4 ms·

Re wind being so cheap: it is currently because we have fossil backup. If fossil fuels and nuclear get phased out, we might wake up to a reality where, when the

• api 4y ago
  This already kind of happens in places with a lot of solar around noon. Not the extortionate part but the almost free when the system is saturated part.
• Gwypaas 4y ago
  Both fission and fusion are awful at peaking. For peaker energy you want low capital investment and higher marginal costs. Fusion and fission are extremely capital expensive with quite hefty marginal costs through the steam side. They're simply awful at solving the last 20%. Even worse when they're undercut badly enough to never run for the first 80%.
  • DennisP 4y ago
    Whether fusion is good at peaking will depend on which fusion technologies end up working. Helion for one would be fantastic at peaking. It's likely to be quite cheap, wouldn't use a turbine, and could run fusion pulses at whatever rate we need.
    • adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
      it's still a pretty bad peaker. it's cheaper than a tomumak but it still needs a ton of capacitors and incredibly precise machining.
      • DennisP 4y ago
        They claim an electricity price of $0.01/kWh even before mass production kicks in. If they achieve that, the economics will work out fine.
        • pfdietz 4y ago
          I'll believe that when I see it, but that price would be more than good enough to beat renewables. I find it amusing that Helion's approach also strongly depends on the cost of storage, just in a very different part of storage parameter space.
    • pfdietz 4y ago
      Helion's approach is I'd guess still dominated by capital cost, not fuel cost, so it's relatively bad at peaking. Granted, if they split the reactors into DD reactors making 3He, and field reactors burning the 3He (with reduced DD), it might make more sense to turn the latter up and down, if they have a relatively larger part of their cost from their fuel.
    • bell-cot 4y ago
      With the capital costs of every form of ~continuous-output fusion reactor, the only fusion technology that would be good for peaking would be H-bombs. That has been looked into, in the context of propelling very large spacecraft. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls... )
  • ilyt 4y ago
    Why would fusion be bad for peaking ? It got none of the fission problems regarding that.
    • moloch-hai 4y ago
      It has exactly the same problems, same as any high capex steam-driven turbine.
    • throw_me_5555 4y ago
      Can it start generating electricity without waiting for steam to reach required temperature? For now we can only assume the worst case scenario and group it with fission in "up to 12h startup time". The report in https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956 compares existing power sources
  • janef0421 4y ago
    They can't peak independently, but their reliability and low marginal cost means that they can are well suited to providing peaking capacity in conjunction with storage. Excess power from the reactor can be used to place energy in the storage source, which is then discharged during peak load. Due to the reliability of the nuclear generator, the amount of storage required can be relatively small.
  • panick21_ 4y ago
    You right, just build high-temperature nuclear and use if for everything, then no peaking is required. And you can also use if for both industrial and residential heat. Solving all your problems at once. If you have electrified transport (electric trains and electric cars) you can have a 100% green economy.
• AntoniusBlock 4y ago
  Depends on whether we improve battery technology, then we could store the excess for less windy days. Also I did a quick search and there are places on Earth that are consistently very windy, so we could maybe even set up massive wind farms there. Commonwealth Bay, Antartica is apparently the windiest place on Earth, where the average annual windspeed is 50mph, according to the Guinness World Record book.
  • throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
    it isn't even economical to transfer electricity from north africa to europe
    • TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
      It's completely economical, and it's being worked on. It's difficult for political reasons, not economic or practical ones.
    • _0w8t 4y ago
      UK is planing a cable from Morocco
  • moloch-hai 4y ago
    Battery technology doesn't need improvement, and most storage won't be in chemical batteries. Batteries will remain the expensive alternative.
• aeternum 4y ago
  The way solar prices are trending, energy will also be free when it's sunny out, maybe even partially sunny. Then the way EVs are trending, each home should have giant batteries in their garage and a good percentage will likely be incentivized to charge their EV when the sun/wind is strong and potentially release it back to the grid when its not.
  • nwiswell 4y ago
    Not everyone lives in the suburbs with a two-car garage.
    • jghn 4y ago
      Indeed. Where I live most people are limited to street parking. It wasn't so bad keeping an EV charged using public chargers, but as more people are getting EVs the public chargers are becoming harder to access.
      • persedes 4y ago
        checkout ubricity, have not used them but the concept is pretty neat: use street lights for ev charging.
      • theptip 4y ago
        Or public chargers will see higher utilization and therefore be more prevalent. Supply/demand - neither is static.
        • akira2501 4y ago
          And supply and demand still have to deal with physical constraints and the current layout of the grid. You can only install so many chargers in a given area before you find blocking issues.
    • ImHereToVote 4y ago
• captainmuon 4y ago
  Would that be a showstopper? Then we would just produce less stuff when energy is expensive, and more when it is cheap. We'd build houses to keep a pleasant temperature for longer. We'd combine local energy generation with a strong grid to transport energy over longer distances. Stuff will become more expensive, economic activity might be somewhat dampened, but that might be offset by the cheapness of wind and solar, and by the fact that building the new infrastructure will create a lot of growth. And in the end, it will literally save the planet. I'd choose a bit slower economic activity over accelerating climate change any time.
  • pifm_guy 4y ago
    You're assuming energy companies switch to hourly priced billing. But nationwide nearly everyone is on a fixed price per kWh deal, and current electricity meters don't usually even support pricing that chances every few minutes, as would need to happen to incentivize people to only use power when the wind blows. The cost of simply upgrading every electricity meter to a modern one is many years of profits for most energy companies.
    • fulafel 4y ago
      This seems pretty pessimistic. Weather forecasts exist and things work quite well already today eg for day ahead hourly pricing model, lots of end user energy contracts are like that.
    • captainmuon 4y ago
      Maybe I'm more optimistic because I live in Europe :-P. I'm pretty sure most energy intensive industry is already on flexible pricing. And privately, if you build a new home or change anything about your meter, you're already mandated to install a smart meter. But households' energy use has been slowly going down anyway, due to energy saving appliances and lights, education, and better insulation (the latter doesn't help much with electricity, but with total power consumption). As the sibling post said, the transition will be difficult. But there is absolutely no way the government will allow widespread brownouts or industrial collapse (in the worst case we'll use just enough fossil as necessary). We are talking about reduced profit margins for a couple of years, and having to wait a bit more longer to buy shiny new gadgets. The real challenge is to orchestrate everything so that it is socially fair and the weakest, or those most dependent on cars, etc. don't get hit too hard.
• WaxProlix 4y ago
  Batteries are a thing, and continue to improve & diversify. The same arguments about pace apply here, too.
• audunw 4y ago
  > If fossil fuels and nuclear get phased out Don't you realise the consequences of phasing out fossil fuels? So much of that is used for, well fuels.. and even when it isn't, like fertilisers, it's still something that's produced in bulk in large quantities and stored. We'll have to produce a HUGE amounts of hydrogen, ammonia, etc. .. and in the absolute worst case scenario we can store some of that hydrogen and use in in existing natural gas power plants (yes, running a turbine on 100% hydrogen has been demonstrated already). We're already seeing the prices swing more due to renewables, and we're already seeing that it's creating a lot of solutions for shifting energy consumption. Right now I can connect my EV directly to my electricity provider and they'll stop or start charging based on prices. There's an entire parking garage in the Netherlands full of EV rental cars that can deliver power back to grid when prices are higher. People seem to think nuclear will let us avoid solving the energy storage problems. No. You might be able to run some big ships on nuclear, but not much else. If we solve the problems we need to solve to stop climate change (in a sustainable way.. don't get me started on CCS), then we'll be doing energy storage at just around the same scale needed to balance renewables. BEVs is a pretty good illustration of that, where, if you have one you suddenly have enough energy storage to run your house a day or three. If we're making enough batteries for all cars to be EVs, we're making battery at a scale where a doubling could give most households dedicated battery storage. I'm not sure exactly that will be the solution, maybe it'll be more specialised grid-level batteries like Ambri.. point is, we're moving towards a world where we HAVE to become experts at transforming and storing energy. Cause we're not getting "free" storable/transportable energy from the ground for eternity.
• Archelaos 4y ago
  > when the wind blows, energy is basically free, and when it doesn't, it is extortionately expensive. This is why one must look at the whole spectrum not only on wind and solar. There is hydro, biomass[1] and geothermal as well. The latter is currently not so relevant directly for electricity in most regions, but has a hugh potential to replace other energy sources, including electricity, for heating buildings via heat pumps. [1] In the USA biomass plays a comparatively minor role in electricity production: 1.3% of all, 6.5% of renewables (half of solar). In a more advanced country like Germany the numbers are: 8.8% of all, 19% of renewables (a little less than solar). -- Sources: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany