17 ms·

Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

209 points by epistasis 3y ago

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
81% of new US electric-generating capacity. Not 81% of total US capacity.
- epistasis 3y ago
  Thanks for the correction, "new" was accidentally dropped while trying to squeezed the original title into the allowed number of characters.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  I saw that qualifier also. Does anyone know what percent of total capacity will be new next year (or better, what percent of total capacity will be solar next year)?
- mjevans 3y ago
  81% of *new* capacity planned for *this year* Trends are often easier to understand from a rolling average or derivative. Electricity might also seem fungible but even near optimal conditions a rule of thumb of 1% power lost per 100 miles (~160km) of distance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Lo... Thus the value of any installations should be rated by their distance to loads and load capacity under typical operating conditions. Solar is probably a good pair against AC units. Base load plants are still desirable.
JoeAltmaier 3y ago
A neat trend. But still renewables are a small fraction of electrical generation capacity in the US. Dominated by gas, even the renewable slice (< 20%) is dominated by hydroelectric. Which hasn't changed in 50 years, even gone down a bit. Second is wind. Solar is a scrap of a scrap. A long, long way to go to complete renewable energy.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/research/us-interconnection-queues-analysis-2023 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights... ("US Interconnection Queues Analysis 2023") https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960 ("Renewable generation surpassed coal and nuclear in the U.S. electric power sector in 2022") https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/11/02/u-s-to-deploy-550-gw-of-new-renewables-by-2030/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/11/02/u-s-to-deploy-550-gw-... ("U.S. to deploy 550 GW of new renewables by 2030") China deployed more solar last year than total US solar generation capacity, so while work, it can be done. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-solar-power-capacity-rises-552-2023-2024-01-26/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-sol... ("The country built in excess of 216 gigawatts (GW) of solar power this year, the data indicated, underscoring the scale and pace of China's solar build out.") Currently, the U.S. PV manufacturing industry has the capacity to produce PV modules to meet nearly a third of US domestic demand. https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-manufacturing https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-manufacturing
  - nateglims 3y ago
    The second link is interesting since it covers actual generated energy. The others are kind of convoluted and need to be more clear on what the capacity measurement is since most renewables have significantly lower capacity factors than nuke, gas and coal.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Which is why the battery uptake mentioned in this piece is of note. It firms renewables and steals grid service revenue from thermal generators. Pulls the uptake trajectory of renewables closer to vertical. Only one coal fired generator in the US is currently economical to run vs new renewables. You don’t have to match capacity factor, it’s about economics; if renewables can run often enough cheap enough, it makes other generators uneconomical even if they have superior capacity factors. It’s why nuclear is on life support in the US. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/end-of-coal-power-in-australia-means-a-boom-for-battery-makers-like-tesla https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/end-of-co... | https://archive.today/2owbd https://archive.today/2owbd https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/30/us-coal-more-expensive-than-renewable-energy-study https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/30/us-coal-more...
balderdash 3y ago
I think the promising thing is that as we get more batteries on the grid, it will enable more renewables penetration as a percentage of the grid as a whole
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Yes, absolutely, this compound effect is very important. Also interesting is that with every EV that gets added to the grid this effect improves even for the ones that can't deliver the power back later if it is economical to do so. They effectively serve as capacitors.
jacquesm 3y ago
That's nice, but there is a long way to go, also it would probably be better to see batteries as a part of the 'storage' bracket, after all the batteries don't generate electricity, they store it. It's a bit like lumping fields of grain in with bags for grain. The one is useful all by itself, the other can't function without some other generator doing its job first. Typically the use for storage in the form of batteries is to play arbitrage with power prices around solar noon to farm it back out again when power is more expensive, for instance early evening or the next morning. Longer term storage also works but tends to be more capital expensive and isn't really an option just yet, though there are some edge cases where it may already work on (slightly) longer timescales.
- danielheath 3y ago
  > The one [solar] is useful all by itself Not in a power-grid context; it'll over-volt the grid sometimes and under-volt it other times. In the specific context of "understanding generation supply to a grid", working in terms of "load supplied by a system of solar & batteries" makes the math drastically simpler.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Every modern inverter respects the local grid regulations with respect to overvolting and undervolting isn't an issue at all and has in principle if it happens absolutely nothing to do with solar power.
- audunw 3y ago
  I think it's actually brilliant to include battery together with energy generation. We know that when renewables become more than 20% of power generation, every GW of renewables you add should be matched by a similar order of magnitude of batteries. So if we start reporting this way, you can immediately see if we're building enough energy storage or not. If you wanted to make the amount of power actually produced comparable you could reduce the amount of reported GW of bother renewables and batteries by 50% so they add up to a realistic capacity number. But capacity numbers are never really comparable anyway. Perhaps best to report raw numbers and assume readers are smart enough to understand that for every source you need to know the significance of what a "GW" means. Like, a "GW" of a gas peaker plant does not mean much regarding how much energy it produces. That "GW" is actually much more comparable to battery energy storage "GW"
auspiv 3y ago
Nice headline but batteries do not generate electricity
Animats 3y ago
"The Gemini solar facility in Nevada plans to begin operating in 2024. With a planned photovoltaic capacity of 690 megawatts (MW) and battery storage of 380 MW, it is expected to be the largest solar project in the United States when fully operational." That's about 60% of the capacity of one unit at Vogtle nuclear power station, and Vogtle has four units. Also, adding the solar capacity to the battery capacity to get a gigawatt makes no sense. Either you're charging the battery, which takes power from the solar array, or you're discharging the battery because it's dark and the solar array is idle.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Gemini took 2 years and cost $1.3B. Vogtle cost $34B for 2 units and took 12 years for those 2 units. Edit: Gemini took 4 years from project submission and 2 years from construction start. Vogtle took 19 years from project submission and 12 years from construction start.
  - exoverito 3y ago
    In large part because of constantly shifting requirements, obstructionism, and various forms of lawfare. The US has become terribly inefficient at large infrastructural projects, see the CA HSR project which is massively delayed and over budget. China does not have this problem, and has been rapidly expanding their nuclear capacity. A standardized reactor design and regulatory certainty would enable the economies of scale and accrual of institutional knowledge to efficiently build new power plants. In response to the 1973 oil crisis, France massively expanded their fleet of nuclear reactors which were producing more than 70% of their electricity in about 15 years. If the political will is there, it can be done.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      Gemini also qualifies as a large infrastructural project; it was delayed by concerns about the tortoises living in the area and challenges from local environmental groups. China does similar projects in about 6 months. IOW, China does solar projects about 8X as fast as the US. OTOH it does nuclear projects in about 5 years, about 4X as fast as the US.
barney54 3y ago
Batteries are not generating capacity.
- dymk 3y ago
  Solar is the generating, batteries are the capacity
credit_guy 3y ago
It's not really correct to call batteries "electric-generating". They store electricity, but don't generate it. Still, if you take the batteries out, solar makes up 75% of the remaining new electric-generating capacity. If you add wind, you get 92%.
- gitfan86 3y ago
  In some scenarios the solar is only deployed because of batteries being deployed in the same network. The batteries are providing energy when the sun is down.
- troymc 3y ago
  It seems that the thing they're measuring is the amount of instantaneous power that all the new "sources" could deliver at once, assuming they're able to deliver right then, and at max-output-power. In other words, it's an optimistic measure, but it's not meaningless.
- epistasis 3y ago
  From the purposes of grid operation, batteries serve both generating and load functions. Having a complete catalog of generating capacity is a standard metric that EIA tracks. So even though batteries can also consume from the grid, it really does make sense to add them to the list of "generation," at least according to the purpose that this generation metric has always served.
  - breather 3y ago
    > batteries serve both generating and load functions. Only until they run out of power! Capacity is still the core of their function.
- cwal37 3y ago
  It’s even a bit funnier than you put it since on net they consume electricity due to round trip efficiency losses. This also can provide something of an interesting discussion with local authorities when trying to site a battery somewhere that has banned new “generating” technologies (typically targeted at wind and solar), since batteries are consuming electricity and can be likened to transmission infrastructure (or physical trade assets which I think some people are enjoying playing with).
nekoashide 3y ago
The cool thing about batteries is that they are great as an investment. You can charge them when power is cheap and sell back power when you have high demand and market prices for power. Typically Peaker Plants fill this role but at much higher cost for electricity and emissions. Batteries just make much more sense for this kind of power.
- chii 3y ago
  The question is whether such battery's charge/discharge cycle degrade faster than the return on investment. For home use, break-even is an acceptable outcome, but not for commercial use like above. Is the price of battery low enough atm to make a return for such an investment?
  - epistasis 3y ago
    These are all grid investments. About half of the storage is being installed in Texas, which is the closest thing the US has to an open market for investors. The storage being installed in Texas is all being done purely for profit. Meaning that the investors have run the numbers and find batteries to be the highest return they think they can get for their money. Storage in other places (specifically California) is being driven both by the profit motive, but also in some cases by legislation that mandates storage (not specifically batteries) be added as part of the grid mix. California has enough solar now that nearly all new installations include storage, in order to profit during the peak evening hours when electricity prices are highest.
  - Retric 3y ago
    It’s currently possible for batteries to be a great investment, but diminishing returns hit hard. The most cost efficient setup is a solar farm where the panels produce DC which directly charges the batteries and the losses from DC>AC conversion only happens once before you send power to the grid. With the added benefit of only paying for a single set of DC>AC equipment. However, the more such systems come online the less peaking power is worth and batteries aren’t competitive with current ultra low nighttime rates.
  - audunw 3y ago
bequanna 3y ago
One thing I have wondered: does it make sense to just put most of our eggs in the solar basket in sunny states and then invest heavily in batteries and transmission lines to less sunny areas? Wind seems so much more expensive and maintenance intensive.
- thehappypm 3y ago
  Wind is strange, because there is more maintenance and more upfront cost, but the amount of energy you get from a windmill is enormous.
- elif 3y ago
  Panel and battery prices have come down such that transmission losses, natural disasters to farms, last mile power lines in storms, etc become bigger concerns comparatively. I think the end-use solar and battery model makes more and more sense every year from a consumer perspective.
  - einpoklum 3y ago
    Note that you don't necessarily have to put the panels and the batteries at the same place. You can, and there are benefits like DC <-> AC conversion, but you could in theory de-centralize solar more than you de-centralize battery storage. And there may be some scale advantages there, especially since some storage technologies involve putting things underground, or high temperatures which are a safety concern like with molten salt, etc. Caveat: I'm just a layman about this stuff.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  No. Transmission lines are too expensive, it's cheaper to put solar panels in non optimal locations. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-of-electricity-is-local/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-of-...
applied_heat 3y ago
Look at the stock prices of the companies installing owning and operating solar and wind farms. They are dogshit. I think the boom is to capture the transmission system capacity near the best wind/solar sites, try and stay in business for the duration of the 20 year energy purchase agreement signed with local utility, and then mergers and aquisitions so that the larger entity can exert leverage upon renewal. Power outages have a massive cost on society so the value of the marginal unit of electricity is very high.
- roenxi 3y ago
  Not necessarily a problem; recall that the way economics works is the market will have marginal businesses that are on the verge of being unprofitable to run - so seeing some borderline cases is not troubling. It looks like solar is finally becoming economic; so it is reasonable that the marginal producers right now will be solar farms. But assuming the price trends continue businesses will start to appear that make good money. Although there does seem to be a serious risk to grid stability. Most of the energy emergencies in the last few years have been linked to areas that invested heavily in renewables.
  - Panzer04 3y ago
    Indeed. Arguably it shows just how good for the economy wind and solar are - they are so easy to install and build that companies that run businesses doing that just don't have any real edge.
- hackermatic 3y ago
  Some important businesses are just terrible investments. Airlines come to mind; they always seem to be one minor downturn away from insolvency.
- pinkgolem 3y ago
  There is just no barrier to entry in the market. You can get a small PV going for a few hundred bucks, and it scales more or less linear from that point on. And cost to entry is reducing over time
samatman 3y ago
This is nameplate capacity: the power a generator can deliver, full on, under ideal conditions. Solar and wind always look great when measured in nameplate capacity, which is why this is done. If you want to know how much electricity they will generate, you have to multiply by the capacity factor. Nuclear, for instance has a capacity factor of 0.9 in the US: it delivers 90% of its nameplate capacity in a given year. Solar ranges between 0.08 and 0.15.
- why_only_15 3y ago
  In the US, PV solar capacity factor is about 0.24 (partly because lots of people live near very sunny regions like California and Texas). The National Renewable Energy Laboratory claims that in some parts of the US utility-scale solar capacity factors are 0.33 [0]. Wind is about 0.36, Hydro also 0.36, Nuclear about 0.93 [1]. If you apply these capacity factors to the nameplate capacities (ignoring batteries), you get 58.5% solar, 19.7% wind, 15.1% natural gas, and 6.6% nuclear. [0]: https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2021/utility-scale_pv https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2021/utility-scale_pv [1]: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_6_07_b https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
  - Retric 3y ago
    US nuclear averages below 0.9, individual plants can break 0.93 for a single year, but long term maintenance and refueling cycles lower the average. Ex: 95.73% (2017) 80.25% (lifetime) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Valley_Nuclear_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Valley_Nuclear_Power_St... 94.43% (2017) 75.20% (lifetime) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunswick_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunswick_Nuclear_Generating_S... 96.04% (2017) 78.07% (lifetime) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Plant So you can cherry pick a few numbers from the best years, but the lifetime averages tell a different story.
    - foota 3y ago
      Is a 15% difference that much of a different story?
fortran77 3y ago
How do batteries generate electricity?
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  By discharging energy when the grid operator calls for it, having charged when there was excess energy on the grid (typically what would’ve been wasted as curtailed renewables).
- dymk 3y ago
  They form a voltage potential between their anode and cathode.
hackermatic 3y ago
I'm surprised that wind is such a small part of the US's projected future energy mix. Does anyone know why? Wind power works overnight, it leaves a lot more usable land than solar does, and there's a lot more capacity to be exploited. It's strange even considering the political backlash against wind power in some areas.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  Looking through LCOE+[^1] and references to old reports[^2], it looks like solar used to be significantly cheaper, and wind a surprising dip in cost last 12-18 months. It's now on par if not less for onshore wind across the board. [^1] [^1] https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus/ https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost.... [^2] https://www.quora.com/Which-is-more-expensive-to-build-wind-energy-or-solar-energy https://www.quora.com/Which-is-more-expensive-to-build-wind-...
- fbdab103 3y ago
  My knee jerk thought is that you have to work significantly harder to secure land for windmills. They have to be distributed such that you require huge tracts of land and/or to secure rights to install a tower on someone else's property. Each of those towers then need additional transmission lines. While solar might generate less energy per unit area, it is at least condensed so that you could get away with buying a plot and fully exploit the area. You can add additional (unconnected) plots as cheap land becomes available. I could also see the advantage that solar has quite limited opex after installation. A fleet of windmills may require significantly more resources to keep operating after years of service.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    Drive through Indiana and it’s pretty clear farmers are happy to site lots of windmills in their fields.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  The US is a bit behind in catching up with the rest of the world on this front. There are some positive exceptions like Texas where they figured out quite early that it's cheaper to power refineries with renewables than with fossil fuel. So, Texas has a lot of solar and wind at this point. And why not, it's a sparsely populated state that is very suitable for tapping into both. The complacency in the rest of the US of course has a lot to do with the fact that there's a very loud and active pro fossil fuel lobby that kept insisting coal was the future even while a lot of coal plants were going out of business. A lot of states invested in gas plants instead of wind generation because of that too. And now that renewables are clearly cheaper, a lot of those investments are starting to look pretty bad.
throwaway2037 3y ago
> Nuclear. Start-up of the fourth reactor (1.1 GW) at Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power plant I checked the Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla... > Two additional units utilizing Westinghouse AP1000 reactors were under construction since 2009, with Unit 3 being completed in July 2023.[9][10][11] This last report blames the latest increase in costs on the contractor not completing work as scheduled. Another complicating factor in the construction process is the bankruptcy of Westinghouse in 2017.[12] In 2018 costs were estimated to be about $25 billion.[13] By 2021 they were estimated to be over $28.5 billion.[14] In 2023 costs had increased to $34 billion, with work still to be completed on Vogtle 4.[15] Those numbers are simply mind blowing. Why are these still built? How much solar/wind/battery capacity can 34B USD buy!? I feel the same about the two big nuke projects in the UK (Hinkley Point C & Sizewell C). It makes no sense compared to solar/wind/battery.
- RamblingCTO 3y ago
  Network stability, night and bad weather hedging is a problem though with full solar/wind, isn't it? We still need a mix until tech is better to solve these problems.
- breather 3y ago
  > How much solar/wind/battery capacity can 34B USD buy!? I'm guessing you'd run into space constraints pretty quickly. For one large project a nuclear reactor is incredibly compact compared to most alternatives except maybe hydro.
  - gamepsys 3y ago
    I don't think space is a concern in North America.
    - sowbug 3y ago
      If space isn't a concern, then transmission is.
jeffbee 3y ago
The closest analogy I can recall to all these tireless fission stans are the OS/2 fans who refused to shut up even after Windows was dancing on its grave. It is truly embarrassing for the tech commentariat to be so blinded to reality.
pbazarnik 3y ago
Calculation of battery capacity one can build for 34B 0.3k$ per 1kWh of battery storage [1] (0.3$/Wh) Battery capacity = 34B$ /(0.3$/Wh) =113.3GWh (1G$=1B$) The 34B battery capacity will be equivalent to 113hours of operation of 1GW power plant. (4.7 days) [1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  That's not the main use of grid batteries. The main use of batteries is 1) to soak up power that is otherwise not needed when there's too much of it. 2) to deliver that power back when there's too little of it. This is something that happens very often for typically short amount of times (hours). Batteries help smooth this out. The mistake you are making is only thinking about when there's not enough power. The real challenge is dealing with the very regular situation that there's too much of it. That's energy that is wasted and lost. Batteries improve the capacity factor of renewables (the percentage of time they are useful). So, do electricity cables. Shortages and surpluses are highly localized. Germany for example has the problem that the demand is in the south and a lot of wind generation is in the north. So, they are curtailing wind power when there's too much wind and are firing up coal plants in the south because they lack the cables to get the power from where there is too much of it to where it is needed. When Texas had it's blackouts, other states had plenty of power. But Texas is not connected to those states by cables. So they had no way to get the power delivered. So, blackouts happened. Long term storage is much less relevant currently and a market in it's infancy. The overwhelming majority of grid batteries is for dealing with short term dips and peaks in power generation. Most setups don't provide more than a few hours of power at best. But they can switch between charging and discharging in milliseconds and do both at high capacities. This is why lithium ion is popular in this space. It can deliver or soak up a lot of power very quickly. You can put cells in series or in parallel depending on the use case. You add more cells to deliver more power more quickly. Not necessarily for longer. You can configure the same 1gwh of cells to deliver 100mw of power for 10 hours or 2gw for half an hour. Most of these batteries are configured for high capacity charging/discharging and relatively short storage. There are some long term storage solutions emerging as well of course. Redux flow batteries are a good example where there's a fixed size cathode and anode and reservoirs of electrolyte that are pumped around. You can scale these by simply using larger reservoirs. They are cheap and can hold many days/weeks of power. Just add larger tanks. The caveat, is that the power delivery is a constant and typically low.
zarify 3y ago
Ultimately how useful is the high uptake in individual states? My understanding was that the US had a lot of weirdness going on about provision of utilities over state lines. (Mind you here in Oz I think we have our own state politics involved, but I guess at least we have fewer states )
- pjc50 3y ago
  The US has three separate grids: east, west, and Texas. Who are oddly separatist about their badly managed energy system.
  - zarify 3y ago
    Ah, it was probably me hearing about Texas and then extrapolating that to the rest of the US. Probably not a great idea on my part. Thanks for setting me straight :)
EricE 3y ago
Welp, now you will be able to understand where the rolling blackouts are coming from.

209 points by epistasis 3y ago

AnimalMuppet 3y ago

81% of new US electric-generating capacity. Not 81% of total US capacity.

epistasis 3y ago
Thanks for the correction, "new" was accidentally dropped while trying to squeezed the original title into the allowed number of characters.
gnicholas 3y ago
I saw that qualifier also. Does anyone know what percent of total capacity will be new next year (or better, what percent of total capacity will be solar next year)?
mjevans 3y ago
81% of *new* capacity planned for *this year* Trends are often easier to understand from a rolling average or derivative. Electricity might also seem fungible but even near optimal conditions a rule of thumb of 1% power lost per 100 miles (~160km) of distance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Lo... Thus the value of any installations should be rated by their distance to loads and load capacity under typical operating conditions. Solar is probably a good pair against AC units. Base load plants are still desirable.

JoeAltmaier 3y ago

A neat trend. But still renewables are a small fraction of electrical generation capacity in the US. Dominated by gas, even the renewable slice (< 20%) is dominated by hydroelectric. Which hasn't changed in 50 years, even gone down a bit. Second is wind. Solar is a scrap of a scrap. A long, long way to go to complete renewable energy.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/research/us-interconnection-queues-analysis-2023 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights... ("US Interconnection Queues Analysis 2023") https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960 ("Renewable generation surpassed coal and nuclear in the U.S. electric power sector in 2022") https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/11/02/u-s-to-deploy-550-gw-of-new-renewables-by-2030/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/11/02/u-s-to-deploy-550-gw-... ("U.S. to deploy 550 GW of new renewables by 2030") China deployed more solar last year than total US solar generation capacity, so while work, it can be done. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-solar-power-capacity-rises-552-2023-2024-01-26/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-sol... ("The country built in excess of 216 gigawatts (GW) of solar power this year, the data indicated, underscoring the scale and pace of China's solar build out.") Currently, the U.S. PV manufacturing industry has the capacity to produce PV modules to meet nearly a third of US domestic demand. https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-manufacturing https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-manufacturing
- nateglims 3y ago
  The second link is interesting since it covers actual generated energy. The others are kind of convoluted and need to be more clear on what the capacity measurement is since most renewables have significantly lower capacity factors than nuke, gas and coal.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Which is why the battery uptake mentioned in this piece is of note. It firms renewables and steals grid service revenue from thermal generators. Pulls the uptake trajectory of renewables closer to vertical. Only one coal fired generator in the US is currently economical to run vs new renewables. You don’t have to match capacity factor, it’s about economics; if renewables can run often enough cheap enough, it makes other generators uneconomical even if they have superior capacity factors. It’s why nuclear is on life support in the US. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/end-of-coal-power-in-australia-means-a-boom-for-battery-makers-like-tesla https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/end-of-co... | https://archive.today/2owbd https://archive.today/2owbd https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/30/us-coal-more-expensive-than-renewable-energy-study https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/30/us-coal-more...

balderdash 3y ago

I think the promising thing is that as we get more batteries on the grid, it will enable more renewables penetration as a percentage of the grid as a whole

jacquesm 3y ago
Yes, absolutely, this compound effect is very important. Also interesting is that with every EV that gets added to the grid this effect improves even for the ones that can't deliver the power back later if it is economical to do so. They effectively serve as capacitors.

jacquesm 3y ago

That's nice, but there is a long way to go, also it would probably be better to see batteries as a part of the 'storage' bracket, after all the batteries don't generate electricity, they store it. It's a bit like lumping fields of grain in with bags for grain. The one is useful all by itself, the other can't function without some other generator doing its job first. Typically the use for storage in the form of batteries is to play arbitrage with power prices around solar noon to farm it back out again when power is more expensive, for instance early evening or the next morning. Longer term storage also works but tends to be more capital expensive and isn't really an option just yet, though there are some edge cases where it may already work on (slightly) longer timescales.

danielheath 3y ago
> The one [solar] is useful all by itself Not in a power-grid context; it'll over-volt the grid sometimes and under-volt it other times. In the specific context of "understanding generation supply to a grid", working in terms of "load supplied by a system of solar & batteries" makes the math drastically simpler.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Every modern inverter respects the local grid regulations with respect to overvolting and undervolting isn't an issue at all and has in principle if it happens absolutely nothing to do with solar power.
audunw 3y ago
I think it's actually brilliant to include battery together with energy generation. We know that when renewables become more than 20% of power generation, every GW of renewables you add should be matched by a similar order of magnitude of batteries. So if we start reporting this way, you can immediately see if we're building enough energy storage or not. If you wanted to make the amount of power actually produced comparable you could reduce the amount of reported GW of bother renewables and batteries by 50% so they add up to a realistic capacity number. But capacity numbers are never really comparable anyway. Perhaps best to report raw numbers and assume readers are smart enough to understand that for every source you need to know the significance of what a "GW" means. Like, a "GW" of a gas peaker plant does not mean much regarding how much energy it produces. That "GW" is actually much more comparable to battery energy storage "GW"

auspiv 3y ago

Nice headline but batteries do not generate electricity

Animats 3y ago

"The Gemini solar facility in Nevada plans to begin operating in 2024. With a planned photovoltaic capacity of 690 megawatts (MW) and battery storage of 380 MW, it is expected to be the largest solar project in the United States when fully operational." That's about 60% of the capacity of one unit at Vogtle nuclear power station, and Vogtle has four units. Also, adding the solar capacity to the battery capacity to get a gigawatt makes no sense. Either you're charging the battery, which takes power from the solar array, or you're discharging the battery because it's dark and the solar array is idle.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
Gemini took 2 years and cost $1.3B. Vogtle cost $34B for 2 units and took 12 years for those 2 units. Edit: Gemini took 4 years from project submission and 2 years from construction start. Vogtle took 19 years from project submission and 12 years from construction start.
- exoverito 3y ago
  In large part because of constantly shifting requirements, obstructionism, and various forms of lawfare. The US has become terribly inefficient at large infrastructural projects, see the CA HSR project which is massively delayed and over budget. China does not have this problem, and has been rapidly expanding their nuclear capacity. A standardized reactor design and regulatory certainty would enable the economies of scale and accrual of institutional knowledge to efficiently build new power plants. In response to the 1973 oil crisis, France massively expanded their fleet of nuclear reactors which were producing more than 70% of their electricity in about 15 years. If the political will is there, it can be done.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Gemini also qualifies as a large infrastructural project; it was delayed by concerns about the tortoises living in the area and challenges from local environmental groups. China does similar projects in about 6 months. IOW, China does solar projects about 8X as fast as the US. OTOH it does nuclear projects in about 5 years, about 4X as fast as the US.

barney54 3y ago

Batteries are not generating capacity.

dymk 3y ago
Solar is the generating, batteries are the capacity

credit_guy 3y ago

It's not really correct to call batteries "electric-generating". They store electricity, but don't generate it. Still, if you take the batteries out, solar makes up 75% of the remaining new electric-generating capacity. If you add wind, you get 92%.

gitfan86 3y ago
In some scenarios the solar is only deployed because of batteries being deployed in the same network. The batteries are providing energy when the sun is down.
troymc 3y ago
It seems that the thing they're measuring is the amount of instantaneous power that all the new "sources" could deliver at once, assuming they're able to deliver right then, and at max-output-power. In other words, it's an optimistic measure, but it's not meaningless.
epistasis 3y ago
From the purposes of grid operation, batteries serve both generating and load functions. Having a complete catalog of generating capacity is a standard metric that EIA tracks. So even though batteries can also consume from the grid, it really does make sense to add them to the list of "generation," at least according to the purpose that this generation metric has always served.
- breather 3y ago
  > batteries serve both generating and load functions. Only until they run out of power! Capacity is still the core of their function.
cwal37 3y ago
It’s even a bit funnier than you put it since on net they consume electricity due to round trip efficiency losses. This also can provide something of an interesting discussion with local authorities when trying to site a battery somewhere that has banned new “generating” technologies (typically targeted at wind and solar), since batteries are consuming electricity and can be likened to transmission infrastructure (or physical trade assets which I think some people are enjoying playing with).

nekoashide 3y ago

The cool thing about batteries is that they are great as an investment. You can charge them when power is cheap and sell back power when you have high demand and market prices for power. Typically Peaker Plants fill this role but at much higher cost for electricity and emissions. Batteries just make much more sense for this kind of power.

chii 3y ago
The question is whether such battery's charge/discharge cycle degrade faster than the return on investment. For home use, break-even is an acceptable outcome, but not for commercial use like above. Is the price of battery low enough atm to make a return for such an investment?
- epistasis 3y ago
  These are all grid investments. About half of the storage is being installed in Texas, which is the closest thing the US has to an open market for investors. The storage being installed in Texas is all being done purely for profit. Meaning that the investors have run the numbers and find batteries to be the highest return they think they can get for their money. Storage in other places (specifically California) is being driven both by the profit motive, but also in some cases by legislation that mandates storage (not specifically batteries) be added as part of the grid mix. California has enough solar now that nearly all new installations include storage, in order to profit during the peak evening hours when electricity prices are highest.
- Retric 3y ago
  It’s currently possible for batteries to be a great investment, but diminishing returns hit hard. The most cost efficient setup is a solar farm where the panels produce DC which directly charges the batteries and the losses from DC>AC conversion only happens once before you send power to the grid. With the added benefit of only paying for a single set of DC>AC equipment. However, the more such systems come online the less peaking power is worth and batteries aren’t competitive with current ultra low nighttime rates.
- audunw 3y ago

bequanna 3y ago

One thing I have wondered: does it make sense to just put most of our eggs in the solar basket in sunny states and then invest heavily in batteries and transmission lines to less sunny areas? Wind seems so much more expensive and maintenance intensive.

thehappypm 3y ago
Wind is strange, because there is more maintenance and more upfront cost, but the amount of energy you get from a windmill is enormous.
elif 3y ago
Panel and battery prices have come down such that transmission losses, natural disasters to farms, last mile power lines in storms, etc become bigger concerns comparatively. I think the end-use solar and battery model makes more and more sense every year from a consumer perspective.
- einpoklum 3y ago
  Note that you don't necessarily have to put the panels and the batteries at the same place. You can, and there are benefits like DC <-> AC conversion, but you could in theory de-centralize solar more than you de-centralize battery storage. And there may be some scale advantages there, especially since some storage technologies involve putting things underground, or high temperatures which are a safety concern like with molten salt, etc. Caveat: I'm just a layman about this stuff.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
No. Transmission lines are too expensive, it's cheaper to put solar panels in non optimal locations. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-of-electricity-is-local/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-of-...

applied_heat 3y ago

Look at the stock prices of the companies installing owning and operating solar and wind farms. They are dogshit. I think the boom is to capture the transmission system capacity near the best wind/solar sites, try and stay in business for the duration of the 20 year energy purchase agreement signed with local utility, and then mergers and aquisitions so that the larger entity can exert leverage upon renewal. Power outages have a massive cost on society so the value of the marginal unit of electricity is very high.

roenxi 3y ago
Not necessarily a problem; recall that the way economics works is the market will have marginal businesses that are on the verge of being unprofitable to run - so seeing some borderline cases is not troubling. It looks like solar is finally becoming economic; so it is reasonable that the marginal producers right now will be solar farms. But assuming the price trends continue businesses will start to appear that make good money. Although there does seem to be a serious risk to grid stability. Most of the energy emergencies in the last few years have been linked to areas that invested heavily in renewables.
- Panzer04 3y ago
  Indeed. Arguably it shows just how good for the economy wind and solar are - they are so easy to install and build that companies that run businesses doing that just don't have any real edge.
hackermatic 3y ago
Some important businesses are just terrible investments. Airlines come to mind; they always seem to be one minor downturn away from insolvency.
pinkgolem 3y ago
There is just no barrier to entry in the market. You can get a small PV going for a few hundred bucks, and it scales more or less linear from that point on. And cost to entry is reducing over time

samatman 3y ago

This is nameplate capacity: the power a generator can deliver, full on, under ideal conditions. Solar and wind always look great when measured in nameplate capacity, which is why this is done. If you want to know how much electricity they will generate, you have to multiply by the capacity factor. Nuclear, for instance has a capacity factor of 0.9 in the US: it delivers 90% of its nameplate capacity in a given year. Solar ranges between 0.08 and 0.15.

why_only_15 3y ago
In the US, PV solar capacity factor is about 0.24 (partly because lots of people live near very sunny regions like California and Texas). The National Renewable Energy Laboratory claims that in some parts of the US utility-scale solar capacity factors are 0.33 [0]. Wind is about 0.36, Hydro also 0.36, Nuclear about 0.93 [1]. If you apply these capacity factors to the nameplate capacities (ignoring batteries), you get 58.5% solar, 19.7% wind, 15.1% natural gas, and 6.6% nuclear. [0]: https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2021/utility-scale_pv https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2021/utility-scale_pv [1]: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_6_07_b https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
- Retric 3y ago
  US nuclear averages below 0.9, individual plants can break 0.93 for a single year, but long term maintenance and refueling cycles lower the average. Ex: 95.73% (2017) 80.25% (lifetime) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Valley_Nuclear_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Valley_Nuclear_Power_St... 94.43% (2017) 75.20% (lifetime) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunswick_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunswick_Nuclear_Generating_S... 96.04% (2017) 78.07% (lifetime) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Plant So you can cherry pick a few numbers from the best years, but the lifetime averages tell a different story.
  - foota 3y ago
    Is a 15% difference that much of a different story?

fortran77 3y ago

How do batteries generate electricity?

toomuchtodo 3y ago
By discharging energy when the grid operator calls for it, having charged when there was excess energy on the grid (typically what would’ve been wasted as curtailed renewables).
dymk 3y ago
They form a voltage potential between their anode and cathode.

hackermatic 3y ago

I'm surprised that wind is such a small part of the US's projected future energy mix. Does anyone know why? Wind power works overnight, it leaves a lot more usable land than solar does, and there's a lot more capacity to be exploited. It's strange even considering the political backlash against wind power in some areas.

refulgentis 3y ago
Looking through LCOE+[^1] and references to old reports[^2], it looks like solar used to be significantly cheaper, and wind a surprising dip in cost last 12-18 months. It's now on par if not less for onshore wind across the board. [^1] [^1] https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus/ https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost.... [^2] https://www.quora.com/Which-is-more-expensive-to-build-wind-energy-or-solar-energy https://www.quora.com/Which-is-more-expensive-to-build-wind-...
fbdab103 3y ago
My knee jerk thought is that you have to work significantly harder to secure land for windmills. They have to be distributed such that you require huge tracts of land and/or to secure rights to install a tower on someone else's property. Each of those towers then need additional transmission lines. While solar might generate less energy per unit area, it is at least condensed so that you could get away with buying a plot and fully exploit the area. You can add additional (unconnected) plots as cheap land becomes available. I could also see the advantage that solar has quite limited opex after installation. A fleet of windmills may require significantly more resources to keep operating after years of service.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Drive through Indiana and it’s pretty clear farmers are happy to site lots of windmills in their fields.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
The US is a bit behind in catching up with the rest of the world on this front. There are some positive exceptions like Texas where they figured out quite early that it's cheaper to power refineries with renewables than with fossil fuel. So, Texas has a lot of solar and wind at this point. And why not, it's a sparsely populated state that is very suitable for tapping into both. The complacency in the rest of the US of course has a lot to do with the fact that there's a very loud and active pro fossil fuel lobby that kept insisting coal was the future even while a lot of coal plants were going out of business. A lot of states invested in gas plants instead of wind generation because of that too. And now that renewables are clearly cheaper, a lot of those investments are starting to look pretty bad.

throwaway2037 3y ago

> Nuclear. Start-up of the fourth reactor (1.1 GW) at Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power plant I checked the Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla... > Two additional units utilizing Westinghouse AP1000 reactors were under construction since 2009, with Unit 3 being completed in July 2023.[9][10][11] This last report blames the latest increase in costs on the contractor not completing work as scheduled. Another complicating factor in the construction process is the bankruptcy of Westinghouse in 2017.[12] In 2018 costs were estimated to be about $25 billion.[13] By 2021 they were estimated to be over $28.5 billion.[14] In 2023 costs had increased to $34 billion, with work still to be completed on Vogtle 4.[15] Those numbers are simply mind blowing. Why are these still built? How much solar/wind/battery capacity can 34B USD buy!? I feel the same about the two big nuke projects in the UK (Hinkley Point C & Sizewell C). It makes no sense compared to solar/wind/battery.

RamblingCTO 3y ago
Network stability, night and bad weather hedging is a problem though with full solar/wind, isn't it? We still need a mix until tech is better to solve these problems.
breather 3y ago
> How much solar/wind/battery capacity can 34B USD buy!? I'm guessing you'd run into space constraints pretty quickly. For one large project a nuclear reactor is incredibly compact compared to most alternatives except maybe hydro.
- gamepsys 3y ago
  I don't think space is a concern in North America.
  - sowbug 3y ago
    If space isn't a concern, then transmission is.

jeffbee 3y ago

The closest analogy I can recall to all these tireless fission stans are the OS/2 fans who refused to shut up even after Windows was dancing on its grave. It is truly embarrassing for the tech commentariat to be so blinded to reality.

pbazarnik 3y ago

Calculation of battery capacity one can build for 34B 0.3k$ per 1kWh of battery storage [1] (0.3$/Wh) Battery capacity = 34B$ /(0.3$/Wh) =113.3GWh (1G$=1B$) The 34B battery capacity will be equivalent to 113hours of operation of 1GW power plant. (4.7 days) [1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf

jillesvangurp 3y ago
That's not the main use of grid batteries. The main use of batteries is 1) to soak up power that is otherwise not needed when there's too much of it. 2) to deliver that power back when there's too little of it. This is something that happens very often for typically short amount of times (hours). Batteries help smooth this out. The mistake you are making is only thinking about when there's not enough power. The real challenge is dealing with the very regular situation that there's too much of it. That's energy that is wasted and lost. Batteries improve the capacity factor of renewables (the percentage of time they are useful). So, do electricity cables. Shortages and surpluses are highly localized. Germany for example has the problem that the demand is in the south and a lot of wind generation is in the north. So, they are curtailing wind power when there's too much wind and are firing up coal plants in the south because they lack the cables to get the power from where there is too much of it to where it is needed. When Texas had it's blackouts, other states had plenty of power. But Texas is not connected to those states by cables. So they had no way to get the power delivered. So, blackouts happened. Long term storage is much less relevant currently and a market in it's infancy. The overwhelming majority of grid batteries is for dealing with short term dips and peaks in power generation. Most setups don't provide more than a few hours of power at best. But they can switch between charging and discharging in milliseconds and do both at high capacities. This is why lithium ion is popular in this space. It can deliver or soak up a lot of power very quickly. You can put cells in series or in parallel depending on the use case. You add more cells to deliver more power more quickly. Not necessarily for longer. You can configure the same 1gwh of cells to deliver 100mw of power for 10 hours or 2gw for half an hour. Most of these batteries are configured for high capacity charging/discharging and relatively short storage. There are some long term storage solutions emerging as well of course. Redux flow batteries are a good example where there's a fixed size cathode and anode and reservoirs of electrolyte that are pumped around. You can scale these by simply using larger reservoirs. They are cheap and can hold many days/weeks of power. Just add larger tanks. The caveat, is that the power delivery is a constant and typically low.

zarify 3y ago

Ultimately how useful is the high uptake in individual states? My understanding was that the US had a lot of weirdness going on about provision of utilities over state lines. (Mind you here in Oz I think we have our own state politics involved, but I guess at least we have fewer states )

pjc50 3y ago
The US has three separate grids: east, west, and Texas. Who are oddly separatist about their badly managed energy system.
- zarify 3y ago
  Ah, it was probably me hearing about Texas and then extrapolating that to the rest of the US. Probably not a great idea on my part. Thanks for setting me straight :)

EricE 3y ago

Welp, now you will be able to understand where the rolling blackouts are coming from.