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Significant obstacles like: - Batteries don't work at the scale of a grid. There are a few 'natural' batteries, like the water level of a hydro dam, but none f

Significant obstacles like: - Batteries don't work at the scale of a grid. There are a few 'natural' batteries, like the water level of a hydro dam, but none for renewables. - Sometimes it's cloudy - Sometimes there's no wind - The renewable grid isn't, you know, BUILT yet. So, despite handwaving these issues away, the "baseload" capacity remains a problem which has to be addressed by something with storable energy - eg. nuclear, hydro or coal.

venk12 4y ago
Do you believe we have the technology needed to safely dispose nuclear waste without affecting the environment and future generations?
- yaantc 4y ago
  Do you believe the possible threat of nuclear waste to future generations, considering our current waste management technologies, to be higher than the impact due to more CO2 generation by running electrical coal plants instead of nuclear ones? That seems a more relevant question to me. There's no silver bullet, and pointing problems on one side only may help win arguments (maybe?) but is not so helpful when trying to find the "best" option. Which, in real life, usually means the less bad option. Warts everywhere...
  - venk12 4y ago
    Indeed, you are correct! Is there an 'impartial' governing body that has examined these two alternatives and determined the advantages and disadvantages of each? Or is there any relevant literature that focuses on simulating/evaluating these options?
- kirrent 4y ago
  Yes.
- VHRanger 4y ago
  Easily, yes. It's easy and safe to dispose of, and doesn't take much space at all. Disposing nuclear waste effectively means putting it under ~3m of water in a place where people won't mess with it. As of 2016, France has produced 14,000 tons of nuclear waste *in its entire history*. That's about 7 normal olympic swimming pools in total volume. We have much bigger issues with other forms of waste, nuclear waste has always just been a scaremongering tactic for the anti-nuclear crowd.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Nuclear waste is also the issue the nuclear stans like to bring up, to propagate the falsehood that it is the issue that's holding back nuclear (so they can then correctly argue that it's not that big a problem, so incorrectly claim building more nuclear is a good idea.)
pfdietz 4y ago
Batteries work fine at scale. What they don't do is get you to 100% renewables. But hydrogen can be used for that last 5-10%, and Europe has many petawatt hours of hydrogen storage potential available in salt formations.
- VHRanger 4y ago
  Sources on "they work fine at scale"? Last I checked 4 years ago they didn't at all in terms of costs or pollution to produce/dispose of. Natural stores energy like nuclear or hydro remain best.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Now you're moving the goal posts. If something is too expensive, it's too expensive at small scale as well as large scale. There is no engineering reason why a grid cannot have very large amounts of batteries attached to it. If they're at the moment too expensive, that's no inherent obstacle, since battery prices have been falling rapidly, much faster than nuclear's price ever did. > Sources on "they work fine at scale"? Hitchen's Razor. I can dismiss your original claim without evidence, since it was presented without evidence. In other words: sources? You go first. I suspect you are parroting studies that assume batteries are used to get to 100% renewables, then clutch their pearls at how many batteries are needed. Using batteries for that last 10% or so is just bad engineering, so those studies are strawmen.
- _hypx 4y ago
  If you have many petawatt-hours of hydrogen storage, you don't need batteries at all.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Batteries are likely going to be better for short term storage, due to their higher round trip efficiency. Hydrogen would win for long term storage (seasonal, for example) and backing up the system against rare prolonged dark-calm periods. A combination of the two storage modes could be better than either one alone. Adding additional capabilities (transmission, intermediate term storage, dispatchable demand of various kinds) can only make things cheaper.
jacquesm 4y ago
> Batteries don't work at the scale of a grid https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2019/Sep/IRENA_Utility-scale-batteries_2019.pdf https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication... They do. This is from 2019, there are probably better and more recent sources. > Sometimes it's cloudy > Sometimes there's no wind Yes, so you always use a mix. The biggest problem is when there is no sun and no wind and this happens for an extended period. At those times power will likely become a lot more expensive. And as long as we don't have seasonal storage there will always be periods in the year like that, no matter where you live unless it is close to the equator. > The renewable grid isn't, you know, BUILT yet. You don't need a 'renewable grid', the one we have will serve just fine. Gamechanger: HVDC to offset day/night and seasonal cycles because it allows the transport of electricity over far larger distances. This + a relatively modest amount of storage may well be the ticket.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  Batteries are expensive + needs to be replaced periodically, which is making whole setup even more expensive in the long run. Batteries are dead end for energy storage.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Batteries are emphatically not a dead end, there are many more chemistries than Lithium Ion and the life spans are approaching 6000 cycles for the best kinds which is a 20 year lifespan. Yes, they are expensive, so is everything else connected to the power grid. The cost of storing a KWh and retrieving it has been steadily dropping over the past two decades making this now a feasible method to store energy at grid scale. Even so, like everything else, it is an optimization problem, you don't want to overdesign your battery storage because the safe assumption seems to be that future tech will be even better so pacing the roll-out of such tech is a prudent approach.

venk12 4y ago

Do you believe we have the technology needed to safely dispose nuclear waste without affecting the environment and future generations?

yaantc 4y ago
Do you believe the possible threat of nuclear waste to future generations, considering our current waste management technologies, to be higher than the impact due to more CO2 generation by running electrical coal plants instead of nuclear ones? That seems a more relevant question to me. There's no silver bullet, and pointing problems on one side only may help win arguments (maybe?) but is not so helpful when trying to find the "best" option. Which, in real life, usually means the less bad option. Warts everywhere...
- venk12 4y ago
  Indeed, you are correct! Is there an 'impartial' governing body that has examined these two alternatives and determined the advantages and disadvantages of each? Or is there any relevant literature that focuses on simulating/evaluating these options?
kirrent 4y ago
Yes.
VHRanger 4y ago
Easily, yes. It's easy and safe to dispose of, and doesn't take much space at all. Disposing nuclear waste effectively means putting it under ~3m of water in a place where people won't mess with it. As of 2016, France has produced 14,000 tons of nuclear waste *in its entire history*. That's about 7 normal olympic swimming pools in total volume. We have much bigger issues with other forms of waste, nuclear waste has always just been a scaremongering tactic for the anti-nuclear crowd.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Nuclear waste is also the issue the nuclear stans like to bring up, to propagate the falsehood that it is the issue that's holding back nuclear (so they can then correctly argue that it's not that big a problem, so incorrectly claim building more nuclear is a good idea.)

pfdietz 4y ago

Batteries work fine at scale. What they don't do is get you to 100% renewables. But hydrogen can be used for that last 5-10%, and Europe has many petawatt hours of hydrogen storage potential available in salt formations.

VHRanger 4y ago
Sources on "they work fine at scale"? Last I checked 4 years ago they didn't at all in terms of costs or pollution to produce/dispose of. Natural stores energy like nuclear or hydro remain best.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Now you're moving the goal posts. If something is too expensive, it's too expensive at small scale as well as large scale. There is no engineering reason why a grid cannot have very large amounts of batteries attached to it. If they're at the moment too expensive, that's no inherent obstacle, since battery prices have been falling rapidly, much faster than nuclear's price ever did. > Sources on "they work fine at scale"? Hitchen's Razor. I can dismiss your original claim without evidence, since it was presented without evidence. In other words: sources? You go first. I suspect you are parroting studies that assume batteries are used to get to 100% renewables, then clutch their pearls at how many batteries are needed. Using batteries for that last 10% or so is just bad engineering, so those studies are strawmen.
_hypx 4y ago
If you have many petawatt-hours of hydrogen storage, you don't need batteries at all.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Batteries are likely going to be better for short term storage, due to their higher round trip efficiency. Hydrogen would win for long term storage (seasonal, for example) and backing up the system against rare prolonged dark-calm periods. A combination of the two storage modes could be better than either one alone. Adding additional capabilities (transmission, intermediate term storage, dispatchable demand of various kinds) can only make things cheaper.

jacquesm 4y ago

> Batteries don't work at the scale of a grid https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2019/Sep/IRENA_Utility-scale-batteries_2019.pdf https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication... They do. This is from 2019, there are probably better and more recent sources. > Sometimes it's cloudy > Sometimes there's no wind Yes, so you always use a mix. The biggest problem is when there is no sun and no wind and this happens for an extended period. At those times power will likely become a lot more expensive. And as long as we don't have seasonal storage there will always be periods in the year like that, no matter where you live unless it is close to the equator. > The renewable grid isn't, you know, BUILT yet. You don't need a 'renewable grid', the one we have will serve just fine. Gamechanger: HVDC to offset day/night and seasonal cycles because it allows the transport of electricity over far larger distances. This + a relatively modest amount of storage may well be the ticket.

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
Batteries are expensive + needs to be replaced periodically, which is making whole setup even more expensive in the long run. Batteries are dead end for energy storage.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Batteries are emphatically not a dead end, there are many more chemistries than Lithium Ion and the life spans are approaching 6000 cycles for the best kinds which is a 20 year lifespan. Yes, they are expensive, so is everything else connected to the power grid. The cost of storing a KWh and retrieving it has been steadily dropping over the past two decades making this now a feasible method to store energy at grid scale. Even so, like everything else, it is an optimization problem, you don't want to overdesign your battery storage because the safe assumption seems to be that future tech will be even better so pacing the roll-out of such tech is a prudent approach.