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Cost is indeed the issue for commercial power generation. So let's look at costs. Especially, let's look at cost trends. My sources are: Lazard's 2022 levelize
by tuatoru 4y ago
Cost is indeed the issue for commercial power generation. So let's look at costs. Especially, let's look at cost trends.
My sources are: Lazard's 2022 levelized cost of energy estimates; NREL's Spring 2022 Solar Industry Update: the Global Wind Energy Council's Global Wind Report 2022 highlights; and especially the 2022 report in Cell (Cell's "Joule" sub-publication) called "Empirically Grounded Energy Forecasts and the Energy Transition".
On the basis of the trends in costs shown there, I conclude that 1) coal, nuclear, and large-scale hydro are obsolete for power generation; 2) combined-cycle gas, peaker gas, and on-shore wind generation are obsolescent. (Biomass thermal, concentrated solar thermal, and geothermal are essentially lab experiments. A few hundred MW or maybe 2 GW total globally each. Oil is of course obsolete too.)
Once current project pipelines are emptied (2035 maybe?), there won't be much of any of these built for commercial power generation, because they won't be able to compete except in obscure niches. Onshore wind comes closest to being competitive, but its costs are not dropping fast enough. The costs of the others are rising.
(According to NREL and the GWEC respectively, cumulative global solar PV installed capacity is 939 GWdc, most of it installed in 2018-2021, and cumulative global wind capacity installed is 837 GW, most installed 2012-2019. Onshore wind, while it has not yet peaked in terms of yearly increment, has peaked as a share of total generation, while PV is bottlenecked by permitting queues alone.)
- pclmulqdq 4y agoSo what is supposed to replace all of these obsolete technologies that currently account for the vast majority of energy generation? Lithium batteries, solar power, and offshore wind power? There are so many problems with this scheme, not least of which is that you have pretty much no base load and batteries can't be manufactured at anywhere near enough scale to successfully do this "transition" for at least the next 20 years.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoIn the US, we already have about ~25% of power coming from nuclear and Hydro. That's a huge chunk of our base load. Add in ~7% offshore wind, ~4% for onshore, and ~4% storage for pumped hydro, and we would be just fine with the rest coming from solar & a hodge podge of other renewables. And we'll have natural gas power plants in commission for another 30 years. Why shut them down? We can use them in the Winter. 30 years is more than enough time to transition to near 100% renewables. If mini nuclear reactors pan out and can replace even a fraction of the coal plants out there - our base load will be covered. At night, in the winter, we use about half as much electricity as during the day in the summer - when Solar works best.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoI was informed by the parent comment that Nuclear and Hydro were obsolete too. Not just natural gas and coal.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoObsolete means we're unlikely to add a lot more energy generation from them - but not that we'll decommission what we have or stop maintaining them. This is especially true for Hydro. I doubt we'll ever add much more nuclear if not mini nuclear reactors - that's why I'm really excited about the possibilities for them.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThat's not usually what the word "obsolete" means, but thanks for clearing that up.
- tuatoru 4y agoThank you. To add to that, I said nothing about storage. There is not much clarity about storage as yet. Pumped hydro, compressed air, thermal (hot rocks), hydrogen or ammonia: they could all be viable alongside batteries (for grid stabilization and short term storage). And more besides them, probably. It's also not clear to me which battery chemistries will win for grid storage. Possibly several of them. Storage is where the R&D action is.
- ncmncm 4y agoMost storage will not be batteries, unless a new battery chemistry proves radically cheaper (which might happen). Right now the overwhelming majority of storage is pumped hydro, almost as dispatchable as batteries. There are plenty of alternatives.
- megaman821 4y agoGrid scale batteries are in their infancy. There are over 100 different technologies in the oven now. The technology, mining, refinement, and manufacturing will mature. In 20 years nothing will come close to storing energy at the price and scale of grid batteries.