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Please enlighten us about where countries which have gone all-in on solar get their base power when the sun is not shining enough and there is no wind. I don’t

Please enlighten us about where countries which have gone all-in on solar get their base power when the sun is not shining enough and there is no wind. I don’t understand why people who have an axe to grind pretend to be more stupid than they are in these debates. The question is not average price per kWh and never was. The question remains the same: where should we get base power when intermittent sources are off? The solutions are gas, coal, nuclear or some form of large scale storage. Germany seems to be ok with polluting a lot with coal to appease the proportion of die hard antinuclear activists in its population. From my point of view, nuclear is not the worst of all the options - it’s actually unclear to me if it’s not even cleaner than building all the batteries required for large scale storage - but you might disagree.

ViewTrick1002 2y ago
Everything is impossible until someone has done it? Meaning the French nuclear buildout also was impossible given your reasoning. When this question is modeled no large problems pop out and renewables remain the vastly cheaper option. https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2023-24Final_20240522.pdf https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2023-24Fi...
- RandomThoughts3 2y ago
  You are moving the goal post a lot. I never pretended anything was impossible. I said that the argument regarding rational calculation based on average costs of a kWh crumbles when you look at it from a proper angle. The correct question is: is nuclear interesting when compared to building large scale storage facilities? The answer to that is far from being cut and dry with arguments in favour and against both. The report you quote is not a definitive answer at all. It starts with a huge disclaimer that the cost of nuclear is to be taken specifically in the case of Australia and uses very adverse parameters based on South Korea.
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    You started with: > Please enlighten us about where countries which have gone all-in on solar get their base power when the sun is not shining enough and there is no wind. I.e. demanding real world done and dusted examples or it is impossible. Then trying to find technicalities as to why the report is wrong or does not fit your made up example.
    - RandomThoughts3 2y ago
      > I.e. demanding real world done and dusted examples or it is impossible. Huh? No, the point is that today, countries which have gone all-in with solars use coal or gas for their base. Hardly clean. I’m not finding technicalities. That’s literally the heart of the report: what makes sense for investment in Australia given the Australian context. That’s barely related to the heart of the discussion especially considering the caveat stated which I have exposed. You seem to have trouble arguing in good faith when the discussion doesn’t go your way.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        The cost optimal path (as CO2 taxes or the equivalent are imposed) will be to displace more and more fossil fuel generation with renewables, then short term storage, then (finally) some combination of very long term storage, transmission, and demand dispatch. At no point will adding more nuclear make sense. That fossil fuels are being used now is just a stage in the migration to 0% fossil fuel, assuming the world actually decides to do that (as it damn well better).
cauch 2y ago
One interesting element is that, while solar needs storage, nuclear needs storage too: the demand is not flat, and become more and more non-flat when decarbonizing the energy sector. For the nuclear, there are two possibilities: 1) over-building centrals, such that they produce the energy corresponding to the peak, but then "dumping" the excess energy otherwise. But this is extremely costly, because the driver of the nuclear cost are upfront: if a central can generate X energy at 100% of the time and costed Y to be build, the price will be Y/X, but if you generate X energy but at 50%, the price will be 2*Y/X. 2) build storage. So, the storage problem is not a renewable problem, it's something that the grid needs no matter what. In these condition, if the grid needs storage both in case of solar and in case of nuclear, it's not really an argument against renewable anymore.
- RandomThoughts3 2y ago
  France has been doing fine with nuclear and hydro for decades (at least when scheduled maintenance doesn’t all happen at the same time). You can use dams as big batteries by pumping water back up when you have excess and nuclear production is actually fairly scalable up and down which ensures the peaks are never that big.
  - cauch 2y ago
    And yet, in France, RTE, the grid supervisor, itself subcompany of EDF who owns the nuclear plants, keeps publishing reports saying that if France does not up their solar generation there is no way the grid works in the future with increased demand volatility. You can use dams to store renewable energy too. That's the point. Some people says that renewable is intrinsically flawed because of intermittence. But at the grid level, we will need flexibility, aka storage, no matter what, which means that the intermittence problem is strongly reduced. And, yes, nuclear plant can scale up and down, but: 1) they need to be designed to do so efficiently and some existing don't. Building a "flexible" nuclear to provide flat generation is uselessly expensive, building a "flat" nuclear to provide flexible generation is uselessly expensive. 2) nuclear, intrinsically, is good to provide flat generation, and scaling the generation up and down cost more money than building storage. So, it is more efficient to build storage in case of a nuclear heavy grid. Sure, you have different way to solve the problem of flexible grid with nuclear, but you insist on one solution JUST because the other solution is not convenient for you because it is also positive for a grid containing renewable.

ViewTrick1002 2y ago

Everything is impossible until someone has done it? Meaning the French nuclear buildout also was impossible given your reasoning. When this question is modeled no large problems pop out and renewables remain the vastly cheaper option. https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2023-24Final_20240522.pdf https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2023-24Fi...

RandomThoughts3 2y ago
You are moving the goal post a lot. I never pretended anything was impossible. I said that the argument regarding rational calculation based on average costs of a kWh crumbles when you look at it from a proper angle. The correct question is: is nuclear interesting when compared to building large scale storage facilities? The answer to that is far from being cut and dry with arguments in favour and against both. The report you quote is not a definitive answer at all. It starts with a huge disclaimer that the cost of nuclear is to be taken specifically in the case of Australia and uses very adverse parameters based on South Korea.
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  You started with: > Please enlighten us about where countries which have gone all-in on solar get their base power when the sun is not shining enough and there is no wind. I.e. demanding real world done and dusted examples or it is impossible. Then trying to find technicalities as to why the report is wrong or does not fit your made up example.
  - RandomThoughts3 2y ago
    > I.e. demanding real world done and dusted examples or it is impossible. Huh? No, the point is that today, countries which have gone all-in with solars use coal or gas for their base. Hardly clean. I’m not finding technicalities. That’s literally the heart of the report: what makes sense for investment in Australia given the Australian context. That’s barely related to the heart of the discussion especially considering the caveat stated which I have exposed. You seem to have trouble arguing in good faith when the discussion doesn’t go your way.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      The cost optimal path (as CO2 taxes or the equivalent are imposed) will be to displace more and more fossil fuel generation with renewables, then short term storage, then (finally) some combination of very long term storage, transmission, and demand dispatch. At no point will adding more nuclear make sense. That fossil fuels are being used now is just a stage in the migration to 0% fossil fuel, assuming the world actually decides to do that (as it damn well better).

cauch 2y ago

One interesting element is that, while solar needs storage, nuclear needs storage too: the demand is not flat, and become more and more non-flat when decarbonizing the energy sector. For the nuclear, there are two possibilities: 1) over-building centrals, such that they produce the energy corresponding to the peak, but then "dumping" the excess energy otherwise. But this is extremely costly, because the driver of the nuclear cost are upfront: if a central can generate X energy at 100% of the time and costed Y to be build, the price will be Y/X, but if you generate X energy but at 50%, the price will be 2*Y/X. 2) build storage. So, the storage problem is not a renewable problem, it's something that the grid needs no matter what. In these condition, if the grid needs storage both in case of solar and in case of nuclear, it's not really an argument against renewable anymore.

RandomThoughts3 2y ago
France has been doing fine with nuclear and hydro for decades (at least when scheduled maintenance doesn’t all happen at the same time). You can use dams as big batteries by pumping water back up when you have excess and nuclear production is actually fairly scalable up and down which ensures the peaks are never that big.
- cauch 2y ago
  And yet, in France, RTE, the grid supervisor, itself subcompany of EDF who owns the nuclear plants, keeps publishing reports saying that if France does not up their solar generation there is no way the grid works in the future with increased demand volatility. You can use dams to store renewable energy too. That's the point. Some people says that renewable is intrinsically flawed because of intermittence. But at the grid level, we will need flexibility, aka storage, no matter what, which means that the intermittence problem is strongly reduced. And, yes, nuclear plant can scale up and down, but: 1) they need to be designed to do so efficiently and some existing don't. Building a "flexible" nuclear to provide flat generation is uselessly expensive, building a "flat" nuclear to provide flexible generation is uselessly expensive. 2) nuclear, intrinsically, is good to provide flat generation, and scaling the generation up and down cost more money than building storage. So, it is more efficient to build storage in case of a nuclear heavy grid. Sure, you have different way to solve the problem of flexible grid with nuclear, but you insist on one solution JUST because the other solution is not convenient for you because it is also positive for a grid containing renewable.