5 ms·

"Base load is a myth" This is a lie repeated by anti-nuclear types. Base load is simply the year round constant electricity demand. How are we actually going

"Base load is a myth" This is a lie repeated by anti-nuclear types. Base load is simply the year round constant electricity demand. How are we actually going to build hundreds of billions of dollars worth of batteries? How are we going to dispose of them?

Schroedingersat 4y ago
https://insideevs.com/news/523413/catl-unveils-sodium-ion-battery/ https://insideevs.com/news/523413/catl-unveils-sodium-ion-ba... A 4 hour battery for the entirety of world primary energy is about the same cost as one year of auto industry revenue. SIBs require no scarce resources and no toxic elements -- they're basically fancy dirt. For longer scale storage, there are electrolyser industries spooling up in multiple countries. Some of the individual factories are big enough to produce the entire presently installed base in 5 years. Existing OCGT plants have minimal capital and fixed costs, and can burn hydrogen or ammonia basically at cost -- yielding indefinite storage for what is effectively a fixed 4x multiple of the cost of energy.
toomuchtodo 4y ago
> How are we actually going to build hundreds of billions of dollars worth of batteries? With battery factories. The very same that will be required to electrify vehicles when jurisdictions are enacting combustion vehicle sales bans at the end of the decade. 74-78 million new vehicles are sold each year. That's a lot of battery demand, which will be a forcing function to scale up battery manufacturing, driving down costs. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/electric-vehicles-to-drive-massive-battery-demand-bnef-chart https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/electri... > How are we going to dispose of them? We recycle them. We already do today. https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/ https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/ (Redwood has battery recycling agreements with several automakers)
- HyperSane 4y ago
  And where will we get the raw materials needed to build such vast amounts of batters? Global supply of lithium is already an issue just for electric car production. Global supply of lithium will not be sufficient to store grid scale amounts of energy. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-world-enough-lithium-resources/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-wor... The world could face lithium shortages by 2025, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says, while Credit Suisse thinks demand could treble between 2020 and 2025, meaning “supply would be stretched”. About 2 billion EVs need to be on the road by 2050 for the world to hit net zero, the IEA says, but sales stood at just 6.6 million last year, and some carmakers are already selling out of EVs. Lithium supply faces challenges not only from surging demand, but because resources are concentrated in a few places and over half of today’s production is in areas with high water stress.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    The same way we found oil for the last century and a half; we explore and produce based on the price of the commodity. Lithium is one of the most abundant materials in the Earth's crust.
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      > Lithium is one of the most abundant materials in the Earth's crust. Sure, and rare earth metals aren't really all that rare. The problem is that the processing cost is well beyond economical for most of it.
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      Markets disagree: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
    - inglor_cz 4y ago
      "Lithium is one of the most abundant materials in the Earth's crust." Abundance alone is irrelevant; you need certain concentrations for the mining process to be viable. AFAIK that is the challenge with Li: the necessary concentrations are only found in several places of the world.
      - runarberg 4y ago
        Same was true of oil. People predicted peak oil multiple times over, thinking we’d found all the easy oil, and drilling for the expensive oil was gonna lower production. That never happened, instead people found ways to get the hard oil cheaper, e.g. by fracking, and peak oil has yet to happen. Lithium mining is sure to go through similar story. Maybe after the third failed prediction of “peak lithium” they will find ways to harvest it from the ocean or something.
        4y ago
goodpoint 4y ago
No, base load is indeed a myth.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  How is it a myth?
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    You can search "base load myth" and pick only links from reputable sources. A good summary is at https://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/MarkBaseloadFallacyANZSEE.pdf https://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/pub... and https://www.nrdc.org/experts/kevin-steinberger/debunking-three-myths-about-baseload https://www.nrdc.org/experts/kevin-steinberger/debunking-thr...
    - HyperSane 4y ago
      Base load is simply the total electrical generation that must be running year round. It is a very simple concept, not a myth.
      - goodpoint 4y ago
        That, or you can actually read the article instead.
pfdietz 4y ago
What is a myth is the idea you need a base load plant to supply the base load of demand. The truth is that a "base load plant" is one that can only supply the base load, as it has to be kept running most of the time to have a possible chance of making economic sense. Being a base load plant is a negative thing, indicating inflexibility.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  If the lowest demand for electricity in a year is x watts and you have generators that run constantly to supply x watts then you don't need "flexibility". I don't get why this is such a hard concept to understand.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    I didn't say you needed flexibility. What I said was that inflexibility is a negative in a power source. It makes the output from the source less valuable per unit of energy than if the source could economically operate at lower capacity factor.
    - HyperSane 4y ago
      " I said was that inflexibility is a negative in a power source." Not if they are generating base load. This is why base load is an important concept.
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        It's a negative because it forces the plant to be operated in base load mode. The grid operator would prefer something that could be economically operated in a more flexible way. As an example: the combination of wind/solar/storage that could be used to provide the equivalent of a nuclear power plant's output could ALSO be used to provide some flexibility, by altering when the storage is charged and discharged. This flexibility would allow it to generate more value for the same number of kWh provided to the grid.
tuatoru 4y ago
> hundreds of billions Lol, is that supposed to impress? Tens of trillions, and you're talking money. Global spend on oil and gas is in the neighborhood of $4T per year. Coal is another $1T. Per year. $0.1T or $0.8T spent on making batteries, that last ten or twenty years apiece, is small change in comparison. The argument is about who gets the money.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

https://insideevs.com/news/523413/catl-unveils-sodium-ion-battery/ https://insideevs.com/news/523413/catl-unveils-sodium-ion-ba... A 4 hour battery for the entirety of world primary energy is about the same cost as one year of auto industry revenue. SIBs require no scarce resources and no toxic elements -- they're basically fancy dirt. For longer scale storage, there are electrolyser industries spooling up in multiple countries. Some of the individual factories are big enough to produce the entire presently installed base in 5 years. Existing OCGT plants have minimal capital and fixed costs, and can burn hydrogen or ammonia basically at cost -- yielding indefinite storage for what is effectively a fixed 4x multiple of the cost of energy.

toomuchtodo 4y ago

> How are we actually going to build hundreds of billions of dollars worth of batteries? With battery factories. The very same that will be required to electrify vehicles when jurisdictions are enacting combustion vehicle sales bans at the end of the decade. 74-78 million new vehicles are sold each year. That's a lot of battery demand, which will be a forcing function to scale up battery manufacturing, driving down costs. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/electric-vehicles-to-drive-massive-battery-demand-bnef-chart https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/electri... > How are we going to dispose of them? We recycle them. We already do today. https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/ https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/ (Redwood has battery recycling agreements with several automakers)

HyperSane 4y ago
And where will we get the raw materials needed to build such vast amounts of batters? Global supply of lithium is already an issue just for electric car production. Global supply of lithium will not be sufficient to store grid scale amounts of energy. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-world-enough-lithium-resources/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-wor... The world could face lithium shortages by 2025, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says, while Credit Suisse thinks demand could treble between 2020 and 2025, meaning “supply would be stretched”. About 2 billion EVs need to be on the road by 2050 for the world to hit net zero, the IEA says, but sales stood at just 6.6 million last year, and some carmakers are already selling out of EVs. Lithium supply faces challenges not only from surging demand, but because resources are concentrated in a few places and over half of today’s production is in areas with high water stress.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  The same way we found oil for the last century and a half; we explore and produce based on the price of the commodity. Lithium is one of the most abundant materials in the Earth's crust.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    > Lithium is one of the most abundant materials in the Earth's crust. Sure, and rare earth metals aren't really all that rare. The problem is that the processing cost is well beyond economical for most of it.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    Markets disagree: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    "Lithium is one of the most abundant materials in the Earth's crust." Abundance alone is irrelevant; you need certain concentrations for the mining process to be viable. AFAIK that is the challenge with Li: the necessary concentrations are only found in several places of the world.
    - runarberg 4y ago
      Same was true of oil. People predicted peak oil multiple times over, thinking we’d found all the easy oil, and drilling for the expensive oil was gonna lower production. That never happened, instead people found ways to get the hard oil cheaper, e.g. by fracking, and peak oil has yet to happen. Lithium mining is sure to go through similar story. Maybe after the third failed prediction of “peak lithium” they will find ways to harvest it from the ocean or something.
      - 4y ago

goodpoint 4y ago

No, base load is indeed a myth.

HyperSane 4y ago
How is it a myth?
- goodpoint 4y ago
  You can search "base load myth" and pick only links from reputable sources. A good summary is at https://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/MarkBaseloadFallacyANZSEE.pdf https://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/pub... and https://www.nrdc.org/experts/kevin-steinberger/debunking-three-myths-about-baseload https://www.nrdc.org/experts/kevin-steinberger/debunking-thr...
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    Base load is simply the total electrical generation that must be running year round. It is a very simple concept, not a myth.
    - goodpoint 4y ago
      That, or you can actually read the article instead.

pfdietz 4y ago

What is a myth is the idea you need a base load plant to supply the base load of demand. The truth is that a "base load plant" is one that can only supply the base load, as it has to be kept running most of the time to have a possible chance of making economic sense. Being a base load plant is a negative thing, indicating inflexibility.

HyperSane 4y ago
If the lowest demand for electricity in a year is x watts and you have generators that run constantly to supply x watts then you don't need "flexibility". I don't get why this is such a hard concept to understand.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  I didn't say you needed flexibility. What I said was that inflexibility is a negative in a power source. It makes the output from the source less valuable per unit of energy than if the source could economically operate at lower capacity factor.
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    " I said was that inflexibility is a negative in a power source." Not if they are generating base load. This is why base load is an important concept.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      It's a negative because it forces the plant to be operated in base load mode. The grid operator would prefer something that could be economically operated in a more flexible way. As an example: the combination of wind/solar/storage that could be used to provide the equivalent of a nuclear power plant's output could ALSO be used to provide some flexibility, by altering when the storage is charged and discharged. This flexibility would allow it to generate more value for the same number of kWh provided to the grid.

tuatoru 4y ago

> hundreds of billions Lol, is that supposed to impress? Tens of trillions, and you're talking money. Global spend on oil and gas is in the neighborhood of $4T per year. Coal is another $1T. Per year. $0.1T or $0.8T spent on making batteries, that last ten or twenty years apiece, is small change in comparison. The argument is about who gets the money.