4 ms·

solar is 10x cheaper than nuclear generation, but storage is 100x more expensive than nuclear. Need a massive change in our understanding of storage costs to g

solar is 10x cheaper than nuclear generation, but storage is 100x more expensive than nuclear. Need a massive change in our understanding of storage costs to go 100% renewable.

doug_durham 3y ago
Citations? I find this difficult to understand.
MilaM 3y ago
Do you happen to have a source for this comparison? I'm curious to know what the economics of grid scale electricity storage are.
- BenoitP 3y ago
  Cost figures are very hard to come by as: * Financing and returns are spread over 60 years for nuclear, which makes it hugely dependent on the interest rate. Which we don't know in advance, and also is at risk of irrational public perception (Leading in democracies to early closure of perfectly fine plants. That affects ROI hugely). * Nuclear too profits from scale: you have to maintain an army of competent engineers. But once done, you can copy-paste plants cheaply. And raw fuel is less than 10 of the operating cost. * LCOEs (financially Levelized Costs) are all over the place and highly dependent on plugging holes in production * Chinese solar panels are state-sponsored to an unspecified amount * Chinese solar panels are produced using coal electricity, and with lots fossil heat in the process. Models for pricing it in a CO2-free (or levelized with nuclear) are inexistent. * Even calculating the EROEI (Energy Return Over Energy Invested) is difficult as you need to define an envelope. For example: do you need to account for producing gasoline from solar energy to power the mining truck necessary for your materials. How about powering it with batteries? Which you would need more mining. * Battery storage needs are of humongous size. What's marginally fine now will probably be humongously expensive at scale. If done on lithium, we need about 180 years of mining for 28 days storage. And that's without accounting for other uses of lithium. * Having cheap or expensive energy from one source may help you get more of another. TLDR: At scale, it's a system with 150 variables dependent on each other, including geopolitical game theory hidden variables; and of course the climate crisis affecting the whole thing. But maybe we can trust physics: nuclear forces >> electric forces.
- wiredfool 3y ago
  Other recent threads have mentioned gridscale battery storage on the order of 8-10c/KWh.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    Lithium based is on the order of $100/kWhr: https://thundersaidenergy.com/downloads/battery-storage-costs-the-economics/#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20a%20lithium%20ion,costs%20of%20grid%2Dscale%20storage https://thundersaidenergy.com/downloads/battery-storage-cost....
    - wiredfool 3y ago
      FWIW, that's a different measure -- the 8-10c/kwh is for amortized cost over the lifetime of energy storage, vs the capital cost to build it.
Kon5ole 3y ago
It doesn't have to be batteries, hydrogen gas can be generated from solar at 80% efficiency, and storing hydrogen is way cheaper than batteries. Certainly way cheaper than nuclear.
- kimmk 3y ago
  Round-trip efficiency of hydrogen storage is at best around 40% though. But with abundant and cheap renewables, this might not be much of an issue.
  - Raydovsky 3y ago
    Then you have to find a way to store it.
epistasis 3y ago
> storage is 100x more expensive than nuclear. Please don't make things up out of thin air. Storage is cheaper than nuclear.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Look at the cost of storing 12 hours of energy for a 2 GW solar install (assuming long winter nights) or cost per kWhr of non gravity storage (since mountains aren't available everywhere).
  - epistasis 3y ago
    Take these numbers from a smaller install on HN a few days ago, $390/kWh: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38942951 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38942951 And you get roughly $9B for 24GWh. Rhis is roughly half the cost of Vogtle most recently completed $18B reactor, which is only 1.2GW and does baseload, so it provides less valuable constant power rather than dispatchable power that can match supply to demand. And that's before further price reductions for the batteries from having far lower power:energy ratio (save a ton on inverters), bulk discounts, and the thigh cost of doing any construction in Hawaii versus other places. What about the solar to charge it and provide daytime power? Again, using high cost estimates of $1/W, and a capacity factor of 0.25, you'd need 8GW to supply an average of 2GW continuous power, which is $8B. And again, that's using a high installed cost, and ignoring that a major cost of install, the inverters, would be shared with the batteries and could be dual utilized. Solar panel costs are only 1/3 of the total installed cost of utility solar in the US, and batter packs are similarly only able 1/3 of the total balance of system. So using excessivelt high, conservative estimates, a solar+batter install that could sustain 2GW average, but which is also hugely flexible and can adapt to peaks and troughs in demand, is going to be less than $17B, probably closer to $12B or $10B realistically. That nuclear reactor for an inflexible 1.2GW is $18B. And then let's look at project completion risk and timelines. The nuclear reactor will take 10 years, and has a >25% of failing to complete construction, leaving billions stranded. The solar plus battery install will be completed in 2-5 years, with a >95% of project success. That's today, but every year solar and storage costs fall. Nuclear might eke out a 5% decrease in cost when 10+ reactors have been built, but it's not going to catch up to storage and solar. Gravity based storage won't be able to compete, according to any of the startups' preliminary numbers I have seen published. New hydro storage requires construction, which is super expensive for advanced economies, and is unlikely to be able to even match the costs of hydro built 75 years ago, and will likely be be far more expensive. In any case, the idea that storage is 100x more expensive than nuclear is just not close to reality.

solar is 10x cheaper than nuclear generation, but storage is 100x more expensive than nuclear. Need a massive change in our understanding of storage costs to go 100% renewable.

doug_durham 3y ago

Citations? I find this difficult to understand.

MilaM 3y ago

Do you happen to have a source for this comparison? I'm curious to know what the economics of grid scale electricity storage are.

BenoitP 3y ago
Cost figures are very hard to come by as: * Financing and returns are spread over 60 years for nuclear, which makes it hugely dependent on the interest rate. Which we don't know in advance, and also is at risk of irrational public perception (Leading in democracies to early closure of perfectly fine plants. That affects ROI hugely). * Nuclear too profits from scale: you have to maintain an army of competent engineers. But once done, you can copy-paste plants cheaply. And raw fuel is less than 10 of the operating cost. * LCOEs (financially Levelized Costs) are all over the place and highly dependent on plugging holes in production * Chinese solar panels are state-sponsored to an unspecified amount * Chinese solar panels are produced using coal electricity, and with lots fossil heat in the process. Models for pricing it in a CO2-free (or levelized with nuclear) are inexistent. * Even calculating the EROEI (Energy Return Over Energy Invested) is difficult as you need to define an envelope. For example: do you need to account for producing gasoline from solar energy to power the mining truck necessary for your materials. How about powering it with batteries? Which you would need more mining. * Battery storage needs are of humongous size. What's marginally fine now will probably be humongously expensive at scale. If done on lithium, we need about 180 years of mining for 28 days storage. And that's without accounting for other uses of lithium. * Having cheap or expensive energy from one source may help you get more of another. TLDR: At scale, it's a system with 150 variables dependent on each other, including geopolitical game theory hidden variables; and of course the climate crisis affecting the whole thing. But maybe we can trust physics: nuclear forces >> electric forces.
wiredfool 3y ago
Other recent threads have mentioned gridscale battery storage on the order of 8-10c/KWh.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Lithium based is on the order of $100/kWhr: https://thundersaidenergy.com/downloads/battery-storage-costs-the-economics/#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20a%20lithium%20ion,costs%20of%20grid%2Dscale%20storage https://thundersaidenergy.com/downloads/battery-storage-cost....
  - wiredfool 3y ago
    FWIW, that's a different measure -- the 8-10c/kwh is for amortized cost over the lifetime of energy storage, vs the capital cost to build it.

Kon5ole 3y ago

It doesn't have to be batteries, hydrogen gas can be generated from solar at 80% efficiency, and storing hydrogen is way cheaper than batteries. Certainly way cheaper than nuclear.

kimmk 3y ago
Round-trip efficiency of hydrogen storage is at best around 40% though. But with abundant and cheap renewables, this might not be much of an issue.
- Raydovsky 3y ago
  Then you have to find a way to store it.

epistasis 3y ago

> storage is 100x more expensive than nuclear. Please don't make things up out of thin air. Storage is cheaper than nuclear.

mensetmanusman 3y ago
Look at the cost of storing 12 hours of energy for a 2 GW solar install (assuming long winter nights) or cost per kWhr of non gravity storage (since mountains aren't available everywhere).
- epistasis 3y ago
  Take these numbers from a smaller install on HN a few days ago, $390/kWh: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38942951 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38942951 And you get roughly $9B for 24GWh. Rhis is roughly half the cost of Vogtle most recently completed $18B reactor, which is only 1.2GW and does baseload, so it provides less valuable constant power rather than dispatchable power that can match supply to demand. And that's before further price reductions for the batteries from having far lower power:energy ratio (save a ton on inverters), bulk discounts, and the thigh cost of doing any construction in Hawaii versus other places. What about the solar to charge it and provide daytime power? Again, using high cost estimates of $1/W, and a capacity factor of 0.25, you'd need 8GW to supply an average of 2GW continuous power, which is $8B. And again, that's using a high installed cost, and ignoring that a major cost of install, the inverters, would be shared with the batteries and could be dual utilized. Solar panel costs are only 1/3 of the total installed cost of utility solar in the US, and batter packs are similarly only able 1/3 of the total balance of system. So using excessivelt high, conservative estimates, a solar+batter install that could sustain 2GW average, but which is also hugely flexible and can adapt to peaks and troughs in demand, is going to be less than $17B, probably closer to $12B or $10B realistically. That nuclear reactor for an inflexible 1.2GW is $18B. And then let's look at project completion risk and timelines. The nuclear reactor will take 10 years, and has a >25% of failing to complete construction, leaving billions stranded. The solar plus battery install will be completed in 2-5 years, with a >95% of project success. That's today, but every year solar and storage costs fall. Nuclear might eke out a 5% decrease in cost when 10+ reactors have been built, but it's not going to catch up to storage and solar. Gravity based storage won't be able to compete, according to any of the startups' preliminary numbers I have seen published. New hydro storage requires construction, which is super expensive for advanced economies, and is unlikely to be able to even match the costs of hydro built 75 years ago, and will likely be be far more expensive. In any case, the idea that storage is 100x more expensive than nuclear is just not close to reality.