4 ms·

"Do everything" is wrong. This is why: You want the most power per dollar of capex, and you want to have it come on line as fast as possible. Electricity is fun

by Zigurd 5y ago

"Do everything" is wrong. This is why: You want the most power per dollar of capex, and you want to have it come on line as fast as possible. Electricity is fungible. You can't tell a coal watt from a solar watt from a nuke watt. If you want to avoid coal, oil, and gas for externalities, you want the thing that costs the least and arrives soonest. That's renewables. Every dollar spend on nuclear would deliver more power sooner if spent on renewables.

flawi 5y ago
Except you can't just invest it all into renewables and expect to have a stable power grid, the equation isn't quite as simple as "avg_power / $ capex". Last analysis I saw of this argued that the amount of "over-provisioning" needed to cover baseline demand with renewables made them prohibitively expensive as the sole solution. Peaker and storage solutions aim to solve that, but you need to build that capacity in addition to renewables.
- Zigurd 5y ago
  Renewables are nowhere near to running up against the need to buy more grid interconnection, storage, synfuel technology, or other ways of using surplus power and providing power from storage or from other regions. Until renewables displace a lot more fossil fuel power, those costs are not a consideration. That might happen within a decade in places like New Zealand. Still, capex on grid scale storage is up and costs are trending down: https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/investment-trends-in-grid-scale-battery-storage/#gref https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/investment-tren...
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  Here's a fully costed plan to green the grid. It only requires over-provisioning of 20%. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify Here's an anti-renewable paper that quite ironically makes the point quite well that battery storage is quite viable: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z Take a look at the graphs at the back. It shows a 99.99% reliable grid made up of an optimal mix of solar & wind, 3x over-provisioned along with 3 hours of storage and a continental grid. We don't need 3x over-provisioning because the paper doesn't include hydro or existing nuclear. And 3 hours of storage is a lot of batteries, but it's a lot cheaper than building new nuclear.

by Zigurd 5y ago

flawi 5y ago

Except you can't just invest it all into renewables and expect to have a stable power grid, the equation isn't quite as simple as "avg_power / $ capex". Last analysis I saw of this argued that the amount of "over-provisioning" needed to cover baseline demand with renewables made them prohibitively expensive as the sole solution. Peaker and storage solutions aim to solve that, but you need to build that capacity in addition to renewables.

Zigurd 5y ago
Renewables are nowhere near to running up against the need to buy more grid interconnection, storage, synfuel technology, or other ways of using surplus power and providing power from storage or from other regions. Until renewables displace a lot more fossil fuel power, those costs are not a consideration. That might happen within a decade in places like New Zealand. Still, capex on grid scale storage is up and costs are trending down: https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/investment-trends-in-grid-scale-battery-storage/#gref https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/investment-tren...
bryanlarsen 5y ago
Here's a fully costed plan to green the grid. It only requires over-provisioning of 20%. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify Here's an anti-renewable paper that quite ironically makes the point quite well that battery storage is quite viable: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z Take a look at the graphs at the back. It shows a 99.99% reliable grid made up of an optimal mix of solar & wind, 3x over-provisioned along with 3 hours of storage and a continental grid. We don't need 3x over-provisioning because the paper doesn't include hydro or existing nuclear. And 3 hours of storage is a lot of batteries, but it's a lot cheaper than building new nuclear.