7 ms·

To answer your question: the sun doesn’t shine at night, that’s why we can’t do solar only (without enough energy storage to get us through the night).

by jupp0r 5y ago

ncmncm 5y ago
We will build out storage, and transmission lines, to "get us through the night".
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  Now do the math on how much storage would be needed, and how much would it cost, then show your work. Investors have done exactly that, which is why large scale storage is not happening yet.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Storage cost is plummeting even faster than solar or wind cost ever did. A renewable dollar is still better spent today on generating capacity, and will be for several more years, most places. Waiting, you get more storage for your money, and you then already have overcapacity to charge it from. Until the share of renewables approaches enough to destabilize the power grid, building out renewable generating capacity displaces more carbon from entering the atmosphere, and so is a better use of capital. At the same time, decreasing load factor of nukes and fossil plants, as they become too expensive to win bids, will drive them offline in favor of much cheaper storage methods as fast as that comes online. The enormous industrial and export value of synthetic hydrogen and ammonia production, after local tankage is full, make them the compelling choice for long-term storage. Initially, those will be burned in gas turbines as they edge out natural gas, both locally and abroad, but improving fuel cells will finally displace turbines.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      > Storage cost is plummeting even faster than solar or wind cost ever did. About batteries, that's no longer true - lithium, nickel and cobalt prices have exploded in recent months. Furthermore they're impractical ( you need massive space, and then you have a giant fire hazard) and most importantly, needed elsewhere. EV adoption is already stifled by lack of sufficient supply of batteries, and heavy duty vehicles are let to be electrified. Replacing all cars, buses, trucks, etc. ( and apparently trains in the US because they can't be bothered to electrify like normal countries) with EV versions will require a lot of batteries. And of course they have a limited lifecycle, and need to be replaced. And speaking of lifecycle, a nuclear reactor has 2-3 times ( at least) the life of a solar panel or wind turbine. About hydrogen, green hydrogen in any quantities is only theoretical at the moment. IMHO the best way forward is to hedge bets and do everything - build nuclear power plants ( and ffs don't close existing ones that can continue to operate to replace them with gas "temporarily" like the dimwits in Belgium are doing), expand renewables, invest in different potential solutions for storage. Fuel cells will probably have a part to play in transportation too, e.g. in aviation. However getting rid of the only low-CO2 baseload power source we have is shortsighted.
      - Joeri 5y ago
        and ffs don't close existing ones that can continue to operate to replace them with gas "temporarily" like the dimwits in Belgium are doing Actually, Belgium has decided to keep open the two plants that are easy to continue to operate (easy is relative, they will still require a billion euro in maintenance work). They’re still closing the five that would require extensive multi-year downtime and costly renovation (like pouring new concrete) and replacing them with gas plants, but there’s not any real alternative anyway as they would have to shut down for multiple years so new gas plants are unavoidable. An interesting fact is that a few years ago there was a constitutional court decision that prevented keeping the plants open on anything less than a five year timeline from the moment of deciding, unless there is a risk of blackouts. The only reason the plants will be able to stay open in 2025 is therefore because of Putin.
        jupp0r 5y ago
        > but there’s not any real alternative anyway as they would have to shut down for multiple years so new gas plants are unavoidable. Of course there were alternatives. One would have had to anticipate this crisis a few years ago and could have built up renewables or new nuclear plants. Instead somebody made the decision to go with fossil fuels from Russia and here we are.
        jabl 5y ago
        It's of course a complete coincidence that the "green" energy minister who was instrumental in the decision to shut down Belgian nuclear power is a lawyer whose main clients included, (drumroll... wait for it), Gazprom. Just like it's a complete coincidence that the head of the government responsible for shutting down German nuclear power, Gerhard Schröder, now is the chairman of Nord Stream, Gazprom as well as having been nominated to a director position at Rosneft.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Everybody knows batteries are the most expensive storage. So, rising battery prices have no impact on utility-scale storage cost. A GW-scale electric ammonia synthesis plant is under construction in Norway. Hint, you don't built a GW-scale operation on unproven tech. We will need hundreds more of them. Every cent diverted to building nukes from building out renewables brings climate catastrophe nearer.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    No need to do the math: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292118301107 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001429211... It's ultimately inevitable.
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    I don't have to do the math. Solar+storage is being sold for 4 cents / kWh. https://www.8minute.com/solar-projects/ https://www.8minute.com/solar-projects/
    - DennisP 5y ago
      For most projects, there's at most four hours of storage, just enough to shift peak daytime supply to peak evening demand. That's not the same as getting through the night, or having enough overcapacity to meet demand in cloudy winter weeks. Lazard puts the wholesale cost of solar PV plus four hours storage at $165 to $296/MWh: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Until we have more renewable generating capacity online, four hours is plenty. As the share of power generation increases, building more storage is favored. Lazard's figures are (as is proper) for existing storage, not for the much cheaper storage that will be built. It is generally a mistake to assume people controlling billion-dollar budgets have no idea what they are doing.
        DennisP 5y ago
        Yes, and building more storage raises the cost by quite a lot, as you can see by Lazard's cost figures for storage. Nuclear can easily be competitive in a grid not backed by natural gas, especially if MSR companies like Thorcon are successful in lowering nuclear costs.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        Lazards's cost figures are backward-looking, so not representative. As I already pointed out. Yet, generation + even those figures is still cheaper than building nukes.
- jupp0r 5y ago
  I hope we will, the problem currently is that this is not competitive compared to just burning natural gas. This is because the externalities related to global warming are not accounted for when the market determines the price of gas. Electricity will be more expensive either way and this really hasn’t sunk in yet. Were these costs accounted for, nuclear would be quite competitively priced, even with newer more modern reactors vs running the insecure ones from the 70s forever which is what we do now for the most part. That being said, there is great potential in batteries becoming much denser and cheaper.
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
    > I hope we will, the problem currently is that this is not competitive compared to just burning natural gas. [Citation required] Grid-scale battery systems have fallen more than 70% since 2015. > nuclear would be quite competitively priced Nuclear is one of the most expensive and keeps getting more expensive; it's not competing against natural gas. It's competing against wind and solar, the two cheapest forms of generation. Solar is dropping ~10% per year...
    - sofixa 5y ago
      > Grid-scale battery systems have fallen more than 70% since 2015. Then why are there checks notes 0 deployments ? Battery costs are exploding currently due to the hikes in prices of lithium, nickel and cobalt. Battery demand outstrips supply by far, and batteries are needed elsewhere. > It's competing against wind and solar, the two cheapest forms of generation. They're complimentary, not competition. Solar+wind alone
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Poor research skills do not tell us much about power generation build-out status.
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      > Grid-scale battery systems have fallen more than 70% since 2015. Grid-scale batteries are still tiny. Lithium batteries will not solve the grid problem anytime soon. Lithium (and co) will be strained to the max already. Every other technology has barley been deployed at all. And there is already a whole litter of energy storage startups that have died. > Nuclear is one of the most expensive and keeps getting more expensive In order to get more expensive we would actually have to build plant. But literally any series engineering analysis of modern GenIV plants show gigantic potential of cost improvement. And if we could actually build them in series production there is another order of magnitude of potential cost improvement.
legulere 5y ago
With concentrated solar you can store the heat and generate power in the night.
- DennisP 5y ago
  Yes but that costs quite a bit more than PV. Lazard puts it at $126 to $156/MWh. https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... That overlaps with Lazard's range for conventional nuclear. And there are lots of reasons to think molten salt reactors in general would be significantly cheaper. Thorcon thinks it can get their cost down to $30/MWh.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Lazard's figures are for the cost of storage already built, not for the cost of the storage that will be built, a much lower figure.
    - DennisP 5y ago
      The figure I quoted above was for thermal solar with storage. That's pretty basic tech, the storage is generally thermal as well. I don't see why the price would drop all that much. Lazard is the source that most renewables advocates point me to, to prove how uncompetitive nuclear is. If your counterargument is that future costs will be lower than today's costs, then I think it's fair to also consider the costs Thorcon and others estimate for molten salt reactors.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        ThorCon true costs are just unknown. Storage, like solar and wind generation, costs are subject to statistical laws.
        MertsA 5y ago
        That's just not the case. Pumped hydro is fundamentally limited in scope. It might be fairly cost effective but you only have a small amount of suitable sites, it can never scale up by many orders of magnitude to support the energy storage needed to enable meeting all energy demands with solar, wind, and hydro. That leaves the only proven energy storage method of grid scale electric batteries which again are only a tiny miniscule fraction of the energy needed. You can make more and more batteries, but lithium isn't plentiful, good luck mining enough lithium to support 100% electric vehicles and energy storage, prices would go through the roof. Personally I think deferring electric vehicle charging and feeding power back into the grid could help a lot here and make this make economic sense, but that doesn't give you enough energy storage to go 100% solar and wind. Right now intermittent power sources are being subsidized heavily with being able to lean on cheap natural gas. Nuclear doesn't depend on any resources that would be strained even if relying on Nuclear power for 100% of demand. Nuclear is also power dense and other than NIMBY concerns is easier to site closer to where the energy is needed than large scale wind farms. Before you say "rooftop solar!" I'll admit, a PV panel is great for being able to scale down to tiny amounts of power instead of just "hundreds of MWe". That still doesn't address the fact that massive swaths of the globe do not get enough sunlight during the winter months to make 100% solar every week of the year worth it. You could currently overproduce enough in the summer to be net zero, but that doesn't change the fact that you're still relying on massive overproduction in sunnier climates and transporting energy large distances or fossil fuels to make up the difference. No chance energy storage bridges the gaps for seasonal changes instead of just a few days. Renewables true costs are just unknown.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

To answer your question: the sun doesn’t shine at night, that’s why we can’t do solar only (without enough energy storage to get us through the night).

by jupp0r 5y ago

To answer your question: the sun doesn’t shine at night, that’s why we can’t do solar only (without enough energy storage to get us through the night).

ncmncm 5y ago

We will build out storage, and transmission lines, to "get us through the night".

xyzzyz 5y ago
Now do the math on how much storage would be needed, and how much would it cost, then show your work. Investors have done exactly that, which is why large scale storage is not happening yet.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Storage cost is plummeting even faster than solar or wind cost ever did. A renewable dollar is still better spent today on generating capacity, and will be for several more years, most places. Waiting, you get more storage for your money, and you then already have overcapacity to charge it from. Until the share of renewables approaches enough to destabilize the power grid, building out renewable generating capacity displaces more carbon from entering the atmosphere, and so is a better use of capital. At the same time, decreasing load factor of nukes and fossil plants, as they become too expensive to win bids, will drive them offline in favor of much cheaper storage methods as fast as that comes online. The enormous industrial and export value of synthetic hydrogen and ammonia production, after local tankage is full, make them the compelling choice for long-term storage. Initially, those will be burned in gas turbines as they edge out natural gas, both locally and abroad, but improving fuel cells will finally displace turbines.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > Storage cost is plummeting even faster than solar or wind cost ever did. About batteries, that's no longer true - lithium, nickel and cobalt prices have exploded in recent months. Furthermore they're impractical ( you need massive space, and then you have a giant fire hazard) and most importantly, needed elsewhere. EV adoption is already stifled by lack of sufficient supply of batteries, and heavy duty vehicles are let to be electrified. Replacing all cars, buses, trucks, etc. ( and apparently trains in the US because they can't be bothered to electrify like normal countries) with EV versions will require a lot of batteries. And of course they have a limited lifecycle, and need to be replaced. And speaking of lifecycle, a nuclear reactor has 2-3 times ( at least) the life of a solar panel or wind turbine. About hydrogen, green hydrogen in any quantities is only theoretical at the moment. IMHO the best way forward is to hedge bets and do everything - build nuclear power plants ( and ffs don't close existing ones that can continue to operate to replace them with gas "temporarily" like the dimwits in Belgium are doing), expand renewables, invest in different potential solutions for storage. Fuel cells will probably have a part to play in transportation too, e.g. in aviation. However getting rid of the only low-CO2 baseload power source we have is shortsighted.
    - Joeri 5y ago
      and ffs don't close existing ones that can continue to operate to replace them with gas "temporarily" like the dimwits in Belgium are doing Actually, Belgium has decided to keep open the two plants that are easy to continue to operate (easy is relative, they will still require a billion euro in maintenance work). They’re still closing the five that would require extensive multi-year downtime and costly renovation (like pouring new concrete) and replacing them with gas plants, but there’s not any real alternative anyway as they would have to shut down for multiple years so new gas plants are unavoidable. An interesting fact is that a few years ago there was a constitutional court decision that prevented keeping the plants open on anything less than a five year timeline from the moment of deciding, unless there is a risk of blackouts. The only reason the plants will be able to stay open in 2025 is therefore because of Putin.
      - jupp0r 5y ago
        > but there’s not any real alternative anyway as they would have to shut down for multiple years so new gas plants are unavoidable. Of course there were alternatives. One would have had to anticipate this crisis a few years ago and could have built up renewables or new nuclear plants. Instead somebody made the decision to go with fossil fuels from Russia and here we are.
        jabl 5y ago
        It's of course a complete coincidence that the "green" energy minister who was instrumental in the decision to shut down Belgian nuclear power is a lawyer whose main clients included, (drumroll... wait for it), Gazprom. Just like it's a complete coincidence that the head of the government responsible for shutting down German nuclear power, Gerhard Schröder, now is the chairman of Nord Stream, Gazprom as well as having been nominated to a director position at Rosneft.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Everybody knows batteries are the most expensive storage. So, rising battery prices have no impact on utility-scale storage cost. A GW-scale electric ammonia synthesis plant is under construction in Norway. Hint, you don't built a GW-scale operation on unproven tech. We will need hundreds more of them. Every cent diverted to building nukes from building out renewables brings climate catastrophe nearer.
- jhgb 5y ago
  No need to do the math: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292118301107 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001429211... It's ultimately inevitable.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  I don't have to do the math. Solar+storage is being sold for 4 cents / kWh. https://www.8minute.com/solar-projects/ https://www.8minute.com/solar-projects/
  - DennisP 5y ago
    For most projects, there's at most four hours of storage, just enough to shift peak daytime supply to peak evening demand. That's not the same as getting through the night, or having enough overcapacity to meet demand in cloudy winter weeks. Lazard puts the wholesale cost of solar PV plus four hours storage at $165 to $296/MWh: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Until we have more renewable generating capacity online, four hours is plenty. As the share of power generation increases, building more storage is favored. Lazard's figures are (as is proper) for existing storage, not for the much cheaper storage that will be built. It is generally a mistake to assume people controlling billion-dollar budgets have no idea what they are doing.
      - DennisP 5y ago
        Yes, and building more storage raises the cost by quite a lot, as you can see by Lazard's cost figures for storage. Nuclear can easily be competitive in a grid not backed by natural gas, especially if MSR companies like Thorcon are successful in lowering nuclear costs.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        Lazards's cost figures are backward-looking, so not representative. As I already pointed out. Yet, generation + even those figures is still cheaper than building nukes.
jupp0r 5y ago
I hope we will, the problem currently is that this is not competitive compared to just burning natural gas. This is because the externalities related to global warming are not accounted for when the market determines the price of gas. Electricity will be more expensive either way and this really hasn’t sunk in yet. Were these costs accounted for, nuclear would be quite competitively priced, even with newer more modern reactors vs running the insecure ones from the 70s forever which is what we do now for the most part. That being said, there is great potential in batteries becoming much denser and cheaper.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  > I hope we will, the problem currently is that this is not competitive compared to just burning natural gas. [Citation required] Grid-scale battery systems have fallen more than 70% since 2015. > nuclear would be quite competitively priced Nuclear is one of the most expensive and keeps getting more expensive; it's not competing against natural gas. It's competing against wind and solar, the two cheapest forms of generation. Solar is dropping ~10% per year...
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > Grid-scale battery systems have fallen more than 70% since 2015. Then why are there checks notes 0 deployments ? Battery costs are exploding currently due to the hikes in prices of lithium, nickel and cobalt. Battery demand outstrips supply by far, and batteries are needed elsewhere. > It's competing against wind and solar, the two cheapest forms of generation. They're complimentary, not competition. Solar+wind alone
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Poor research skills do not tell us much about power generation build-out status.
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    > Grid-scale battery systems have fallen more than 70% since 2015. Grid-scale batteries are still tiny. Lithium batteries will not solve the grid problem anytime soon. Lithium (and co) will be strained to the max already. Every other technology has barley been deployed at all. And there is already a whole litter of energy storage startups that have died. > Nuclear is one of the most expensive and keeps getting more expensive In order to get more expensive we would actually have to build plant. But literally any series engineering analysis of modern GenIV plants show gigantic potential of cost improvement. And if we could actually build them in series production there is another order of magnitude of potential cost improvement.

legulere 5y ago

With concentrated solar you can store the heat and generate power in the night.

DennisP 5y ago
Yes but that costs quite a bit more than PV. Lazard puts it at $126 to $156/MWh. https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... That overlaps with Lazard's range for conventional nuclear. And there are lots of reasons to think molten salt reactors in general would be significantly cheaper. Thorcon thinks it can get their cost down to $30/MWh.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Lazard's figures are for the cost of storage already built, not for the cost of the storage that will be built, a much lower figure.
  - DennisP 5y ago
    The figure I quoted above was for thermal solar with storage. That's pretty basic tech, the storage is generally thermal as well. I don't see why the price would drop all that much. Lazard is the source that most renewables advocates point me to, to prove how uncompetitive nuclear is. If your counterargument is that future costs will be lower than today's costs, then I think it's fair to also consider the costs Thorcon and others estimate for molten salt reactors.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      ThorCon true costs are just unknown. Storage, like solar and wind generation, costs are subject to statistical laws.
      - MertsA 5y ago
        That's just not the case. Pumped hydro is fundamentally limited in scope. It might be fairly cost effective but you only have a small amount of suitable sites, it can never scale up by many orders of magnitude to support the energy storage needed to enable meeting all energy demands with solar, wind, and hydro. That leaves the only proven energy storage method of grid scale electric batteries which again are only a tiny miniscule fraction of the energy needed. You can make more and more batteries, but lithium isn't plentiful, good luck mining enough lithium to support 100% electric vehicles and energy storage, prices would go through the roof. Personally I think deferring electric vehicle charging and feeding power back into the grid could help a lot here and make this make economic sense, but that doesn't give you enough energy storage to go 100% solar and wind. Right now intermittent power sources are being subsidized heavily with being able to lean on cheap natural gas. Nuclear doesn't depend on any resources that would be strained even if relying on Nuclear power for 100% of demand. Nuclear is also power dense and other than NIMBY concerns is easier to site closer to where the energy is needed than large scale wind farms. Before you say "rooftop solar!" I'll admit, a PV panel is great for being able to scale down to tiny amounts of power instead of just "hundreds of MWe". That still doesn't address the fact that massive swaths of the globe do not get enough sunlight during the winter months to make 100% solar every week of the year worth it. You could currently overproduce enough in the summer to be net zero, but that doesn't change the fact that you're still relying on massive overproduction in sunnier climates and transporting energy large distances or fossil fuels to make up the difference. No chance energy storage bridges the gaps for seasonal changes instead of just a few days. Renewables true costs are just unknown.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]