3 ms·

tesla's service does not scale to gigawatts and gigawatt hours. Battery storage works for minutes of demand, not hours. At the moment, any battery tries to prof

tesla's service does not scale to gigawatts and gigawatt hours. Battery storage works for minutes of demand, not hours. At the moment, any battery tries to profit from arbitrage, not supplying continuous load. You mention zero energy prices but fail to address the major problem - reliability. The power is always on and losing power is catastrophic. The solution to the current problem is more transmission capacity. Not batteries. Wind and solar can help but they are not the solution unto themselves. Oh and the cost of wind and solar are not only in fuel. There's lots of costs to O&M and grid balancing, both of which are not included in their energy cost.

p_l 5y ago
While of course oversimplified, https://model.energy https://model.energy is interesting site to simulate the issues, as it tries to model a "base load" generation using green energy. The moment the storage costs of hydrogen go beyond ridiculously low (based on assumptions of available salt caverns), or if you try to use batteries only, the numbers game is over for non-nuclear - unless you add gas turbines which defeat the 0-emission target. For a simulated replacement of 2GW power plant (2-3 reactors, enough to provide for a metropolitan region base load, assuming Poland for weather/solar data) using only batteries for storage, we look at needing to build: ~29GW of solar power ~12GW of wind power ~46.7GWh of battery storage (with ~3.5GW output) Going for hydrogen storage, the result is ~10.2GW solar ~6.5GW wind ~5.5GWh battery (with 0.98GW output) ~1.5GW hydrogen gas turbine ~760GWh hydrogen storage. All of that, to replace a 2GW power plant with non-nuclear zero emission sources. (for comparison, polish base load demand is effectively around 14GW, and we don't really have any place for more pumped storage or hydro power without some funky exclusion zones and environmental destruction)

p_l 5y ago

While of course oversimplified, https://model.energy https://model.energy is interesting site to simulate the issues, as it tries to model a "base load" generation using green energy. The moment the storage costs of hydrogen go beyond ridiculously low (based on assumptions of available salt caverns), or if you try to use batteries only, the numbers game is over for non-nuclear - unless you add gas turbines which defeat the 0-emission target. For a simulated replacement of 2GW power plant (2-3 reactors, enough to provide for a metropolitan region base load, assuming Poland for weather/solar data) using only batteries for storage, we look at needing to build: ~29GW of solar power ~12GW of wind power ~46.7GWh of battery storage (with ~3.5GW output) Going for hydrogen storage, the result is ~10.2GW solar ~6.5GW wind ~5.5GWh battery (with 0.98GW output) ~1.5GW hydrogen gas turbine ~760GWh hydrogen storage. All of that, to replace a 2GW power plant with non-nuclear zero emission sources. (for comparison, polish base load demand is effectively around 14GW, and we don't really have any place for more pumped storage or hydro power without some funky exclusion zones and environmental destruction)