6 ms·

>4GW of solar plus 6-12GWh It will use a lot of land and I'm not sure if anyone ever did 6GWh storage, not even mentioning 12 GWh. The Li-ion battery technolog

by donny2018 3y ago

>4GW of solar plus 6-12GWh It will use a lot of land and I'm not sure if anyone ever did 6GWh storage, not even mentioning 12 GWh. The Li-ion battery technology that is currently being used for storage is very expensive and will last maybe 15 years at best before becoming chemical waste, while the nuke is normally planned to last 60+ years. And that is just to match 1GW of nuke. Now, if you want 100GW, you multiply that by 100. Now solar isn't looking all that advantageous or even technologically feasible (with storage factored in) to me.

epistasis 3y ago
I don't think you have a good idea of scale here 4GW of solar and 12 GWh of storage are a tiny fraction of what we produce every year, barely worth mention. Whereas even a single GW of new nuclear is newsworthy because it was such a monumental effort, over budget and behind schedule by factors of 2-4x Wind, solar, and storage get delivered on time, under budget, and at a scale that nuclear can not even dream of achieving for decades. Claiming that 100GW/year of nuclear is even in the realm of possibility is beyond delusional, whereas 400 GW/year of solar is close to happening, and we will deploying TW/year in the 2030s, before a second site of nuclear could even come online in the US. Land for solar is similarly a red herring. Solar "land use" is easily dual purpose, if need be, but it need not be. Using even a fraction of land that we currently use to grow corn for ethanol would completely power all of our transportation.
- ftth_finland 3y ago
  According to a recent report, there was only 13.4 GWh of grid storage in the US 2022. Even with projected growth, each addition 12 GWh is not trivial. https://www.smart-energy.com/regional-news/north-america/us-grid-scale-storage-capacity-breaks-market-record-at-4-7gwh/?amp=1 https://www.smart-energy.com/regional-news/north-america/us-...
  - epistasis 3y ago
    12 GWh is a fraction of a single factory's output from a single year. We are producing >50GWh total for storage per year, and the only reason more of it isn't going to the grid is that grid storage is a much less lucrative use of our storage capacity compare to cars, which have higher margins. The entire industry is growing at 10x capacity every five years! Don't forget that this single 1GW of nuclear took more than a decade. We simply can not scale nuclear to meet our needs, it is not a technology that scales well at all. For example, we have roughly 100GW of reactors in the US rapidly reaching their end of life. Even if the industry put all its effort in rebuilding fast enough to replace existing reactors, it would require a scale up that we can't possibly imagine right now. Meanwhile, we are already scaling storage, by building factory after factory.
    - ftth_finland 3y ago
      > The entire industry is growing at 10x capacity every five years! Grid storage is projected only to grow 10-17 GWh per year according to the aforementioned article. Is that anywhere enough, if the aim is to decarbonise?
      - ben_w 3y ago
        Kinda; cars need to decarbonise as well as the grid, so the batteries are still really important even if none end up on the grid for whatever reason.
      - epistasis 3y ago
        And there's zero new expected nuclear after vogtle 4... If we add 10-17GWh in 2023, it would be foolish to think we will add the same amount in 2024. The amount added per year will grow too. We are at the beginning of the logistic curve, where growth is exponential. A few years ago, there wasn't even a single GWh on the grid. For more than a century we have balanced the grid by keeping energy stored in fuel; as we switch to cheap renewables, that's the only time that grid storage becomes necessary, and you have to get to pretty high levels of renewables before it makes economic sense to add storage. So the market is small now, and will grow. Until then, those lithium ion batteries are being shoved into cars, because car makers can not acquire them fast enough to meet demand. There are several other very promising and quickly advancing battery technologies as well, based on iron or sodium instead of lithium. We will see which get cheap, but until there's high amounts of renewables.
  - evilos 3y ago
    Casually suggesting we add the equivalent of our nation's supply of grid battery storage to get the equivalent of a single nuclear plants worth of energy is a new one.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      Is it? Given how fast reactors are getting built in the US, I'd say the batteries look like they're already doing much better than the reactors. Of course, both can change as the number are, while interesting, small.
      - evilos 3y ago
        Even if we really could ramp up those factories and the corresponding mines for all the battery materials, those batteries will last maybe 10 ish years. Then they need to be recycled and we have basically no capacity for that today. A nuclear plant can easily go for 60 to 80 years with good maintenance.
        epistasis 3y ago
        What do you mean "even if"? Can you name a single battery factory that has seen delays of cost overruns like nuclear regularly has? Can you point to a single investor that's willing to back new nuclear in the US like they are backing new battery factories all over? Your usage of numbers is off and extremely biased. Warranties for grid storage batteries are already longer than 10 years, and they don't suddenly stop working, they just experience finished capacity over time. Whereas 80 years for nuclear has no basis in reality, and most are getting shut down at forty due to excessive costs to continue operation. This sort of rose-colored view of nuclear, cherry picking the very best case from one's imagination, and then taking the very worst possible estimate of the comparator, is the type of self-deception that results in nuclear losing again and again. Without a clear view of why these projects fail, and what they actually can deliver, the entire industry has lost any credibility.
        evilos 3y ago
- User23 3y ago
  We're building batteries and panels at scale now? When did that start?
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Define "at scale".
  - epistasis 3y ago
    The US will add more nameplate power capacity of batteries to the grid this year than it will new gas generators: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/us-will-see-more-new-battery-capacity-than-natural-gas-generation-in-2023/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/us-will-see-more-new... (Noting of course that power characteristics of entirely different tools can be an apples an oranges comparison... but look at solar versus fossil fuel generators in that.) Depends on the definition of scale, but the 2010s was where it was in GW added every year: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/04/17/the-world-installed-240-gw-of-solar-in-2020/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/04/17/the-world-installed-2...
    - User23 3y ago
      And are "we" building that capacity? Who is "we" for you?
      - epistasis 3y ago
        There are two definitions of "we" in the studies I linked, one for the US and one for the world. What definition of "we" did we have in mind, and if you have a different one why didn't you state what you mean instead of asking questions that have clear answers?

epistasis 3y ago

I don't think you have a good idea of scale here 4GW of solar and 12 GWh of storage are a tiny fraction of what we produce every year, barely worth mention. Whereas even a single GW of new nuclear is newsworthy because it was such a monumental effort, over budget and behind schedule by factors of 2-4x Wind, solar, and storage get delivered on time, under budget, and at a scale that nuclear can not even dream of achieving for decades. Claiming that 100GW/year of nuclear is even in the realm of possibility is beyond delusional, whereas 400 GW/year of solar is close to happening, and we will deploying TW/year in the 2030s, before a second site of nuclear could even come online in the US. Land for solar is similarly a red herring. Solar "land use" is easily dual purpose, if need be, but it need not be. Using even a fraction of land that we currently use to grow corn for ethanol would completely power all of our transportation.

ftth_finland 3y ago
According to a recent report, there was only 13.4 GWh of grid storage in the US 2022. Even with projected growth, each addition 12 GWh is not trivial. https://www.smart-energy.com/regional-news/north-america/us-grid-scale-storage-capacity-breaks-market-record-at-4-7gwh/?amp=1 https://www.smart-energy.com/regional-news/north-america/us-...
- epistasis 3y ago
  12 GWh is a fraction of a single factory's output from a single year. We are producing >50GWh total for storage per year, and the only reason more of it isn't going to the grid is that grid storage is a much less lucrative use of our storage capacity compare to cars, which have higher margins. The entire industry is growing at 10x capacity every five years! Don't forget that this single 1GW of nuclear took more than a decade. We simply can not scale nuclear to meet our needs, it is not a technology that scales well at all. For example, we have roughly 100GW of reactors in the US rapidly reaching their end of life. Even if the industry put all its effort in rebuilding fast enough to replace existing reactors, it would require a scale up that we can't possibly imagine right now. Meanwhile, we are already scaling storage, by building factory after factory.
  - ftth_finland 3y ago
    > The entire industry is growing at 10x capacity every five years! Grid storage is projected only to grow 10-17 GWh per year according to the aforementioned article. Is that anywhere enough, if the aim is to decarbonise?
    - ben_w 3y ago
      Kinda; cars need to decarbonise as well as the grid, so the batteries are still really important even if none end up on the grid for whatever reason.
    - epistasis 3y ago
      And there's zero new expected nuclear after vogtle 4... If we add 10-17GWh in 2023, it would be foolish to think we will add the same amount in 2024. The amount added per year will grow too. We are at the beginning of the logistic curve, where growth is exponential. A few years ago, there wasn't even a single GWh on the grid. For more than a century we have balanced the grid by keeping energy stored in fuel; as we switch to cheap renewables, that's the only time that grid storage becomes necessary, and you have to get to pretty high levels of renewables before it makes economic sense to add storage. So the market is small now, and will grow. Until then, those lithium ion batteries are being shoved into cars, because car makers can not acquire them fast enough to meet demand. There are several other very promising and quickly advancing battery technologies as well, based on iron or sodium instead of lithium. We will see which get cheap, but until there's high amounts of renewables.
- evilos 3y ago
  Casually suggesting we add the equivalent of our nation's supply of grid battery storage to get the equivalent of a single nuclear plants worth of energy is a new one.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Is it? Given how fast reactors are getting built in the US, I'd say the batteries look like they're already doing much better than the reactors. Of course, both can change as the number are, while interesting, small.
    - evilos 3y ago
      Even if we really could ramp up those factories and the corresponding mines for all the battery materials, those batteries will last maybe 10 ish years. Then they need to be recycled and we have basically no capacity for that today. A nuclear plant can easily go for 60 to 80 years with good maintenance.
      - epistasis 3y ago
        What do you mean "even if"? Can you name a single battery factory that has seen delays of cost overruns like nuclear regularly has? Can you point to a single investor that's willing to back new nuclear in the US like they are backing new battery factories all over? Your usage of numbers is off and extremely biased. Warranties for grid storage batteries are already longer than 10 years, and they don't suddenly stop working, they just experience finished capacity over time. Whereas 80 years for nuclear has no basis in reality, and most are getting shut down at forty due to excessive costs to continue operation. This sort of rose-colored view of nuclear, cherry picking the very best case from one's imagination, and then taking the very worst possible estimate of the comparator, is the type of self-deception that results in nuclear losing again and again. Without a clear view of why these projects fail, and what they actually can deliver, the entire industry has lost any credibility.
        evilos 3y ago
User23 3y ago
We're building batteries and panels at scale now? When did that start?
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Define "at scale".
- epistasis 3y ago
  The US will add more nameplate power capacity of batteries to the grid this year than it will new gas generators: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/us-will-see-more-new-battery-capacity-than-natural-gas-generation-in-2023/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/us-will-see-more-new... (Noting of course that power characteristics of entirely different tools can be an apples an oranges comparison... but look at solar versus fossil fuel generators in that.) Depends on the definition of scale, but the 2010s was where it was in GW added every year: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/04/17/the-world-installed-240-gw-of-solar-in-2020/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/04/17/the-world-installed-2...
  - User23 3y ago
    And are "we" building that capacity? Who is "we" for you?
    - epistasis 3y ago
      There are two definitions of "we" in the studies I linked, one for the US and one for the world. What definition of "we" did we have in mind, and if you have a different one why didn't you state what you mean instead of asking questions that have clear answers?