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I am not sure I see the point of continuing this. Other than I initially thought you clearly are knowledgeable, yet you refuse to cleanly argue your point. You

I am not sure I see the point of continuing this. Other than I initially thought you clearly are knowledgeable, yet you refuse to cleanly argue your point. You attacked me directly for bringing up that storage has a role to play in nuclear as well as renewables, and now you claim that renewables are not the point. I never claimed that they played the same role either. Again, why is that an issue? That said, the point of storage for nuclear is exactly also that you don't build out the peak load, so if large scale storage failure leading to undersupply is your worry (as you indicate elsewhere), then that is a concern for this scenario as well. But again, why? Storage backed energy grids are already a reality: we were running Europe on stored Gas for much of the winter. We are not talking about hypothetical batteries but about storing methane/H2 and operating gas power plants in these scenarios. Nothing in this tech stack is unproven by now, it is primarily a question of economics. You insinuate (without clarifying) that markets arent working, yet we have fantastically reliable grids in Europe. Finally, the degree to which economics trumps reliability can be seen very directly in the energy-only vs capacity market debate. Energy only puts the critical safety decisions in the hand of market actors. Negative and very high positive prices in the market are supposed to incentivise building a base load that will only run for a few weeks a year and feeding it with flexibly produced gas/storage. Capacity markets put the decision how much of this to build I. The hands of the planners and engineers instead. Much to the horror of most engineers and planners I know energy-only markets won the political debate a few years ago. It seems politicians really hate giving engineers money to spend on reliability directly. This debate probably would work if we were at a bar or conference, but it's not really clear it makes sense here...

pyrale 3y ago
> yet you refuse to cleanly argue your point. It's not a very large point, and I believe I fleshed it enough already. > so if large scale storage failure leading to undersupply is your worry (as you indicate elsewhere) I don't remember mentioning that. If we work under the hypothesis that we have large scale power supply available at reasonable cost, then yes, there is no reason not to use them. Currently, pumpable hydro is the closest we have, and it's more or less capped out here. > But again, why? Storage backed energy grids are already a reality: we were running Europe on stored Gas for much of the winter. This is the first time I hear someone mention gas as storage, in the context of a power grid. If you forget emissions, then, I guess, why not. But if you forget emissions, 90% of the public discourse on the european power grid stops making sense. To date, I have knowledge of no large-scale environmentally viable way to produce this fuel in a renewable way. > You insinuate (without clarifying) that markets arent working, yet we have fantastically reliable grids in Europe. The grid was already working well before the introduction of markets. Since then, in my neck of the woods we have seen a complete failure of investment in the production side. In other countries that already had a built grid like us, renewal was only possible with heavy public subsidies. I would welcome an explanation on what you believe markets brought to an already working grid.
- Certhas 3y ago
  Power2Gas has been a major topic. And the idea that this will become highly relevant in about a decade is behind the idea to allow Gas infrastructure investment as Green in Europe. This means Hydrogen but also synthetic natural gas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas Methanation and methane storage is at the same level as Hydorgen storage in optimal models. This here has 500 citations: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05290.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05290.pdf They also cite something I haven't personally read, but which goes back all the way to 2009, again with hundreds of citations: M. Sterner, Bioenergy and renewable power methane in integrated 100% renewable energy systems, Ph.D. thesis, Kassel University (2009). Of course as the roundtrip efficiency is better, its preferable to store Hydrogen directly if that is feasible (and this is why a pure electricity sector optimization model will never show methane). But fundamentally the idea has been for a long time to run Gas power plants on carbon neural gases. This is an explicit point in the EU Taxonomy of labeling Gas investments as green. They can only do so if they retrofitted to running on carbon free gas from 2035 onwards. Siemens is selling their stuff as H2-ready for that exact reason [1]. Pumped hydro can not be meaningfully expanded, its only a small part of the overall solution. [1] https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/news/magazine/2022/hydrogen-ready.html https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/news/magazine/2022/...
  - pyrale 3y ago
    I can see that there's a lot of momentum for that, indeed. But as you told me earlier, we moved from a system where engineers and planners offered options to choose from to a system that is driven by political will, and implementation concerns come down the line. Both systems have their flaws: the first one is clearly detrimental to democratic oversight, and may sometimes cause authoritarian problems, where administrators don't see or overlook problems caused to individuals. On the other hand, political-first systems tend to kill unviable or uncompetitive projects way too late, because implementer signal is attenuated. A good example of this is the development of nuclear power in France and the UK in the 60's: both countries had a local reactor project which was politically favored. France, where engineers had a strong influence on politicians, killed it quickly and bought US licenses for its program. The UK on the other hand moved on with their local graphite-gas reactors, which proved much harder to implement, and hampered their program. All of this to point out that power2gas is currently at a very early stage, and since this program is dominated by political will, it's extremely hard to know how well it will work, let alone have a good idea of the economic figures. Maybe it will work. I hope so. But it's certainly not a done deal, and it's extremely unsettling to see our countries' energy safety be debated based on a few scientific papers or a planned demonstrator by people that won't have to actually implement it.

pyrale 3y ago

> yet you refuse to cleanly argue your point. It's not a very large point, and I believe I fleshed it enough already. > so if large scale storage failure leading to undersupply is your worry (as you indicate elsewhere) I don't remember mentioning that. If we work under the hypothesis that we have large scale power supply available at reasonable cost, then yes, there is no reason not to use them. Currently, pumpable hydro is the closest we have, and it's more or less capped out here. > But again, why? Storage backed energy grids are already a reality: we were running Europe on stored Gas for much of the winter. This is the first time I hear someone mention gas as storage, in the context of a power grid. If you forget emissions, then, I guess, why not. But if you forget emissions, 90% of the public discourse on the european power grid stops making sense. To date, I have knowledge of no large-scale environmentally viable way to produce this fuel in a renewable way. > You insinuate (without clarifying) that markets arent working, yet we have fantastically reliable grids in Europe. The grid was already working well before the introduction of markets. Since then, in my neck of the woods we have seen a complete failure of investment in the production side. In other countries that already had a built grid like us, renewal was only possible with heavy public subsidies. I would welcome an explanation on what you believe markets brought to an already working grid.

Certhas 3y ago
Power2Gas has been a major topic. And the idea that this will become highly relevant in about a decade is behind the idea to allow Gas infrastructure investment as Green in Europe. This means Hydrogen but also synthetic natural gas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas Methanation and methane storage is at the same level as Hydorgen storage in optimal models. This here has 500 citations: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05290.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05290.pdf They also cite something I haven't personally read, but which goes back all the way to 2009, again with hundreds of citations: M. Sterner, Bioenergy and renewable power methane in integrated 100% renewable energy systems, Ph.D. thesis, Kassel University (2009). Of course as the roundtrip efficiency is better, its preferable to store Hydrogen directly if that is feasible (and this is why a pure electricity sector optimization model will never show methane). But fundamentally the idea has been for a long time to run Gas power plants on carbon neural gases. This is an explicit point in the EU Taxonomy of labeling Gas investments as green. They can only do so if they retrofitted to running on carbon free gas from 2035 onwards. Siemens is selling their stuff as H2-ready for that exact reason [1]. Pumped hydro can not be meaningfully expanded, its only a small part of the overall solution. [1] https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/news/magazine/2022/hydrogen-ready.html https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/news/magazine/2022/...
- pyrale 3y ago
  I can see that there's a lot of momentum for that, indeed. But as you told me earlier, we moved from a system where engineers and planners offered options to choose from to a system that is driven by political will, and implementation concerns come down the line. Both systems have their flaws: the first one is clearly detrimental to democratic oversight, and may sometimes cause authoritarian problems, where administrators don't see or overlook problems caused to individuals. On the other hand, political-first systems tend to kill unviable or uncompetitive projects way too late, because implementer signal is attenuated. A good example of this is the development of nuclear power in France and the UK in the 60's: both countries had a local reactor project which was politically favored. France, where engineers had a strong influence on politicians, killed it quickly and bought US licenses for its program. The UK on the other hand moved on with their local graphite-gas reactors, which proved much harder to implement, and hampered their program. All of this to point out that power2gas is currently at a very early stage, and since this program is dominated by political will, it's extremely hard to know how well it will work, let alone have a good idea of the economic figures. Maybe it will work. I hope so. But it's certainly not a done deal, and it's extremely unsettling to see our countries' energy safety be debated based on a few scientific papers or a planned demonstrator by people that won't have to actually implement it.