7 ms·

But you need 5x as much wind and solar because you will have to store it in the form of hydrogen for 50-80% loss in round-trip back to electricity There will n

But you need 5x as much wind and solar because you will have to store it in the form of hydrogen for 50-80% loss in round-trip back to electricity There will never be enough batteries and hydro storage in the world.

sunshinesnacks 4y ago
> There will never be enough batteries and hydro storage in the world. Do you have a source to back that up? An amount of storage that would be needed and what it isn't reachable?
pfdietz 4y ago
The levelized cost of wind/solar/storage will likely still end up cheaper, even for the use case of providing synthesized baseload power.
ianburrell 4y ago
For 5x wind and solar, you don’t need long term storage. Just short term storage for time shifting. It is fine to use gas peaker plants in emergencies and use the extra capacity to pump the carbon out of the air. Hydrogen would also work welll for few times it is needed. The nice thing is that use fuel that already use, but do have to worry about backup plants not being maintained. Also, nuclear is so slow to build that we don’t know what storage will look like in the future. Nuclear is impeding against the unknown storage tech in 15 years.
- pasttense01 4y ago
  In Minnesota solar produces three times as much electricity in the longest days of summer than in the shortest days of winter. So either you need massive overcapacity or lots of long term storage or a massive expansive expansion of the electric grid [which Nimbys will oppose]--and probably all three.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Or wind, which is somewhat anticorrelated with solar. Also, the PV can be arranged at an angle that maximizes production in winter rather than total annual production. This has the added benefit of allowing some sun to hit the ground in summer, so something can be grown there.
  - ianburrell 4y ago
    The point is that renewables are cheap enough that can build overcapacity for same price as nuclear capacity. Overcapacity is an advantage since there can be dispatchable users of the free power. We will need to pull carbon from air, make hydrogen, and make carbon fuel. Those could turn out to be long term storage. Also, we shouldn’t think of power regionally. Minnesota is good at wind, Arizona is good at solar, California and Texas are good at solar and wind. This will require more transmission lines but those are affordable compared to alternatives. We would need more transmission lines in all nuclear world.

sunshinesnacks 4y ago

> There will never be enough batteries and hydro storage in the world. Do you have a source to back that up? An amount of storage that would be needed and what it isn't reachable?

pfdietz 4y ago

The levelized cost of wind/solar/storage will likely still end up cheaper, even for the use case of providing synthesized baseload power.

ianburrell 4y ago

For 5x wind and solar, you don’t need long term storage. Just short term storage for time shifting. It is fine to use gas peaker plants in emergencies and use the extra capacity to pump the carbon out of the air. Hydrogen would also work welll for few times it is needed. The nice thing is that use fuel that already use, but do have to worry about backup plants not being maintained. Also, nuclear is so slow to build that we don’t know what storage will look like in the future. Nuclear is impeding against the unknown storage tech in 15 years.

pasttense01 4y ago
In Minnesota solar produces three times as much electricity in the longest days of summer than in the shortest days of winter. So either you need massive overcapacity or lots of long term storage or a massive expansive expansion of the electric grid [which Nimbys will oppose]--and probably all three.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Or wind, which is somewhat anticorrelated with solar. Also, the PV can be arranged at an angle that maximizes production in winter rather than total annual production. This has the added benefit of allowing some sun to hit the ground in summer, so something can be grown there.
- ianburrell 4y ago
  The point is that renewables are cheap enough that can build overcapacity for same price as nuclear capacity. Overcapacity is an advantage since there can be dispatchable users of the free power. We will need to pull carbon from air, make hydrogen, and make carbon fuel. Those could turn out to be long term storage. Also, we shouldn’t think of power regionally. Minnesota is good at wind, Arizona is good at solar, California and Texas are good at solar and wind. This will require more transmission lines but those are affordable compared to alternatives. We would need more transmission lines in all nuclear world.