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Smaller plants combined with energy storage seems like it would help here. When prices go negative store the extra energy until prices also go back up.
by tedivm 5y ago
Smaller plants combined with energy storage seems like it would help here. When prices go negative store the extra energy until prices also go back up.
- dragontamer 5y agoIf energy storage solutions were sufficient, there wouldn't be any negative priced energy! Obviously, everyone who can store energy maxes out their battery banks during these times of negative-cost energy. The reason why prices are negative is because the sum of market participants still has a shortage of storage. We have a shortage of storage because the amount of energy our grid uses is on a behemoth scale, barely comprehensible. Dozens-of-GW-hr pumped hydro stations fill up their storage to the brim on a constant basis.
- tedivm 5y agoEnergy storage has gotten a lot better in the last few years, just as solar and other things have. Most of the plants in the US are decades old. That said, I'm not saying it'll completely solve the problem- just increase efficiency and reduce the problem.
- engineer_22 5y agoIf you can make it work you'll be a very rich person, tedivm. I encourage you to aggressively pursue this opportunity.
- ncmncm 5y agoWe have a shortage of storage because it takes a long time to build out that much capacity. Until intermittent sources represent a much bigger piece of the pie, a renewable dollar has been much better spent on generating capacity. As the fraction of capacity increases, the need for storage starts to rise. So, now we see big storage projects breaking ground, to come on line in the next few years. The amount of storage finally built will be astonishing to contemplate.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- qqqwerty 5y agoEnergy storage is expensive. Nuclear is expensive. Solar and wind are cheap. If we are going to need energy storage regardless (we will), then why not combine it with the cheapest sources rather than the most expensive?
- godelski 5y agoThere's another factor in the equation that you're not considering. "How much battery storage". The equation is finding an optima on a(cost of nuclear) + b(cost of renewables) + c(cost of storage). Restricting the equation to just aN + c_NS vs bR + c_RS is rather absurd (only something laypeople do and not something people in the energy community do). But in that case we can easily see that c_N << c_R, since nuclear provides a baseline storage. This brings us back to using the systems to complement one another (aN + bR + cS). After all, the goal is to get zero emission energy at the cheapest value, not energy at the cheapest value.
- qqqwerty 5y agoI did consider it, I work in the energy industry after all. But even your equation over simplifies things considerably. Things like cost over time (batteries are likely to get much cheaper in the future, whereas solar and nuclear are not likely to decrease much), and deployment characteristics (much easier/cheaper for the grid to add small incremental solar+wind+storage deployments over time then to add large individual nuclear deployments once or twice a decade) I am fully supportive of using whatever technology that gets us to a zero carbon grid as quickly as possible. And right now the most advanced research in this area is suggesting that renewables + storage is our best bet.