5 ms·

> https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline If the price of batteries continues to decline exponentiall

> https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline If the price of batteries continues to decline exponentially, then absolutely, renewables will be great. I don't they will be 4x cheaper per decade going forward, though. Maybe 2x cheaper per decade for a few more decades is more likely, if so 2050 might be a break-even point. > Complement: V2G will be a key, here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid V2G can absolutely make some contribution for very short-term fluctuations (such as for from Nuclear ramp up/down cycles, but the capacity several orders of magnitude too small to compensate for a few weeks of almost no wind in the North Sea. > Prices fluctuations? Yes. The extreme price fluctuations seen this winter (both from day-to-day, but also compared to earlier years) is due to coming very close to reaching max capacity. For Norwegian consumers, this is already extremely sticky, since many households are experiencing increased costs of $1000-$2000 per month (more in some cases), even after government subsidies. Also, the reservoirs in the hydro systems are already unusually low. so next year may be worse. I don't think any Norwegian government will survive that. In other words, Denmark should expect that at some point soon, Norway will shut down exports until the situation has normalized. >> Denmark imports 17% of their consumption > Denmark officially targets 84% electricity wind by 2035. What happens to Danmark's electricity market if they are no longer able to import power from Norway and Sweden? > This is mainly a financial matter. A 'cooperation' achieved thru a market lets some buy production surpluses on the spot market at a bargain, store them then sell with a profit wipes out such outrage. You would be right if Norway were able to coordinate that internally in ways that did not hurt the population. But in Norway, since electricity is used for heating (and it is cold here). That would have to mean a setup where households were able to buy electricity at prices close to the historical prices, in other words, it would require us to do the very thing that stops a market from working. We could still sell excess production (after reservoir levels return to "safe), and could also offer foreign energy companies to "rent" available storage in our hydro systems. But being a full member of the open energy market simply doesn't work for Norway at these price levels. It's kind of being members of an open market for food when your population is starving, even if you're a net exporter. (I'm sure Denmark would strangle food exports, if the price became so high that danes could no longer afford to eat.) > Yes, a very low LCOE offers financial provisions for the infrastructure (grid, storage...). Renewable sources' LCOE is low and falls sharply. Nuclear-produced electricity cost, on the other hand, is way higher and raises. Surprises (real building costs, waste management, decommission, accident...) may further extend the gap. The prices of nuclear is caused by political choices. With rational (or only sightly paranoid) regulations, nuclear would be a lot cheaper. > The current (awful) nuclear-building capacity needs a miracle to adjust. You may be right. Still, there are a lot more pro-nuclear people now, than when I advocated for nuclear 15 years ago. > A continental mix reduces this need. Not below "several days". Also, long distance energy transfers are expensive, and require massive investments in infrastructure. Not only that, it depends on a lot of countries participating. Maybe Greece has other ideas? > The last Korean president was against nuclear and practically froze it in Korea. The newly elected president is pro-nuclear, though. I'm aware of some shady dealings with earlier plants, but I didn't see any good argument that it shifted the cost enought to really matter for the long term electricity price. > Nuclear isn't emission free (building, obtaining the fuel, waste management, decommission... aren't emission-free). True, but the same goes for all other energy sources, and Nuclear seem to have lower emissions than all "renewable" sources, as far as I can tell from your link. > In any case who will build them? I said ideal, meaning that should be the goal. Every movement toward that goal would be positive. 30% is much better than going to 15%. However, if there really is will to do it, it absolutely can be done. Unless there is some extreme event (such as a Russian nuke landing in Poland), Europe is unlikely to act with such resolve, though. > We more and more know how to build 'renewables' Yes, but like with nuclear, there is a lot of fudging the number even when not accounting for storage needs. And for the storage part, all we have is some kind of hope that it will become cheap enough in the future. And without enough storage, Northern Europe is almost at "Peak Renewable" already (and Southern Europe doesn't seem very interested). For every new windmill we build from now on (without storage), we are going to add to price fluctuations, meaning that the sales price for wind (before subsidies) will be reduced for each mill. Being about 30 times lower than natural gas (without carbon capture) is only a rounding error away from zero, imo.

natmaka 4y ago
> V2G can absolutely make some contribution for very short-term fluctuations (such as for from Nuclear ramp up/down cycles, but the capacity several orders of magnitude too small to compensate for a few weeks of almost no wind in the North Sea. As noted we know efficient ways to reduce intermittence-induced production variability. If you are interested in all this the very scientific study described by the article I refenced is of interest. Note that other studies deliver similar results, see "How synchronous is wind energy production among European countries?" -- Monforti, Gaetani, Vignati). Those conclusions are sound for other continents, for the US see "Is it always windy somewhere? Occurrence of low-wind-power events over large areas" (Handschy, Rose, Apt), for China see Liu, Xiao Wang, Dai, Qi "Analysis on the hourly spatiotemporal complementarities between China's solar and wind energy resources spreading in a wide area"... > The extreme price fluctuations Yes, the context (economic crisis, energetic transition, international tensions...) isn't keen. I didn't know how hard it hits in Norway. In many Western nations it hits very hard but this is hidden from public sight by throwing public money at the problem (usually by sacrificing usually perceived energy taxes in order to create provisions or even pay for the current high market price), leading to more debt and therefore higher taxes (as usual the taxpayer and consumer will nonetheless pay, and more because the very government has a cost, burning part of taxes). > the reservoirs in the hydro systems are already unusually low Yes (climate...), and the planners have to keep some reserve in order to preserve necessary margins (emergencies and follow-up). > Denmark should expect that at some point soon, Norway will shut down exports until the situation has normalized. A huge grid offers more potential commercial partners, and the probability of an extreme "nobody is able to sell" case gets lower and lower. > What happens to Danmark's electricity market if they are no longer able to import power from Norway and Sweden? There are many factors: how much parties can plan for it in advance, find others sellers, curtail, backup... The composition gives the net result. >> This is mainly a financial matter. A 'cooperation' achieved thru a market > You would be right if Norway were able to coordinate that internally in ways that did not hurt the population. But in Norway, since electricity is used for heating (and it is cold here). That would have to mean a setup where households were able to buy electricity at prices close to the historical prices We can predict a fair part of the parameters, therefore many cases are manageable. Even worst-case scenarios, leading to throwing public money at the problem, are in a way useful because they trigger adequate reactions (innovation...). Ways to cut down a huge part of heating-related needs are known, for example by enhancing thermal isolation or heating buildings in "anti-frost" (no freezing) mode while wearing heated clothing. > But being a full member of the open energy market simply doesn't work for Norway at these price levels. It's kind of being members of an open market for food when your population is starving, even if you're a net exporter. Yes, there always is a limit, even for our ability to counter limits by multiplying ways to cope. Compare various approaches merits is difficult, for example France touted its nuclear fleet as a sure way to be autonomous but now detects corrosion inside pipes, has to temporarily shutdown reactors (load factor now floats around .7) and therefore was recently very happy to import electricity from Germany (which is usually mocked because "wind & solar are intermittent,: Germany needs France"...). Moreover France imports most of its uranium from Kazakhstan (one may imagine Putin's going full LOL ahead upon reading that "France loves not to depend upon other nations"). > The prices of nuclear is caused by political choices. With rational (or only sightly paranoid) regulations, nuclear would be a lot cheaper. Political choices are only part of the problem, and apparently not part of the main ones (there is a very interesting report about the French Flamanville-3 case, named the "rapport Folz", however it's in French I could not find any English version). Not being paranoid probably increases the probability of incident/accidents (contesting this is saying that some safety-related new specifications are totally useless: this is a bold statement), and on the long-term reducing the amount and patent effects of boo-boos, even at a non-negligible cost, may be the best bet when it comes to public opinion. This is not necessarily badly-invested money and time. > there are a lot more pro-nuclear people now, than when I advocated for nuclear 15 years ago. This seems globally true, however the amount of people willing to see a reactor installed in their vicinity rather than wind turbines in the ocean is low and stable. >> A continental mix reduces this need. > Not below "several days" At continental scale several days without a fair part of the baseload and peaks, starting with storage at low charge, with not enough curtailing and backup capacity? I doubt so. > long distance energy transfers are expensive Indeed, however the huge grid is justified whatever the type of source: even going full-nuclear would justify it, for safety (see the current French 'corrosion' case) and to be able to use more sound sources (avoiding production units which burn fossil fuel). As showed this is already launched ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta... ) and will very be be further developed ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_super_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_super_grid ). The impact of renewable sources is here limited to dimensions, not the very existence of most lines, therefore the real cost (specific to renewable sources) is limited, and way below many models proposed by nuclear or fossil industries. This limited specific investment will be recouped thanks to a way lower LCOE, as producing electricity thanks to renewable sources is way cheaper than using nuclear (and getting more and more so).

natmaka 4y ago

> V2G can absolutely make some contribution for very short-term fluctuations (such as for from Nuclear ramp up/down cycles, but the capacity several orders of magnitude too small to compensate for a few weeks of almost no wind in the North Sea. As noted we know efficient ways to reduce intermittence-induced production variability. If you are interested in all this the very scientific study described by the article I refenced is of interest. Note that other studies deliver similar results, see "How synchronous is wind energy production among European countries?" -- Monforti, Gaetani, Vignati). Those conclusions are sound for other continents, for the US see "Is it always windy somewhere? Occurrence of low-wind-power events over large areas" (Handschy, Rose, Apt), for China see Liu, Xiao Wang, Dai, Qi "Analysis on the hourly spatiotemporal complementarities between China's solar and wind energy resources spreading in a wide area"... > The extreme price fluctuations Yes, the context (economic crisis, energetic transition, international tensions...) isn't keen. I didn't know how hard it hits in Norway. In many Western nations it hits very hard but this is hidden from public sight by throwing public money at the problem (usually by sacrificing usually perceived energy taxes in order to create provisions or even pay for the current high market price), leading to more debt and therefore higher taxes (as usual the taxpayer and consumer will nonetheless pay, and more because the very government has a cost, burning part of taxes). > the reservoirs in the hydro systems are already unusually low Yes (climate...), and the planners have to keep some reserve in order to preserve necessary margins (emergencies and follow-up). > Denmark should expect that at some point soon, Norway will shut down exports until the situation has normalized. A huge grid offers more potential commercial partners, and the probability of an extreme "nobody is able to sell" case gets lower and lower. > What happens to Danmark's electricity market if they are no longer able to import power from Norway and Sweden? There are many factors: how much parties can plan for it in advance, find others sellers, curtail, backup... The composition gives the net result. >> This is mainly a financial matter. A 'cooperation' achieved thru a market > You would be right if Norway were able to coordinate that internally in ways that did not hurt the population. But in Norway, since electricity is used for heating (and it is cold here). That would have to mean a setup where households were able to buy electricity at prices close to the historical prices We can predict a fair part of the parameters, therefore many cases are manageable. Even worst-case scenarios, leading to throwing public money at the problem, are in a way useful because they trigger adequate reactions (innovation...). Ways to cut down a huge part of heating-related needs are known, for example by enhancing thermal isolation or heating buildings in "anti-frost" (no freezing) mode while wearing heated clothing. > But being a full member of the open energy market simply doesn't work for Norway at these price levels. It's kind of being members of an open market for food when your population is starving, even if you're a net exporter. Yes, there always is a limit, even for our ability to counter limits by multiplying ways to cope. Compare various approaches merits is difficult, for example France touted its nuclear fleet as a sure way to be autonomous but now detects corrosion inside pipes, has to temporarily shutdown reactors (load factor now floats around .7) and therefore was recently very happy to import electricity from Germany (which is usually mocked because "wind & solar are intermittent,: Germany needs France"...). Moreover France imports most of its uranium from Kazakhstan (one may imagine Putin's going full LOL ahead upon reading that "France loves not to depend upon other nations"). > The prices of nuclear is caused by political choices. With rational (or only sightly paranoid) regulations, nuclear would be a lot cheaper. Political choices are only part of the problem, and apparently not part of the main ones (there is a very interesting report about the French Flamanville-3 case, named the "rapport Folz", however it's in French I could not find any English version). Not being paranoid probably increases the probability of incident/accidents (contesting this is saying that some safety-related new specifications are totally useless: this is a bold statement), and on the long-term reducing the amount and patent effects of boo-boos, even at a non-negligible cost, may be the best bet when it comes to public opinion. This is not necessarily badly-invested money and time. > there are a lot more pro-nuclear people now, than when I advocated for nuclear 15 years ago. This seems globally true, however the amount of people willing to see a reactor installed in their vicinity rather than wind turbines in the ocean is low and stable. >> A continental mix reduces this need. > Not below "several days" At continental scale several days without a fair part of the baseload and peaks, starting with storage at low charge, with not enough curtailing and backup capacity? I doubt so. > long distance energy transfers are expensive Indeed, however the huge grid is justified whatever the type of source: even going full-nuclear would justify it, for safety (see the current French 'corrosion' case) and to be able to use more sound sources (avoiding production units which burn fossil fuel). As showed this is already launched ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta... ) and will very be be further developed ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_super_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_super_grid ). The impact of renewable sources is here limited to dimensions, not the very existence of most lines, therefore the real cost (specific to renewable sources) is limited, and way below many models proposed by nuclear or fossil industries. This limited specific investment will be recouped thanks to a way lower LCOE, as producing electricity thanks to renewable sources is way cheaper than using nuclear (and getting more and more so).