3 ms·

None of those watts are dispatchable though. A solar plant can't look ahead a month and bid a block of kWh on any given day with any confidence. Solar and Wind

by XorNot 2y ago

None of those watts are dispatchable though. A solar plant can't look ahead a month and bid a block of kWh on any given day with any confidence. Solar and Wind in "price per watt" are meaningless when storage is not accounted for. In fact a huge chunk of their actual cost of power has to be buying contracts for the backup plants to provide the kWh they want to promise but may not be able to deliver (hence the true cost of a kWh from a solar plant is basically whatever it would cost a gas plant to produce it).

kragen 2y ago
you'd think it would turn out to be a huge chunk, but it turns out to be relatively marginal. also power producers bid on day-ahead markets generally, not month-ahead markets
roenxi 2y ago
The quality isn't the same, but price is its own reward. We'll learn how to shift a lot of industrial production around if the price goes low enough. Watt-for-watt dispatchable is superior, but for half price there are probably a lot of uses that will turn out to be quite flexible. The energy markets don't appear to have quite gotten to the point where they handle that flexibility (prices keep dipping negative, which is unfortunate if you understand what that implies), but it is reasonable to expect that it is coming.
- kragen 2y ago
  yeah, negative lmps with solar is 100% perverse bureaucratic incentives. solar panels aren't like coal plants (or conventional nuclear) where they overheat if you stop drawing power from them, and take hours to heat back up if you ramp down their burn rate; they're perfectly happy to be left in the sun either open-circuited or (more safely) short-circuited, and can return to supplying grid power in literally nanoseconds
- dev_tty01 2y ago
  >We'll learn how to shift a lot of industrial production around if the price goes low enough. Are you going to send everyone home on overcast days? What if production needs to run 24/7? Solar is a whole solution if and only if storage is solved on a massive scale. Even with adequate storage, it still isn't going to work in some parts of the world or during certain seasons. In the end, I think we need a mix of energy sources and working to make nuclear cost effective is part of a practical low carbon energy future. I just don't understand the confrontational nature of the solar vs. nuclear argument. Solar is absolutely going to be a huge part of our energy future. Supplementation by cost-effective nuclear would be a great complement to solar. Nuclear costs might not ever get low enough, but we'll never know if we don't put serious effort behind the goal.
  - kragen 2y ago
    yes, i completely agree; i'm skeptical that nuclear will make it in the next decades, but certainly it's worth continued research

by XorNot 2y ago

kragen 2y ago

you'd think it would turn out to be a huge chunk, but it turns out to be relatively marginal. also power producers bid on day-ahead markets generally, not month-ahead markets

roenxi 2y ago

The quality isn't the same, but price is its own reward. We'll learn how to shift a lot of industrial production around if the price goes low enough. Watt-for-watt dispatchable is superior, but for half price there are probably a lot of uses that will turn out to be quite flexible. The energy markets don't appear to have quite gotten to the point where they handle that flexibility (prices keep dipping negative, which is unfortunate if you understand what that implies), but it is reasonable to expect that it is coming.

kragen 2y ago
yeah, negative lmps with solar is 100% perverse bureaucratic incentives. solar panels aren't like coal plants (or conventional nuclear) where they overheat if you stop drawing power from them, and take hours to heat back up if you ramp down their burn rate; they're perfectly happy to be left in the sun either open-circuited or (more safely) short-circuited, and can return to supplying grid power in literally nanoseconds
dev_tty01 2y ago
>We'll learn how to shift a lot of industrial production around if the price goes low enough. Are you going to send everyone home on overcast days? What if production needs to run 24/7? Solar is a whole solution if and only if storage is solved on a massive scale. Even with adequate storage, it still isn't going to work in some parts of the world or during certain seasons. In the end, I think we need a mix of energy sources and working to make nuclear cost effective is part of a practical low carbon energy future. I just don't understand the confrontational nature of the solar vs. nuclear argument. Solar is absolutely going to be a huge part of our energy future. Supplementation by cost-effective nuclear would be a great complement to solar. Nuclear costs might not ever get low enough, but we'll never know if we don't put serious effort behind the goal.
- kragen 2y ago
  yes, i completely agree; i'm skeptical that nuclear will make it in the next decades, but certainly it's worth continued research