3 ms·

I don't get how this would make sense. Assuming no hydro-electric: at night with no wind you'd need to draw the same 100('s) of MW from batteries (or use gas/c

I don't get how this would make sense. Assuming no hydro-electric: at night with no wind you'd need to draw the same 100('s) of MW from batteries (or use gas/coal/nuclear which defeats the purpose of ALSO using renewables on top of that 100 percent backup capacity). Batteries with that capacity are still extremely expensive (and massive in volume) which would essentially mean your energy price is 5 to 10x higher (ballpark rough estimate) than non-renewable continious sources. Not to mention the huge amount of land needed/wasted (costs money), there's a recycling problem (solar panels are not actually sustainable in the sense that they'll last forever or can be recycled) and so on. The only company in the world for which I could see that setup MAYBE make sense business-wise is Tesla/xAI: they could relatively quickly and cheaply roll-out massive battery storage, data center and solar (for example). If only to be slightly faster and bigger at rolling out than their competitors it could make sense from a business perspective. But that's only because they can produce massive battery capacity at the lowest possible cost and quickest turn-around. Maybe I'm missing something.

epistasis 2y ago
I think your talking points are mostly put of date or incorrect. First, batteries are cheap today and being installed on grids at fantastic scales all the time. I suggested 5GWh of batteries above, which at that scale could probably be delivered at $300/kWh installed in a 2024 project. (Back in 2022, that figure was a $481/kWh and price competition has been brutal since then, see figure 3 [1]) At 6000 cycles of lifetime, the cost of delivering a stored a kWh is only $0.05, less than typical transmission and distribution charges. Second, solar is cheap, and that includes the land costs, at $0.04/kWh unsubsidized (slide 31 [2]). Land producing valuable electricity is now wasted, it's the exact opposite of waste. Solar is recyclable, as a simple web search will show. Further to say that solar is somehow "not sustainable" is just bad propaganda on a massive scale. There are 571GW of solar+battery projects seeking connection on the grid. [3] Very few of those projects are planning on using Tesla's storage. Now, all of those projects are going to have vastly smaller batteries, but scaling up the battery to cover for 24hour power is an easy design change, especially if it helps the project start generating money years faster than it would if it had to wait for an interconnection. A new data center could partner on site as the off-take for one of these hundreds of proposed projects, if it's close enough to the data center resources. NC would be a likely site. Well, I do not know if I have convinced you it's a good idea, but I have definitely gained a lot of conviction for myself that it's a fantastic business idea for both the power project and the data center... now if only I had serious skin in the game on either side so that I could benefit from it! [1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf [2] https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/utility_scale_solar_2023_edition_slides.pdf https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/utility_scale_solar_... [3] https://energyanalysis.lbl.gov/publications/queued-2024-edition-characteristics https://energyanalysis.lbl.gov/publications/queued-2024-edit...

epistasis 2y ago

I think your talking points are mostly put of date or incorrect. First, batteries are cheap today and being installed on grids at fantastic scales all the time. I suggested 5GWh of batteries above, which at that scale could probably be delivered at $300/kWh installed in a 2024 project. (Back in 2022, that figure was a $481/kWh and price competition has been brutal since then, see figure 3 [1]) At 6000 cycles of lifetime, the cost of delivering a stored a kWh is only $0.05, less than typical transmission and distribution charges. Second, solar is cheap, and that includes the land costs, at $0.04/kWh unsubsidized (slide 31 [2]). Land producing valuable electricity is now wasted, it's the exact opposite of waste. Solar is recyclable, as a simple web search will show. Further to say that solar is somehow "not sustainable" is just bad propaganda on a massive scale. There are 571GW of solar+battery projects seeking connection on the grid. [3] Very few of those projects are planning on using Tesla's storage. Now, all of those projects are going to have vastly smaller batteries, but scaling up the battery to cover for 24hour power is an easy design change, especially if it helps the project start generating money years faster than it would if it had to wait for an interconnection. A new data center could partner on site as the off-take for one of these hundreds of proposed projects, if it's close enough to the data center resources. NC would be a likely site. Well, I do not know if I have convinced you it's a good idea, but I have definitely gained a lot of conviction for myself that it's a fantastic business idea for both the power project and the data center... now if only I had serious skin in the game on either side so that I could benefit from it! [1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf [2] https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/utility_scale_solar_2023_edition_slides.pdf https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/utility_scale_solar_... [3] https://energyanalysis.lbl.gov/publications/queued-2024-edition-characteristics https://energyanalysis.lbl.gov/publications/queued-2024-edit...