6 ms·

It doesn't really matter if renewable generated more energy than coal for 1 day. What matters is annual generation. Renewables generates 5 times less than coal

by jokoon 4y ago

It doesn't really matter if renewable generated more energy than coal for 1 day. What matters is annual generation. Renewables generates 5 times less than coal annually and still peak for a short period of time, so this is not a big progress. Wind turbines can have big energy peaks when it's very windy, but there is no cheap way to store that energy for a long period of time, WHICH IS WHY NUCLEAR IS THE GREENEST BASELOAD ELECTRICITY. And solar also requires a lot of copper and steel, which makes it carbon cycle much worse than nuclear.

llukas 4y ago
Article is about annual production share.
colinsane 4y ago
> combined wind and solar generation increased from 12 percent of national power production in 2021 to 14 percent in 2022. Hydropower, biomass, and geothermal added another 7 percent — for a total share of 21 percent renewables last year. The figure narrowly exceeded coal’s 20 percent share of electricity generation, which fell from 23 percent in 2021. the article is speaking about average power, not peak power. how do you and the article present such different figures?
- Shaggy2000 4y ago
  [dead]
- kuhewa 4y ago
  > how do you and the article present such different figures? My friend, let me introduce you to the wonderful world of "not reading the article".
audunw 4y ago
> but there is no cheap way to store that energy for a long period of time It's getting close to the point that wind+storage can compete with nuclear, and even gas, on price. With the way cost has been developing on renewables and energy storage sulitons it's more or less inevitable. You're also starting to see off-shore wind, even floating off-shore, come rapidly down in cost, and those have more stable generation and require less energy storage. The problem of storage is also exaggerated by people who haven't looked at the big picture. We need to replace oil/gas in lots of areas where you need to store and transform energy anyway. Like cars. Think about it.. if you buy an EV you'll generally have enough storage there to power your house for 1-3 days. In a world where all cars are BEVs we'll be well within an order of magnititude of having the manufacturing capacity to have energy storage for all homes. You can even feed electricity from BEVs back into the grid, and I already have my BEV set to only charge in the hours where electricity is cheapest right now. We're also starting to see people use smart controllers to exploit the storage capacity in hot water tanks. Green metal production will also be a huge source of flexible load. Somewhat related to that, there's even molten metal batteries that can provide extremely cheap grid storage. > WHICH IS WHY NUCLEAR IS THE GREENEST BASELOAD ELECTRICITY. If you need to shout I'm just led to expect you don't have much meat behind your opinion. Anyway, the problem is just this: what we really need isn't baseload. You can't solve the worlds energy crisis without lots and lots of renewables. Going all nuclear would be too expensive, too slow, and would probably generate enough heat to slow recovery after climate change. Thermal power plants in general have a whole range of issue that makes it a bad idea to go all-in on it. Nuclear can certainly supplement with a bit of baseload capacity. But what we need is load following and peaker plants. We need a replacement to gas power plants. Because those are what works well when combining with renewables. And without lots of renewables we have zero hope of combatting climate change. > And solar also requires a lot of copper and steel, which makes it carbon cycle much worse than nuclear. At least copper and steel is easily recycled, with low carbon impact. Nuclear power plants use a lot of concrete and the sustainability of that is far more uncertain.
- martyvis 4y ago
  Here is a pumped hydro project which will be able to store maybe ¼ of Australia's electricity needed for a week. https://www.snowyhydro.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SH1764_Updated-fact-sheets_Snowy-2.0_website.pdf https://www.snowyhydro.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SH1...
- emj 4y ago
  The extremist right wing parties in Sweden are dead set against wind power. For many reasons, mainly because it's politically good to differentiate yourself like that against the evil greens. Sweden produces a significant amount of steel and has green metal production up and running. I would say that there is a real risk this will not be expanded to commercial deliveries because of populism against wind power, but I am overly pessimistic whenever I see right wing populism. SSAB and LKAB has experimented with green steel since ~2017. [0] [0] https://www.ssab.com/sv-se/ssab-koncern/hallbarhet/fossilfritt-stal/tidslinje https://www.ssab.com/sv-se/ssab-koncern/hallbarhet/fossilfri...
kuhewa 4y ago
Too bad the capital requirements upfront are so expensive for nuclear and literally no one wants to fund a project that will cost at least $8 billion, won't be online for a decade, and the power it be will produce is already more expensive than that of smaller renewable projects. Who knows maybe once renewable market penetration is nearly maxed out and if storage tech somehow hasn't caught up enough despite the great strides being made, the economics won't be so terrible for the GREENEST BASELOAD. Who
- Intox 4y ago
  Nuclear is not offering the best price per Mwh now (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source), but it will certainly in the next decades. Solar and wind power sources requires an absurd amount of metal (sometimes rare metals) to build the generators (solar panels, wind turbines, etc). This metal is extracted today with an enourmous consumption of fossil fuels, and it will be difficult to have a greener alternative for this extraction (anything running on batteries will require even MORE metal). The prices per Mwh of renewable energy sources are heavily linked to the prices of fossil fuels, which are quite "low" compared to what will probably happen in the next decades. Moreover, most metals are getting harder and harder to extract (it's likely that we met the peak of copper extraction already), which means that we'll have to dig deeper and deeper to get metal. I'm not saying we should not invest in renewables, but it will be probably be 10x to 50x more expensive to maintain a renewable parc of solar panels or wind turbines without relying on fossil fuels at all, which will cause the prices per mwh to explode. Countries that try to go 100% renewable without a healthy dose of nuclear energy will probably end up either burning fossil fuels or buying raw materials from countries that does, at a very heavy price.
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    you realize nuclear plants also require a lot of metal to produce?
    - jokoon 4y ago
      much much less per unit of power please look at this, I'm tired of having to remind people that nuclear is the best on ALL fronts except cost https://i.imgur.com/qKzwxuj.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/qKzwxuj.jpeg
agentgumshoe 4y ago
And wind requires immense use of rare metals that are often acquired through slave labour and create massive radioactive pools of waste. It is interesting to see the responses to Nuclear of 'too much up front/takes too long' while simultaneously patiently waiting out solar/wind 'it's getting there.' Interesting they also included biomass here as it is certainly not a carbon friendly process nor renewable. Too much 'we've picked our winners and won't hear a negative word' in this space now, and it's getting worse.
- thehappypm 4y ago
  Wind turbines are mostly aluminum, no? And the magnets in the turbines are not required to be rare earth.
  - agentgumshoe 4y ago
    They're not, with the trade-off of being expensive and requiring expensive ongoing maintenance instead (or even an external power source!) That's not including the ongoing gearbox maintenance requirements.
tnel77 4y ago
Nuclear is obviously an amazing source of energy, but the stigma is insane. In high school, my Chem II class had an assignment where pairs of kids had to present on why nuclear was good or bad. Of 16 or so kids, only my friend and I presented on why nuclear energy was good. Even the chemistry teacher was against nuclear energy. Edit: This was in rural USA.
- goatlover 4y ago
  It's wild how bad the reputation of nuclear energy has been, when the alternative has largely been fossil fuels. It's really not that dangerous relative to source for 80% of energy production the world still relies on.
photochemsyn 4y ago
The division of electricity production into baseload, load-following and peaker categories is just a historical anachronism. Coal and nuclear plants have poor abilities to ramp power production up and down in response to fluctuating demand, so they were called 'baseload'. Various versions of natural gas power plants could respond more rapidly, so they were typically placed in the other other two categories. This is all irrelevant if you have distributed wind/solar production coupled to efficient storage systems that manage the distribution using technology that doesn't have those limitations. Practically that means short term storage of power in batteries (daily), long-term storage in synthetic fuels (seasonal).
- pyrale 4y ago
  > The division of electricity production into baseload, load-following and peaker categories is just a historical anachronism. Since you're obviously some time traveler, would you mind sharing winning lottery numbers with us?

by jokoon 4y ago

llukas 4y ago

Article is about annual production share.

colinsane 4y ago

> combined wind and solar generation increased from 12 percent of national power production in 2021 to 14 percent in 2022. Hydropower, biomass, and geothermal added another 7 percent — for a total share of 21 percent renewables last year. The figure narrowly exceeded coal’s 20 percent share of electricity generation, which fell from 23 percent in 2021. the article is speaking about average power, not peak power. how do you and the article present such different figures?

Shaggy2000 4y ago
[dead]
kuhewa 4y ago
> how do you and the article present such different figures? My friend, let me introduce you to the wonderful world of "not reading the article".

audunw 4y ago

> but there is no cheap way to store that energy for a long period of time It's getting close to the point that wind+storage can compete with nuclear, and even gas, on price. With the way cost has been developing on renewables and energy storage sulitons it's more or less inevitable. You're also starting to see off-shore wind, even floating off-shore, come rapidly down in cost, and those have more stable generation and require less energy storage. The problem of storage is also exaggerated by people who haven't looked at the big picture. We need to replace oil/gas in lots of areas where you need to store and transform energy anyway. Like cars. Think about it.. if you buy an EV you'll generally have enough storage there to power your house for 1-3 days. In a world where all cars are BEVs we'll be well within an order of magnititude of having the manufacturing capacity to have energy storage for all homes. You can even feed electricity from BEVs back into the grid, and I already have my BEV set to only charge in the hours where electricity is cheapest right now. We're also starting to see people use smart controllers to exploit the storage capacity in hot water tanks. Green metal production will also be a huge source of flexible load. Somewhat related to that, there's even molten metal batteries that can provide extremely cheap grid storage. > WHICH IS WHY NUCLEAR IS THE GREENEST BASELOAD ELECTRICITY. If you need to shout I'm just led to expect you don't have much meat behind your opinion. Anyway, the problem is just this: what we really need isn't baseload. You can't solve the worlds energy crisis without lots and lots of renewables. Going all nuclear would be too expensive, too slow, and would probably generate enough heat to slow recovery after climate change. Thermal power plants in general have a whole range of issue that makes it a bad idea to go all-in on it. Nuclear can certainly supplement with a bit of baseload capacity. But what we need is load following and peaker plants. We need a replacement to gas power plants. Because those are what works well when combining with renewables. And without lots of renewables we have zero hope of combatting climate change. > And solar also requires a lot of copper and steel, which makes it carbon cycle much worse than nuclear. At least copper and steel is easily recycled, with low carbon impact. Nuclear power plants use a lot of concrete and the sustainability of that is far more uncertain.

martyvis 4y ago
Here is a pumped hydro project which will be able to store maybe ¼ of Australia's electricity needed for a week. https://www.snowyhydro.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SH1764_Updated-fact-sheets_Snowy-2.0_website.pdf https://www.snowyhydro.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SH1...
emj 4y ago
The extremist right wing parties in Sweden are dead set against wind power. For many reasons, mainly because it's politically good to differentiate yourself like that against the evil greens. Sweden produces a significant amount of steel and has green metal production up and running. I would say that there is a real risk this will not be expanded to commercial deliveries because of populism against wind power, but I am overly pessimistic whenever I see right wing populism. SSAB and LKAB has experimented with green steel since ~2017. [0] [0] https://www.ssab.com/sv-se/ssab-koncern/hallbarhet/fossilfritt-stal/tidslinje https://www.ssab.com/sv-se/ssab-koncern/hallbarhet/fossilfri...

kuhewa 4y ago

Too bad the capital requirements upfront are so expensive for nuclear and literally no one wants to fund a project that will cost at least $8 billion, won't be online for a decade, and the power it be will produce is already more expensive than that of smaller renewable projects. Who knows maybe once renewable market penetration is nearly maxed out and if storage tech somehow hasn't caught up enough despite the great strides being made, the economics won't be so terrible for the GREENEST BASELOAD. Who

Intox 4y ago
Nuclear is not offering the best price per Mwh now (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source), but it will certainly in the next decades. Solar and wind power sources requires an absurd amount of metal (sometimes rare metals) to build the generators (solar panels, wind turbines, etc). This metal is extracted today with an enourmous consumption of fossil fuels, and it will be difficult to have a greener alternative for this extraction (anything running on batteries will require even MORE metal). The prices per Mwh of renewable energy sources are heavily linked to the prices of fossil fuels, which are quite "low" compared to what will probably happen in the next decades. Moreover, most metals are getting harder and harder to extract (it's likely that we met the peak of copper extraction already), which means that we'll have to dig deeper and deeper to get metal. I'm not saying we should not invest in renewables, but it will be probably be 10x to 50x more expensive to maintain a renewable parc of solar panels or wind turbines without relying on fossil fuels at all, which will cause the prices per mwh to explode. Countries that try to go 100% renewable without a healthy dose of nuclear energy will probably end up either burning fossil fuels or buying raw materials from countries that does, at a very heavy price.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  you realize nuclear plants also require a lot of metal to produce?
  - jokoon 4y ago
    much much less per unit of power please look at this, I'm tired of having to remind people that nuclear is the best on ALL fronts except cost https://i.imgur.com/qKzwxuj.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/qKzwxuj.jpeg

agentgumshoe 4y ago

And wind requires immense use of rare metals that are often acquired through slave labour and create massive radioactive pools of waste. It is interesting to see the responses to Nuclear of 'too much up front/takes too long' while simultaneously patiently waiting out solar/wind 'it's getting there.' Interesting they also included biomass here as it is certainly not a carbon friendly process nor renewable. Too much 'we've picked our winners and won't hear a negative word' in this space now, and it's getting worse.

thehappypm 4y ago
Wind turbines are mostly aluminum, no? And the magnets in the turbines are not required to be rare earth.
- agentgumshoe 4y ago
  They're not, with the trade-off of being expensive and requiring expensive ongoing maintenance instead (or even an external power source!) That's not including the ongoing gearbox maintenance requirements.

tnel77 4y ago

Nuclear is obviously an amazing source of energy, but the stigma is insane. In high school, my Chem II class had an assignment where pairs of kids had to present on why nuclear was good or bad. Of 16 or so kids, only my friend and I presented on why nuclear energy was good. Even the chemistry teacher was against nuclear energy. Edit: This was in rural USA.

goatlover 4y ago
It's wild how bad the reputation of nuclear energy has been, when the alternative has largely been fossil fuels. It's really not that dangerous relative to source for 80% of energy production the world still relies on.

photochemsyn 4y ago

The division of electricity production into baseload, load-following and peaker categories is just a historical anachronism. Coal and nuclear plants have poor abilities to ramp power production up and down in response to fluctuating demand, so they were called 'baseload'. Various versions of natural gas power plants could respond more rapidly, so they were typically placed in the other other two categories. This is all irrelevant if you have distributed wind/solar production coupled to efficient storage systems that manage the distribution using technology that doesn't have those limitations. Practically that means short term storage of power in batteries (daily), long-term storage in synthetic fuels (seasonal).

pyrale 4y ago
> The division of electricity production into baseload, load-following and peaker categories is just a historical anachronism. Since you're obviously some time traveler, would you mind sharing winning lottery numbers with us?