable is to have massive overcapacity - we will havw a grid where peice can change sharply, and sometime be deeply negative. That can still be fine as the cost of renewables keeps falling, but complainig about capacity factor of nuclear in this context is laughable
    - _ph_ 5y ago
      We don't need grid scale of storage for a days worth of output any time soon. And I have not complained about the capacity factor of nuclear, I just have described what France has to do to be able to run a grid with varying loads with nuclear power.
- eldaisfish 5y ago
  that article is full of gaping holes and is often used by renewable energy proponents to shut down valid criticism of renewable technologies. Here are just two faults with it: >First, the fluctuations in variable wind and solar PV are balanced by flexible renewable energy sources that are dispatchable, i.e. can supply power on demand. These are hydro with dams, Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGTs) and concentrated solar thermal power (CST) with thermal storage, as illustrated in Figure 2. It ‘s not essential for every power station in the system to be dispatchable. Gas turbines are flexible renewable energy? Concentrated solar power is a fringe technology that is highly dependent on geography. How this is taken seriously i do not understand. The article goes on to make a rubbish point about "green" gas while completely ignoring that gas in any form is neither "Green" nor renewable. >In the USA a major computer simulation by a large team of scientists and engineers found that 80-90% renewable electricity is technically feasible and reliable (They didn’t examine 100%.) Gee, i wonder why 100% wasn't examined. Perhaps it points to an uncomfortable conclusion that solely variable, renewable energy cannot work at scale as the sole source of energy for gigawatt scale grids. The reality is that a combination is required and this reality upsets those who believe the pie-in-the-sky dream that solar and wind can power the entire grid if you only overbuild and dispatch them. As the February event in Texas demonstrated, all generation can underperform at the same time leading to near disaster. We would be wise to hedge our bets on generation sources.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    > Gas turbines are flexible renewable energy? Depends what gas you burn and how it was generated, but yeah as long as the source isnt adding fossil carbon to the air then they're part of the solution. In fact, after reading the article, the next paragraph after your quote says exactly that: > Incidentally the gas turbines can themselves be fuelled by ‘green gas’, for example from composting municipal and agricultural wastes, or produced from surpluses of renewable electricity. More on this below … The "more on this below" refers to later parts of the article that cover making syngas from water using electricity supplied by wind power
- jokoon 5y ago
  myth? you can turn on a nuclear reactor anytime you want, but not a solar panel/wind turbine. that is what baseload is about.
_ph_ 5y ago
"Baseload energy" is a completely misguiding term. The base load is a purely statistic artifact. Operating the grid means, that the electricity generation exactly matches the consumption at all times. For this it doesn't matter, whether the demand is close to the base load or high above it. If the electricity generation doesn't match the consumption, you get grid failures. Overproduction can be as problematic as underproduction. The base load is nothing especial, only the fraction of the maximum load of the grid, that is always drawn and can be served by power plants which cannot be regulated well. Which most of the time of the day is a big disadvantage of those power plants. If there is a demand peak, they can't serve it. If their overall output is too high, you cannot turn it down quickly enough. As coal and nuclear power traditionally had a large part of the supply and both are quite slow, for decades the net was designed to raise the "base load". Like in Belgium, where all highways were illuminated at night to consume excess nuclear energy... The good news about wind and solar is, they can be switched off quickly at any time. Their disadvantage is, and that probably is, when you talk about base load, that the maxim power output depends on the weather. With a coal plant, you can put more coals into the fire, with solar, you need to wait for sunrise. That is indeed a challenge and requires storage and grid planning to compensate. Larger scale grids which mix wind and solar are much less affected by the. But nothing of this has to do with the base load. And with nuclear: yes, wind should beat nuclear easily in the aspects of cost and CO2. But the most important metric is: the cost of building new nuclear plants is prohibitive. Just compare the costs of the most recent English nuclear plant with new wind installations. They are about 1/3rd of the cost and not have any of the problems of nuclear energy attached (operation risk, nuclear waste).
- jokoon 5y ago
  co2 matters, not money
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    Yes, CO2 matters. But with a given amount of money, we have to see how to reduce more CO2. Nuclear power plants, which take 10-15 years to build, are to slow to set up and way to expensive.

still not baseload energy and I am still not sure it beats nuclear per co2 spent.

by jokoon 5y ago

still not baseload energy and I am still not sure it beats nuclear per co2 spent.

No, not baseload energy, but there is presumably an optimum overall mix (ideally one that prices in externalities appropriately, non-negligible in nuclear’s case)

cycomanic 5y ago

Can we just stop the baseload myth?! It's been debunked many times [1]. [1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/dispelling-the-nuclear-baseload-myth-nothing-renewables-cant-do-better-94486/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/dispelling-the-nuclear-baseload-...

_ph_ 5y ago
Thanks for the link, it nicely explains what I tried to summarize in my posts about the misconceptions of base load. May be it should be added that of course renewables can be dispatchable if not all of their available capacity is used all the time. The typical gas peaker plans are idle 90% of the time. But people complain less about that, as gas plans consume gas to run, while e.g. solar cells don't have any additional costs for producing electricity vs. not producing electricity. So it seems like a waste to not operate them at full capacity. Yet, the situation isn't that different from a gas plant idling most of the time. Annectodal, the French grid is mostly nuclear and they of course face the problems with running a varying grid load with "base load" power plants. The solution is, to run their nuclear power plants at an average of 75% of their full power, this gives them more ability to regulate the output, but of course it means, that the cost per energy produced raises, as they usually are not fully utilized. Which probably is the reason, why France is exporting a lot of electricity - with the European grid it is cheaper to have a varying export than a variable production.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  I think we will see much more integration across the European electricity grid in the near future, which makes production fluctuations less and less relevant (they just average out over a large grid). I didn't know how many impediments still existed for an integrated european grid. I only found out when reading up on things today, that Scandinavia operates on a different frequency to mainland Europe, which has been an obstacle for Norway to sell their surplus to the rest of Europe (they are now building a connection to Germany and are bridging the operating frequency so that should be better in the future). Here is an interesting article about this: https://www.power-technology.com/features/how-norway-became-europes-biggest-power-exporter/ https://www.power-technology.com/features/how-norway-became-...
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    The first DC connection between Germany and Norway has been put into operations some months ago. Which also solves all frequency problems :). If you look on www.electricitymap.org, you can see how much electricity is already shifted around in Europe. Like with car traffic, Germany is a country which distributes electricity across Europe. Especially France often exports to many European countries, a lot through Germany. (Which creates an inflated impression about how much French electrictiy is exported to Germany, because it is often overlooked that at the same time Germany exports the same amount or even more to neighboring countries).
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Frequency doesn't matter because at a large scale you can't match AC frequencies anyway so you go to DC for transmissions. There are other advantages to high voltage DC over AC as well that I don't remember.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      What is a large scale? The Continental European grid covers 400 million people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  You will not have operational grid scalw storage for a days worth of output any time soon, the only way to compensate for intermittency of renewable is to have massive overcapacity - we will havw a grid where peice can change sharply, and sometime be deeply negative. That can still be fine as the cost of renewables keeps falling, but complainig about capacity factor of nuclear in this context is laughable
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    We don't need grid scale of storage for a days worth of output any time soon. And I have not complained about the capacity factor of nuclear, I just have described what France has to do to be able to run a grid with varying loads with nuclear power.
eldaisfish 5y ago
that article is full of gaping holes and is often used by renewable energy proponents to shut down valid criticism of renewable technologies. Here are just two faults with it: >First, the fluctuations in variable wind and solar PV are balanced by flexible renewable energy sources that are dispatchable, i.e. can supply power on demand. These are hydro with dams, Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGTs) and concentrated solar thermal power (CST) with thermal storage, as illustrated in Figure 2. It ‘s not essential for every power station in the system to be dispatchable. Gas turbines are flexible renewable energy? Concentrated solar power is a fringe technology that is highly dependent on geography. How this is taken seriously i do not understand. The article goes on to make a rubbish point about "green" gas while completely ignoring that gas in any form is neither "Green" nor renewable. >In the USA a major computer simulation by a large team of scientists and engineers found that 80-90% renewable electricity is technically feasible and reliable (They didn’t examine 100%.) Gee, i wonder why 100% wasn't examined. Perhaps it points to an uncomfortable conclusion that solely variable, renewable energy cannot work at scale as the sole source of energy for gigawatt scale grids. The reality is that a combination is required and this reality upsets those who believe the pie-in-the-sky dream that solar and wind can power the entire grid if you only overbuild and dispatch them. As the February event in Texas demonstrated, all generation can underperform at the same time leading to near disaster. We would be wise to hedge our bets on generation sources.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  > Gas turbines are flexible renewable energy? Depends what gas you burn and how it was generated, but yeah as long as the source isnt adding fossil carbon to the air then they're part of the solution. In fact, after reading the article, the next paragraph after your quote says exactly that: > Incidentally the gas turbines can themselves be fuelled by ‘green gas’, for example from composting municipal and agricultural wastes, or produced from surpluses of renewable electricity. More on this below … The "more on this below" refers to later parts of the article that cover making syngas from water using electricity supplied by wind power
jokoon 5y ago
myth? you can turn on a nuclear reactor anytime you want, but not a solar panel/wind turbine. that is what baseload is about.

_ph_ 5y ago

"Baseload energy" is a completely misguiding term. The base load is a purely statistic artifact. Operating the grid means, that the electricity generation exactly matches the consumption at all times. For this it doesn't matter, whether the demand is close to the base load or high above it. If the electricity generation doesn't match the consumption, you get grid failures. Overproduction can be as problematic as underproduction. The base load is nothing especial, only the fraction of the maximum load of the grid, that is always drawn and can be served by power plants which cannot be regulated well. Which most of the time of the day is a big disadvantage of those power plants. If there is a demand peak, they can't serve it. If their overall output is too high, you cannot turn it down quickly enough. As coal and nuclear power traditionally had a large part of the supply and both are quite slow, for decades the net was designed to raise the "base load". Like in Belgium, where all highways were illuminated at night to consume excess nuclear energy... The good news about wind and solar is, they can be switched off quickly at any time. Their disadvantage is, and that probably is, when you talk about base load, that the maxim power output depends on the weather. With a coal plant, you can put more coals into the fire, with solar, you need to wait for sunrise. That is indeed a challenge and requires storage and grid planning to compensate. Larger scale grids which mix wind and solar are much less affected by the. But nothing of this has to do with the base load. And with nuclear: yes, wind should beat nuclear easily in the aspects of cost and CO2. But the most important metric is: the cost of building new nuclear plants is prohibitive. Just compare the costs of the most recent English nuclear plant with new wind installations. They are about 1/3rd of the cost and not have any of the problems of nuclear energy attached (operation risk, nuclear waste).

jokoon 5y ago
co2 matters, not money
- _ph_ 5y ago
  Yes, CO2 matters. But with a given amount of money, we have to see how to reduce more CO2. Nuclear power plants, which take 10-15 years to build, are to slow to set up and way to expensive.