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Cheaper as in it can fully replace nuclear and fully match for demand for also extended periods of no wind, low temperatures and high cloud cover? Without any u
by Ekaros 3y ago
Cheaper as in it can fully replace nuclear and fully match for demand for also extended periods of no wind, low temperatures and high cloud cover? Without any use of fossil fuels?
- ceejayoz 3y agoHow often is a region with an interconnected grid the size of the USA completely lacking in wind, uniformly cold, and overcast? (Among other things, clouds tend to cause wind. https://www.howitworksdaily.com/how-does-cloud-cover-create-wind/ https://www.howitworksdaily.com/how-does-cloud-cover-create-...)
- natmaka 3y agoThere are many encouraging published studies. Europe: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/180592/european-cooperation-could-provide-more-stable/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/180592/european-cooperation-... US: https://www.cmu.edu/ceic/assets/docs/publications/published-papers/2017-and-2018/handschy-et-al-2017.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/ceic/assets/docs/publications/published-...
- ben_w 3y agoYes, using the current lifetime cost of batteries etc. to cover when solar is unavailable, is currently cheaper than nuclear. (We could also in principle do this with a global power grid, the maths says it's fine and surprisingly affordable even if that grid needs extremely frequent total replacement, but geopolitics will almost certainly kill such an idea).
- Ekaros 3y agoSo why isn't production of new gas plants immediately banned and all effort put to replacing them fully with batteries? As it is cheaper and you won't need those gas plants anymore.
- ceejayoz 3y agoBecause the system is managed by practical people with multi-decade plans, not people trying to score a point in an Internet argument.
- ben_w 3y ago"Don't need" != "Don't want"; lots of marketing/lobbying by companies/countries who do want (e.g. OPEC); also the question was originally focussed on nuclear rather than of gas — nuclear is really expensive, gas isn't anything like so expensive, you can also do renewables + gas if you like (and many do), or promise to get around to shifting the gas in "gas" to hydrogen which could come from PV (something which other people are selling; while I'm not sold on it, I'm not in a position to matter, only one person is targeting me personally with the sales pitch for hydrogen and I'm sure they'll pop up in this thread soon enough…); also it's good to have a diverse supply even when one of the options looks really expensive, just so failures aren't correlated.
- nicoburns 3y agoOne problem is that we don't have the production capacity to produce that much battery capacity yet. Battery production is rapidly ramping up, but that will take time.
- krupan 3y agoSo then batteries are not actually cheaper
- ben_w 3y agoCost and production scale are different questions, regardless of if you're asking about now or any other point in time.
- krupan 3y ago"Cost and production scale are different questions" No they aren't. At any given time cost is determined by supply and demand. If you can't supply enough to meet demand, then the cost is high. If there is no supply, then the cost is infinitely high. It really isn't very complicated.
- krupan 3y agoAre batteries renewable?
- ben_w 3y agoYes, batteries are renewable. If you burn coal, almost all of it turns into a gas. Even if a battery catches fire, it mostly turns into a pile of solid metal oxides and water vapour, the water vapour rains into the ocean in a few days, the rest is close enough to the stuff you mine out of the ground you can always just use those same mining etc. processes from the initial production to turn it back into another battery. The only stuff that doesn't end up in a conveniently reprocessable form is the carbon used in any graphite components or plastics etc., which we could get from trees (like we do with lumber in general) but which we almost certainly don't at present. Batteries are also much easier to recycle if they don't catch fire.