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>Eventually they’ll want to add some form of storage There is no grid-scale battery technology to handle baseload for any meaningful duration. Worse, there is

>Eventually they’ll want to add some form of storage There is no grid-scale battery technology to handle baseload for any meaningful duration. Worse, there is no grid-scale battery technology on the horizon either (you can define 'horizon' as the 'next few decades').

dnedic 3y ago
Why do you assume electric batteries have to be used? We've had things like reservoir lakes for hydro plants for a long time. Energy can be stored in more ways than electrical.
- macspoofing 3y ago
  >We've had things like reservoir lakes for hydro plants for a long time. Energy can be stored in more ways than electrical. Hydro is great. Gravity batteries (e.g. pumped storage) are great. The problem is that they require particular geography to work - especially at grid-scale, and we pretty much exploited all of it already - so you cannot scale it.
tzs 3y ago
China has over 20 nuclear plants under construction and another 70 planned.
- macspoofing 3y ago
  As a substitute for battery storage?
  - tzs 3y ago
    For baseload. Battery storage only came up in this branch of the thread because wind and solar don't cover baseload.
    - macspoofing 3y ago
      Right .. Nuclear is fine. It is a perfectly viable way to power your economy. Solar/Wind/Batteries are not.
adrianN 3y ago
Hydrogen and gas turbines are available today.
- macspoofing 3y ago
  There is no infrastructure for mass hydrogen extraction, transport and storage. Hydrogen, at grid-scale, is not currently a viable technology. It may never be viable at that scale.
  - adrianN 3y ago
    There is infra for methane which can be retrofitted.
    - macspoofing 3y ago
      What do you mean it "CAN" be retrofitted? Based on what? The fact is there is NO infrastructure for any of this. It's also a fact that there are MAJOR (and unsolved) challenges with building out a hydrogen collection/storage/transport (regardless of the source) infrastructure at scale. It's why it hasn't been done even though many governments throw billions into non-fossil fuel initiatives (and even close down working nuclear reactors).
joak 3y ago
Grid-scale lithium batteries are being built in Australia and California. With enough PV they are profitable today. Costs of batteries have been exponentially going down by 13% every year (halving in 5 years) for 3 decades. They are already the cheapest in Australia, and at some point, grid-scale batteries are going to be cheaper than gas peakers everywhere. To do baseload with solar it's easy: deploy enough PV and back that with 20 hours grid scale batteries. Sources: https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/australia-leads-global-market-for-battery-energy-storage-systems/ https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/australia-leads-globa...
- macspoofing 3y ago
  >Grid-scale lithium batteries are being built in Australia and California. What we want is battery technology that can serve as baseload for extended period of time when the sun isn't shinning (enough) and wind isn't blowing (enough). The battery farms being built are mainly for "frequency control and ancillary services (FCAS) market" - because they can only store enough energy, generally, for a few minutes, maybe an hour or so. That's not nearly good enough. We need power for days to offset the intermittency of wind and solar (which varies through out the day, as well as throughout the year, and throughout multiple years). >To do baseload with solar it's easy: deploy enough PV and back that with 20 hours grid scale batteries. Easy eh. So why isn't it happening? The reality is that you will not be able to deploy batteries to power even a moderate-sized city for 20 hours with current technology. It isn't going to happen in the next few decades either. Your argument has been made now for a decade or more. Maybe we need another decade so that, as a society, we can internalize the fact that isn't going to happen.
  - joak 3y ago
    >Easy eh. So why isn't it happening? It is happening, that is my point. Look at the link I posted, what's being installed are 4 hours batteries on GW scale.
    - macspoofing 3y ago

dnedic 3y ago

Why do you assume electric batteries have to be used? We've had things like reservoir lakes for hydro plants for a long time. Energy can be stored in more ways than electrical.

macspoofing 3y ago
>We've had things like reservoir lakes for hydro plants for a long time. Energy can be stored in more ways than electrical. Hydro is great. Gravity batteries (e.g. pumped storage) are great. The problem is that they require particular geography to work - especially at grid-scale, and we pretty much exploited all of it already - so you cannot scale it.

tzs 3y ago

China has over 20 nuclear plants under construction and another 70 planned.

macspoofing 3y ago
As a substitute for battery storage?
- tzs 3y ago
  For baseload. Battery storage only came up in this branch of the thread because wind and solar don't cover baseload.
  - macspoofing 3y ago
    Right .. Nuclear is fine. It is a perfectly viable way to power your economy. Solar/Wind/Batteries are not.

adrianN 3y ago

Hydrogen and gas turbines are available today.

macspoofing 3y ago
There is no infrastructure for mass hydrogen extraction, transport and storage. Hydrogen, at grid-scale, is not currently a viable technology. It may never be viable at that scale.
- adrianN 3y ago
  There is infra for methane which can be retrofitted.
  - macspoofing 3y ago
    What do you mean it "CAN" be retrofitted? Based on what? The fact is there is NO infrastructure for any of this. It's also a fact that there are MAJOR (and unsolved) challenges with building out a hydrogen collection/storage/transport (regardless of the source) infrastructure at scale. It's why it hasn't been done even though many governments throw billions into non-fossil fuel initiatives (and even close down working nuclear reactors).

joak 3y ago

Grid-scale lithium batteries are being built in Australia and California. With enough PV they are profitable today. Costs of batteries have been exponentially going down by 13% every year (halving in 5 years) for 3 decades. They are already the cheapest in Australia, and at some point, grid-scale batteries are going to be cheaper than gas peakers everywhere. To do baseload with solar it's easy: deploy enough PV and back that with 20 hours grid scale batteries. Sources: https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/australia-leads-global-market-for-battery-energy-storage-systems/ https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/australia-leads-globa...

macspoofing 3y ago
>Grid-scale lithium batteries are being built in Australia and California. What we want is battery technology that can serve as baseload for extended period of time when the sun isn't shinning (enough) and wind isn't blowing (enough). The battery farms being built are mainly for "frequency control and ancillary services (FCAS) market" - because they can only store enough energy, generally, for a few minutes, maybe an hour or so. That's not nearly good enough. We need power for days to offset the intermittency of wind and solar (which varies through out the day, as well as throughout the year, and throughout multiple years). >To do baseload with solar it's easy: deploy enough PV and back that with 20 hours grid scale batteries. Easy eh. So why isn't it happening? The reality is that you will not be able to deploy batteries to power even a moderate-sized city for 20 hours with current technology. It isn't going to happen in the next few decades either. Your argument has been made now for a decade or more. Maybe we need another decade so that, as a society, we can internalize the fact that isn't going to happen.
- joak 3y ago
  >Easy eh. So why isn't it happening? It is happening, that is my point. Look at the link I posted, what's being installed are 4 hours batteries on GW scale.
  - macspoofing 3y ago