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I'm happy that this is getting some attention. There will never he "just renewable" power grid due to renewables intermittency. The realistic options are rene

by glogla 5y ago

I'm happy that this is getting some attention. There will never he "just renewable" power grid due to renewables intermittency. The realistic options are renewables + some other energy source, or renewables + a lot of storage. Renewables + storage has a problem: energy storage at scale is not a solved problem at all, either it is hard to build (pumped hydro) not scalable (batteries) or barely in PoC stages (various air storages and trains going uphill or whatever). Renewables + other energy source has the problem of "what is the other energy source" and right now, that is fossil fuels - there's a lot of greenwashing going on with natural gas, for example, which is as bad as coal with regards to carbon due to all the methane escaping along the way. Now the argument here is that without the storage being available, there has to be other energy source and in that case, the other energy source should be nuclear. Because the storage just doesn't exist so if the other energy source is not nuclear, it is going to be coal and gas. But of course, people are just going to ignore the situation and parrot FUDs like "nuclear is too expensive" and "what about the waste", effectively pushing for coal and gas.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pydry 5y ago
Pumped hydro is "harder to build"? Fengning cost $1.8 billion for 3.6 gigawatts and took about 7 years to build. Hinkley point C will be about $30 billion dollars for 3.2 GW and will take about 10 years to build. Even prima facie I don't see how building a nuclear power plant could seem easy compared to pushing water uphill.
- glogla 5y ago
  One of them being in China and the other being in UK would probably explain the costs by itself.
  - Arnt 5y ago
    You mean that labour is cheap in China? I've no idea whether it's representative, but I know a construction project where the labour costs were 12% of the final bill. That Hinkley Point project mentioned spends about $8m per day, how much does a construction worker cost per day in that area?
    - pydry 5y ago
      For reference, coire glas pumped storage in the UK is $1.3 billion and 1.5 GW / 30 GWh. More expensive than China, but not wildly so. 5 days' worth of nuclear power plant's output's worth of storage is 384 GWh. Assuming coire glas prices, $1.3 billion*384/30 maxes out at $16.6 billion or roughly half a hinkley. That also gives max output of 19.5GW that is fully dispatchable as compared to 3.2GW which comes out whether you need it or not (& must still be paired with storage/gas to match demand). Lowering the power rating will lower the cost of the pumped storage. Wind energy is currently about 1/3 the price of nuclear, so assuming 5-6 day lulls it still comes out break-even at the very least. Until you consider insuring against $800 billion fukushima style clean up costs. If we properly accounted for the cost incurred by insuring against this risk we'd never build another nuclear plant ever again.
- AndrewDucker 5y ago
  Worth pointing out that pumped storage can store power for months if necessary, but it can generally only supply electricity for several hours before it runs out. Whereas a nuclear powerplant will supply that electricity indefinitely. So if you have a wind lull that lasts several days you may run into issues unless you have a lot of pumped storage.
  - lm28469 5y ago
    It's also worth pointing out that to pump water up hill you still need an energy source...
    - Arnt 5y ago
      A simple problem if you're willing to pump that water uphill while the sun is shining.
      - lm28469 5y ago
        ""Simple"" if you have the topography/natural resources to build it in the first place, ie not that simple
        pydry 5y ago
        http://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/ http://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/ This seems to think that there are 100x as many topogrophical options as are required under pessimistic circumstances.
        lm28469 5y ago
        Sucks to be in Europe I guess, which is where I'm based. It should be done everywhere it can be done cheaply but it's still no viable alternative
        Arnt 5y ago
naranha 5y ago
Just want to point out that logically there is a third option: Renewables + storage + other energy source (nuclear). I wonder why discussions around energy always end up in false dichotomies like nuclear XOR renewables, when the most logical solution is to use every option we have to solve climate change.
fy20 5y ago
In the US the majority of natural gas comes from "tight gas" which is produced by fracking. It can also be produced as a by-product of crude oil extraction (the alternative is flaring it off) or from biogas (capturing methane from trash), but both of those accounts for very little production [0]. There are industrial processes that need natural gas as part of the chemical reaction, so there will always be a market for it. Using natural gas for electricity or heating is definitely not "green" or renewable. [0] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/where-our-natural-gas-comes-from.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/where-our-na...
ben_w 5y ago
> There will never he "just renewable" power grid due to renewables intermittency. The realistic options are renewables + some other energy source, or renewables + a lot of storage. On the contrary, in principle there can be. However, even though a napkin estimate says it’s orders of magnitude cheaper, there are a lot of new and exciting problems with building an intercontinental power grid. And I keep thinking I need to make a video or a blog post about why beamed power is a terrible idea for Earth, but again, technically it’s a way to avoid storage. But enough batteries for cars is also enough for a renewable grid, so it’s probably not important.
lm28469 5y ago
There is also a major issue with the current way renewables are used. They aren't used to replace existing sources, they're used on top of existing sources: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig1-installed-net-power-generation-capacity-germany-2002-2020_0.png?itok=0flak_H1 https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... Renewable would only work if we stopped our quest for constant growth, which won't happen any time soon, in the meantime it's 90% marketing: "keep consuming it's green"
- pydry 5y ago
  Currently every megawatt produced by wind is just a megawatt not produced by gas. Storage doesnt really make economic sense until gas is consistently priced according to the environmental damage it does or wind starts massively overproducing. Of course, nuclear makes little economic sense if you factor in disaster insurance, but nobody does. Nuclear power is simultaneously too dangerous for private insurers to touch with a barge pole and also apparently too safe for us to worry about it. The cost of maintaining nuclear arsenals/submarines/etc. explodes without a nuclear industry so the UK, US, China, France, etc. are happy to throw oversized subsidies at it, let the taxpayer insure it all and run PR campaigns about how only it can save the planet. ...all while glaring angrily at Germany for turning off coal plants "too slowly" while slyly ignoring that Japan is turning a whole hell of a lot of them on.
danbruc 5y ago
Another option is to overbuild renewable production capacity and transport the power over larger distances. Probably not the most economical solution and I guess almost certainly not able to completely eliminate storage and non-renewable requirements but it probably can narrow the gap.

by glogla 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

pydry 5y ago

Pumped hydro is "harder to build"? Fengning cost $1.8 billion for 3.6 gigawatts and took about 7 years to build. Hinkley point C will be about $30 billion dollars for 3.2 GW and will take about 10 years to build. Even prima facie I don't see how building a nuclear power plant could seem easy compared to pushing water uphill.

glogla 5y ago
One of them being in China and the other being in UK would probably explain the costs by itself.
- Arnt 5y ago
  You mean that labour is cheap in China? I've no idea whether it's representative, but I know a construction project where the labour costs were 12% of the final bill. That Hinkley Point project mentioned spends about $8m per day, how much does a construction worker cost per day in that area?
  - pydry 5y ago
    For reference, coire glas pumped storage in the UK is $1.3 billion and 1.5 GW / 30 GWh. More expensive than China, but not wildly so. 5 days' worth of nuclear power plant's output's worth of storage is 384 GWh. Assuming coire glas prices, $1.3 billion*384/30 maxes out at $16.6 billion or roughly half a hinkley. That also gives max output of 19.5GW that is fully dispatchable as compared to 3.2GW which comes out whether you need it or not (& must still be paired with storage/gas to match demand). Lowering the power rating will lower the cost of the pumped storage. Wind energy is currently about 1/3 the price of nuclear, so assuming 5-6 day lulls it still comes out break-even at the very least. Until you consider insuring against $800 billion fukushima style clean up costs. If we properly accounted for the cost incurred by insuring against this risk we'd never build another nuclear plant ever again.
AndrewDucker 5y ago
Worth pointing out that pumped storage can store power for months if necessary, but it can generally only supply electricity for several hours before it runs out. Whereas a nuclear powerplant will supply that electricity indefinitely. So if you have a wind lull that lasts several days you may run into issues unless you have a lot of pumped storage.
- lm28469 5y ago
  It's also worth pointing out that to pump water up hill you still need an energy source...
  - Arnt 5y ago
    A simple problem if you're willing to pump that water uphill while the sun is shining.
    - lm28469 5y ago
      ""Simple"" if you have the topography/natural resources to build it in the first place, ie not that simple
      - pydry 5y ago
        http://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/ http://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/ This seems to think that there are 100x as many topogrophical options as are required under pessimistic circumstances.
        lm28469 5y ago
        Sucks to be in Europe I guess, which is where I'm based. It should be done everywhere it can be done cheaply but it's still no viable alternative
        Arnt 5y ago

naranha 5y ago

Just want to point out that logically there is a third option: Renewables + storage + other energy source (nuclear). I wonder why discussions around energy always end up in false dichotomies like nuclear XOR renewables, when the most logical solution is to use every option we have to solve climate change.

fy20 5y ago

In the US the majority of natural gas comes from "tight gas" which is produced by fracking. It can also be produced as a by-product of crude oil extraction (the alternative is flaring it off) or from biogas (capturing methane from trash), but both of those accounts for very little production [0]. There are industrial processes that need natural gas as part of the chemical reaction, so there will always be a market for it. Using natural gas for electricity or heating is definitely not "green" or renewable. [0] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/where-our-natural-gas-comes-from.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/where-our-na...

ben_w 5y ago

> There will never he "just renewable" power grid due to renewables intermittency. The realistic options are renewables + some other energy source, or renewables + a lot of storage. On the contrary, in principle there can be. However, even though a napkin estimate says it’s orders of magnitude cheaper, there are a lot of new and exciting problems with building an intercontinental power grid. And I keep thinking I need to make a video or a blog post about why beamed power is a terrible idea for Earth, but again, technically it’s a way to avoid storage. But enough batteries for cars is also enough for a renewable grid, so it’s probably not important.

lm28469 5y ago

There is also a major issue with the current way renewables are used. They aren't used to replace existing sources, they're used on top of existing sources: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig1-installed-net-power-generation-capacity-germany-2002-2020_0.png?itok=0flak_H1 https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... Renewable would only work if we stopped our quest for constant growth, which won't happen any time soon, in the meantime it's 90% marketing: "keep consuming it's green"

pydry 5y ago
Currently every megawatt produced by wind is just a megawatt not produced by gas. Storage doesnt really make economic sense until gas is consistently priced according to the environmental damage it does or wind starts massively overproducing. Of course, nuclear makes little economic sense if you factor in disaster insurance, but nobody does. Nuclear power is simultaneously too dangerous for private insurers to touch with a barge pole and also apparently too safe for us to worry about it. The cost of maintaining nuclear arsenals/submarines/etc. explodes without a nuclear industry so the UK, US, China, France, etc. are happy to throw oversized subsidies at it, let the taxpayer insure it all and run PR campaigns about how only it can save the planet. ...all while glaring angrily at Germany for turning off coal plants "too slowly" while slyly ignoring that Japan is turning a whole hell of a lot of them on.

danbruc 5y ago

Another option is to overbuild renewable production capacity and transport the power over larger distances. Probably not the most economical solution and I guess almost certainly not able to completely eliminate storage and non-renewable requirements but it probably can narrow the gap.