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>> Coal and gas plants are closing because they cannot compete on price with solar/wind + battery storage. First of all, I'm not aware of any large scale batte

>> Coal and gas plants are closing because they cannot compete on price with solar/wind + battery storage. First of all, I'm not aware of any large scale battery storage facilities anywhere, they are prohibitively expensive. Second, coal and gas plant's main cost, at least in EU, is carbon tax. So the fact that they can't compete on price is a result of political decision, not of any shortcomings of the technology itself. >> Storage in particular is so early in the cycle that we can expect the cost will drop at least in half. Battery costs will be rising for at least the next decade, before they can fall: we need to ramp up lithium production first, before we can do that there will be significant shortages driving the prices up. The more popular EVs will become the worse it will be.

hef19898 3y ago
Gas can't compete, because gas is too expensive. Coal actually could compete, it usually was the second type of power plant able to sell on the electricity markets, becasue CO2 certificates are just dirt cheap, way to cheap to move the needle, and coal as fuel was the least expensive (sun and win being free).
- Detrytus 3y ago
  CO2 certificates are not "dirt cheap", for Polish coal-based power plants they amount to 59% of the cost of producing electricity.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Still cheap enough to make coal one of the cheapest source on electricity markets, measured in generation cost per kWh. Since coal is the dirtiest fuel we have, those certificates should be expebsive enough to price out coal most of the time. That would be an ingenious combination of setting incenzives for market players im way that the result of market activities benefits everyone.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Sun and wind aren't 'free' but they have the lowest operating costs compared to alternatives and they have the lowest capital cost per W of installed power. But you probably should account for a storage component as well once those hit deployment in volume. I'm holding out for the next generation of storage batteries and then I'll pull the trigger on a system large enough to do both arbitrage and cover the day/night cycle of this house for a week. That works out to 70 to 100 KWh of storage, which is right now both too expensive to make sense (we still have net metering here) and a safety concern. But I expect the next generation storage to both be substantially cheaper and safer than what's out there today.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    True, sun and wind aren't free. In terms of energy markets (too lazy to look up the up to dtae details, so it might have changed in the last 5 years), only the variable costs for producing one kWh of electricity are taking into account (so basically fuel plus CO2 certificates, over simplified a bit). In that sense, sun and wind are free. Don't ask me why fix costs aren't considered... Grid stabilization is priced in, usually using specific contracts with producers and large consumers (read steel, chemical, paper industrial sites and other with huge electricity needs). In that regard, the European markets are working fine and as intended. Long term, we have to solve the issue of electricity storage. Short term, we are totally fine with renewables producing <60% of our electricity, and on some days even more. Base load became much less of a problem, most hige consumers in the industrial sectors found ways to be much more flexible in their demand, driven in no small degree by being to make extra money on the spot markets (and we talk 10s of millions here).
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Yes, consumer flexibility will be a huge part of the solution. You can already see this with power intensive industries operating when power is cheap (or even on surplus power) and reducing or even stopping their output when power is expensive. Obviously not all industries have this option, sometimes energy is only a small fraction of their expenses. But it is good to see at least this part of the market aspect of energy production and consumption operating as it should. Meanwhile I'm sitting pretty with 7.7 MWh net returned to the grid on my private installation.
matthewdgreen 3y ago
Then we'll ramp up production over the next few years. It's already happening at a phenomenal rate [0]. The world does not need vast amounts of storage in 2023: the goal for the next decade should be to build out renewables from 1% to ~50% of production everywhere, and to use storage mostly to smooth out the demand curve (which is currently highly profitable and happening quickly in places like CA [1].) [0] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/lithium-ion-battery-manufacturing-capacity-2022-2030 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/lithium-ion-b... [1] https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/batteries/chart-the-remarkable-rise-of-californias-grid-battery-capacity https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/batteries/chart-the-rem...

hef19898 3y ago

Gas can't compete, because gas is too expensive. Coal actually could compete, it usually was the second type of power plant able to sell on the electricity markets, becasue CO2 certificates are just dirt cheap, way to cheap to move the needle, and coal as fuel was the least expensive (sun and win being free).

Detrytus 3y ago
CO2 certificates are not "dirt cheap", for Polish coal-based power plants they amount to 59% of the cost of producing electricity.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Still cheap enough to make coal one of the cheapest source on electricity markets, measured in generation cost per kWh. Since coal is the dirtiest fuel we have, those certificates should be expebsive enough to price out coal most of the time. That would be an ingenious combination of setting incenzives for market players im way that the result of market activities benefits everyone.
jacquesm 3y ago
Sun and wind aren't 'free' but they have the lowest operating costs compared to alternatives and they have the lowest capital cost per W of installed power. But you probably should account for a storage component as well once those hit deployment in volume. I'm holding out for the next generation of storage batteries and then I'll pull the trigger on a system large enough to do both arbitrage and cover the day/night cycle of this house for a week. That works out to 70 to 100 KWh of storage, which is right now both too expensive to make sense (we still have net metering here) and a safety concern. But I expect the next generation storage to both be substantially cheaper and safer than what's out there today.
- hef19898 3y ago
  True, sun and wind aren't free. In terms of energy markets (too lazy to look up the up to dtae details, so it might have changed in the last 5 years), only the variable costs for producing one kWh of electricity are taking into account (so basically fuel plus CO2 certificates, over simplified a bit). In that sense, sun and wind are free. Don't ask me why fix costs aren't considered... Grid stabilization is priced in, usually using specific contracts with producers and large consumers (read steel, chemical, paper industrial sites and other with huge electricity needs). In that regard, the European markets are working fine and as intended. Long term, we have to solve the issue of electricity storage. Short term, we are totally fine with renewables producing <60% of our electricity, and on some days even more. Base load became much less of a problem, most hige consumers in the industrial sectors found ways to be much more flexible in their demand, driven in no small degree by being to make extra money on the spot markets (and we talk 10s of millions here).
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Yes, consumer flexibility will be a huge part of the solution. You can already see this with power intensive industries operating when power is cheap (or even on surplus power) and reducing or even stopping their output when power is expensive. Obviously not all industries have this option, sometimes energy is only a small fraction of their expenses. But it is good to see at least this part of the market aspect of energy production and consumption operating as it should. Meanwhile I'm sitting pretty with 7.7 MWh net returned to the grid on my private installation.

matthewdgreen 3y ago

Then we'll ramp up production over the next few years. It's already happening at a phenomenal rate [0]. The world does not need vast amounts of storage in 2023: the goal for the next decade should be to build out renewables from 1% to ~50% of production everywhere, and to use storage mostly to smooth out the demand curve (which is currently highly profitable and happening quickly in places like CA [1].) [0] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/lithium-ion-battery-manufacturing-capacity-2022-2030 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/lithium-ion-b... [1] https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/batteries/chart-the-remarkable-rise-of-californias-grid-battery-capacity https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/batteries/chart-the-rem...