5 ms·

Just a point of clarity, we need demand resources, which means variable at our command vs not variable or variable based on wind/solar input out of our control.

Just a point of clarity, we need demand resources, which means variable at our command vs not variable or variable based on wind/solar input out of our control. The economically viable mass storage options (i.e pumped storage) are basically all deployed. Batteries are getting there but they still need some shenanigans in the ancillary market where they get paid for not running for complex reasons to make the economics in most instances. As the shenanigans price out nat gas in those markets it will be interesting to see how offer strategies of nat gas change to recoup the lost economic viability and if that makes batteries less profitable.

Retric 3y ago
Batteries are already viable paired with solar. You see solar power purchase agreements in the 1.5 to 2c / kWh range and you can directly use that energy around 1/2 the time. Recharging and discharging batteries isn’t 100% efficient but it’s close. Current numbers are lower, but in 2022 you could use LFP for ~5,000 discharge cycles and pay ~480$/kWh of capacity or ~9.6 c/kWh. Inverters etc last longer than the batteries themselves so you can amortize those costs across multiple generations of batteries, therefore it’s not quite upfront costs / number of discharge cycles, but it’s also not that far off of it. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf Still roughly 2c/kWh * 105% + 9.6 c/kWh * 50% ~= 6.9c/kWh averaged over a day. Currently batteries are discharged at peak demand, but the underlying economics scales just fine even if you double the number of solar panels for redundancy and aren’t being paid a premium. Further at scale demand that shifted to cheaper nighttime rates will instead shift to cheaper daytime rates.
- tomatocracy 3y ago
  I assume that's for already built solar PV, though it still seems extremely low to me so I'm curious where you are seeing this. For reference on new build, at the UK government's most recently completed CfD auction (which happened in September), the solar PV bids accepted were at £47/MWh, CPI indexed and specified in 2012 prices: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-difference-cfd-allocation-round-5-results/contracts-for-difference-cfd-allocation-round-5-results-accessible-webpage https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-dif...
  - Retric 3y ago
    Not bad considering the UK is a dark rainy hellhole for solar. NYC is 40.7’ North, Toronto Canada is North 43.7’, London is 51.5’ North and that’s the southern part of the UK. Edit: To be clear I don’t think battery backed solar is a good fit for the UK today, I’m just surprised how close it is.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - tomatocracy 3y ago
      Yes, though the fact that it's 2012 prices and indexed to CPI does a lot - that's roughly £65/MWh in current prices. And despite all that it's still cheaper than offshore wind. You can also look at Spain - the CfDs aren't really comparable since the way CfDs are used there is different but LCOE is probably in the 40s-50s EUR/MWh for new build solar PV. But there are now meaningful curtailment issues in some places due to grid capacity there so developers will probably be working to higher numbers.
      - Retric 3y ago
        Yea, UK solar is still offsetting natural gas so it’s viable. One issue for significantly higher UK solar production is they use more electricity in the winter. January 2023 was 26 TWh where July 2022 was only 20 TWh which is the opposite of solar’s peaks. https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-explained/electricity-and-me/great-britains-monthly-electricity-stats https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-explained/electr... (Older reports on bottom) They can import from France, but France also has higher demand in the winter: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107089/electricity-consumption-france/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107089/electricity-cons... It’s only when you’re far enough south to see significant summer AC demand that it flips.
        tomatocracy 3y ago
        Yes, and this is when the vast majority of homes are still heated using gas central heating. If we switch away from that to heat pumps+resistive heating in anything like meaningful amounts, this difference will get much more pronounced.
- konschubert 3y ago
  I think your math is realistic. We have to keep in mind that 6.9 isn’t yet the end user rate after grid fees, but still. There is also a ton of potential in demand shaping by offering hourly prices to customers. The place where batteries fail is long-term, seasonal storage. The price per charge is still low, but an asset that takes 5000 years to amortise (one charge cycle per year) is not a competitive investment. So we will need other approaches here, where the substance that stores the energy is cheap and the cost is shifted onto the energy transforming device (this is e-fuels/ ammonia/ hydrogen)
  - Retric 3y ago
    I’m not convinced we want significant seasonal storage as a separate system because depth of discharge impacts battery lifespan. So rather than having a singe battery doing nothing for 364 days a year and getting used one day you have a battery bank which gets discharged slightly more 1 day a year and recovers that deficit over some time period. For redundancy reasons you want excess generation capacity should something happen which would most of the time allow for a full charge soon afterwards. PS: individual wind locations also tend to get more power on specific time of the year which can offset seasonal issues.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      Using batteries for seasonal storage is crazy. E-fuels like hydrogen would be much more economical for that storage use case.
      - Retric 3y ago
        It’s not the battery being used for seasonal storage but the difference in rates of battery degradation. Suppose a normal discharge cycle costs 10c/kWh and a very deep discharge costs 100c/kWh to access that last 10%. That means there are energy reserves unacceptably expensive for normal operations, but it also means simply operating batteries efficiently automatically creates reserve capacity which is the entire point of dedicated seasonal storage. Put another way if you design a 1TWh battery for daily use it’s going to have a 0.1TWh reserve capacity just sitting there. This isn’t a lot of power across a full season, but it address seasonal storage in terms of short term abnormal peaks like heatwaves. PS: Proponents of seasonal storage argue for seasonal deficits in production rather than short term gaps. However, the daily variability of renewable production promotes significant excess generation capacity.
6510 3y ago
We've used wind for 5000 years when it was available. It just takes a bit more time to wear out the machines if they sit there waiting most of the time. Someone in Iran told me these are about 3500 years old https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H48TV-Wb9NQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H48TV-Wb9NQ
- cma 3y ago
  Wrong link?
  - 6510 3y ago
    thats so weird, the link is from the previous video in the same tab. spa's are a terrible idea :P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ugw7-BwsmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ugw7-BwsmI
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
A bit more clarity: right now, and for the rest of this decade just rolling out a lot more renewables will be the cheapest way to replace carbon generating sources which are right now burning and spewing carbon into the atmosphere to generate electricity around the globe. So, there is a long term need, in order to reach a goal of 100% carbon free electricity (generally set for about 2035) for more on-demand resources (including responsive demand), but it is not the most pressing concern right now. And even when it is, it'll account for a small fraction of the total, like 10% or so. (Luckily, batteries are gettting rolled out already because they have positive economic value in various niches, like in cars, frequency response, avoiding congestion and network upgrades so the ramp up is looking good)
- junofan 3y ago
  What’s the plan for African nations pursuing industrialization agendas? My understanding is that wind and solar are too low-density for their tribal permitting environments. I don’t see the win in meeting a 2035 target that makes wildly optimistic assumptions about Africa’s trajectory over the next century if it means underinvesting in sources that will move the planet off coal.
patmorgan23 3y ago
Nuclear can load follow and be quite dispatch able. Nuclear is variable (though not as nimble as NAT Gas)

Retric 3y ago

Batteries are already viable paired with solar. You see solar power purchase agreements in the 1.5 to 2c / kWh range and you can directly use that energy around 1/2 the time. Recharging and discharging batteries isn’t 100% efficient but it’s close. Current numbers are lower, but in 2022 you could use LFP for ~5,000 discharge cycles and pay ~480$/kWh of capacity or ~9.6 c/kWh. Inverters etc last longer than the batteries themselves so you can amortize those costs across multiple generations of batteries, therefore it’s not quite upfront costs / number of discharge cycles, but it’s also not that far off of it. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf Still roughly 2c/kWh * 105% + 9.6 c/kWh * 50% ~= 6.9c/kWh averaged over a day. Currently batteries are discharged at peak demand, but the underlying economics scales just fine even if you double the number of solar panels for redundancy and aren’t being paid a premium. Further at scale demand that shifted to cheaper nighttime rates will instead shift to cheaper daytime rates.

tomatocracy 3y ago
I assume that's for already built solar PV, though it still seems extremely low to me so I'm curious where you are seeing this. For reference on new build, at the UK government's most recently completed CfD auction (which happened in September), the solar PV bids accepted were at £47/MWh, CPI indexed and specified in 2012 prices: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-difference-cfd-allocation-round-5-results/contracts-for-difference-cfd-allocation-round-5-results-accessible-webpage https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-dif...
- Retric 3y ago
  Not bad considering the UK is a dark rainy hellhole for solar. NYC is 40.7’ North, Toronto Canada is North 43.7’, London is 51.5’ North and that’s the southern part of the UK. Edit: To be clear I don’t think battery backed solar is a good fit for the UK today, I’m just surprised how close it is.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - tomatocracy 3y ago
    Yes, though the fact that it's 2012 prices and indexed to CPI does a lot - that's roughly £65/MWh in current prices. And despite all that it's still cheaper than offshore wind. You can also look at Spain - the CfDs aren't really comparable since the way CfDs are used there is different but LCOE is probably in the 40s-50s EUR/MWh for new build solar PV. But there are now meaningful curtailment issues in some places due to grid capacity there so developers will probably be working to higher numbers.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Yea, UK solar is still offsetting natural gas so it’s viable. One issue for significantly higher UK solar production is they use more electricity in the winter. January 2023 was 26 TWh where July 2022 was only 20 TWh which is the opposite of solar’s peaks. https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-explained/electricity-and-me/great-britains-monthly-electricity-stats https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-explained/electr... (Older reports on bottom) They can import from France, but France also has higher demand in the winter: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107089/electricity-consumption-france/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107089/electricity-cons... It’s only when you’re far enough south to see significant summer AC demand that it flips.
      - tomatocracy 3y ago
        Yes, and this is when the vast majority of homes are still heated using gas central heating. If we switch away from that to heat pumps+resistive heating in anything like meaningful amounts, this difference will get much more pronounced.
konschubert 3y ago
I think your math is realistic. We have to keep in mind that 6.9 isn’t yet the end user rate after grid fees, but still. There is also a ton of potential in demand shaping by offering hourly prices to customers. The place where batteries fail is long-term, seasonal storage. The price per charge is still low, but an asset that takes 5000 years to amortise (one charge cycle per year) is not a competitive investment. So we will need other approaches here, where the substance that stores the energy is cheap and the cost is shifted onto the energy transforming device (this is e-fuels/ ammonia/ hydrogen)
- Retric 3y ago
  I’m not convinced we want significant seasonal storage as a separate system because depth of discharge impacts battery lifespan. So rather than having a singe battery doing nothing for 364 days a year and getting used one day you have a battery bank which gets discharged slightly more 1 day a year and recovers that deficit over some time period. For redundancy reasons you want excess generation capacity should something happen which would most of the time allow for a full charge soon afterwards. PS: individual wind locations also tend to get more power on specific time of the year which can offset seasonal issues.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Using batteries for seasonal storage is crazy. E-fuels like hydrogen would be much more economical for that storage use case.
    - Retric 3y ago
      It’s not the battery being used for seasonal storage but the difference in rates of battery degradation. Suppose a normal discharge cycle costs 10c/kWh and a very deep discharge costs 100c/kWh to access that last 10%. That means there are energy reserves unacceptably expensive for normal operations, but it also means simply operating batteries efficiently automatically creates reserve capacity which is the entire point of dedicated seasonal storage. Put another way if you design a 1TWh battery for daily use it’s going to have a 0.1TWh reserve capacity just sitting there. This isn’t a lot of power across a full season, but it address seasonal storage in terms of short term abnormal peaks like heatwaves. PS: Proponents of seasonal storage argue for seasonal deficits in production rather than short term gaps. However, the daily variability of renewable production promotes significant excess generation capacity.

6510 3y ago

We've used wind for 5000 years when it was available. It just takes a bit more time to wear out the machines if they sit there waiting most of the time. Someone in Iran told me these are about 3500 years old https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H48TV-Wb9NQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H48TV-Wb9NQ

cma 3y ago
Wrong link?
- 6510 3y ago
  thats so weird, the link is from the previous video in the same tab. spa's are a terrible idea :P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ugw7-BwsmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ugw7-BwsmI

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

A bit more clarity: right now, and for the rest of this decade just rolling out a lot more renewables will be the cheapest way to replace carbon generating sources which are right now burning and spewing carbon into the atmosphere to generate electricity around the globe. So, there is a long term need, in order to reach a goal of 100% carbon free electricity (generally set for about 2035) for more on-demand resources (including responsive demand), but it is not the most pressing concern right now. And even when it is, it'll account for a small fraction of the total, like 10% or so. (Luckily, batteries are gettting rolled out already because they have positive economic value in various niches, like in cars, frequency response, avoiding congestion and network upgrades so the ramp up is looking good)

junofan 3y ago
What’s the plan for African nations pursuing industrialization agendas? My understanding is that wind and solar are too low-density for their tribal permitting environments. I don’t see the win in meeting a 2035 target that makes wildly optimistic assumptions about Africa’s trajectory over the next century if it means underinvesting in sources that will move the planet off coal.

patmorgan23 3y ago

Nuclear can load follow and be quite dispatch able. Nuclear is variable (though not as nimble as NAT Gas)