8 ms·

Price != cost/value. You can produce cheap electricity at noon, which would have little value.

by frafra 2y ago

jonplackett 2y ago
Isn’t this a pretty much solved problem though? Just add a battery to your house? Batteries are just going to get better - especially over a 10y time span
- simion314 2y ago
  >Isn’t this a pretty much solved problem though? Just add a battery to your house? In winter the days are short, the sky can be covered in clouds for an entire week, the solar panels can be covered in snow also. I have solar panels but I do not have a way to export my data to show you the summer vs winter GIANT difference. So people like me with solar need the other people in the area not to all go for solar, then we will need to find a way to burn the excess. Is the same with a country, we can't store the energy from summer for winter and also resist for say 2 weeks of snow and clouds. The EU market might be so in demand that the rich countries will bid for the energy and the poor will have to burn their things to survive. I am wondering if it would happen that with so many solar roofs we will either have to pay for people to use my energy or I will need to actually throw the excess in the ground safely somehow.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > In winter the days are short, the sky can be covered in clouds for an entire week, the solar panels can be covered in snow also. I have solar panels but I do not have a way to export my data to show you the summer vs winter GIANT difference. Short days, but still enough to make a lot of juice in Italy. Scotland and Scandinavia get issues, but Italy's basically OK for winter: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28sunrise%2C+Rome%2C+21+Dec+2024%29%2C+%28sunset%2C+Rome%2C+21+Dec+2024%29 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28sunrise%2C+Rome%2C+2... And: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S096014812100029X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601... > we can't store the energy from summer for winter and also resist for say 2 weeks of snow and clouds You, personally, can't store 2 weeks of energy (though it's closer than you may expect, 1 person-week of Italian average electrical consumption is ~= 1 EV battery*). But you personally don't have to, transmission to another part of the country (or continent) has a huge impact on how much storage you need. Basically, this problem is known, it's not all that difficult to work around — everything on the scale of "national power supply" is expensive and has pros and cons, PV isn't particularly remarkable in the scale or cost of those pros and cons even with current solutions and assuming no R&D effort can improve the trade-offs, they're just different than the pros and cons of the other options. * https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%28%28300+terawatt-hours+%2F+1+year%29+%2F+population+Italy%29+*+1+week+*+1+person%29+in+kWh https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%28%28300+terawatt-h...
    - simion314 2y ago
      The real life is not as simple as you wish The energy I produce can only go to my neighbors, it can't be sent to a different region in the same village it is a grid limitation. Also when the weather is bad it is bad in a big chunk of Europe, sure in the South they will probably have nicer weather. What about the issue when everyone has solar? then who buys my extra production? Or if there is someone that can buy it because of too much solar the prices would be close to zero then the solar panels investment will not be worth it since you could be cheap energy from the people with solar panels when the weather is good. My gut feeling is that 100% solar is stupid, it is like the 20-80 problem we see now a lot of growth since it is very profitable, when more grid investment is needed and profits will go down this growth will stop.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        > The real life is not as simple as you wish The energy I produce can only go to my neighbors, it can't be sent to a different region in the same village it is a grid limitation. I would need to write something the size of a PhD thesis, not a comment, to fully describe the various possibilities and their trade-offs for even just the Italian grid, let alone the whole of Europe's. But to keep it simple, I can say that limits of your grid can be re-engineered, and even for unrelated age and capacity reasons people are already planning to spend more on upgrading the European grid anyway, than it would cost for the material to build a global high-power DC backbone that would let the EU be lit in the middle of night, in the middle of winter, without any batteries at all, by panels in the Australian outback — and I have in fact done the maths on that. (Only China is actually making enough aluminium, there's geopolitics even before Trump happened, but the price tag to get a single ohm of resistance around the entire planet is actually fine). > Or if there is someone that can buy it because of too much solar the prices would be close to zero then the solar panels investment will not be worth it since you could be cheap energy from the people with solar panels when the weather is good. Such investment is still generally worth it, because you don't need to actually sell anything when the price is low (or even negative), and even if it was zero the whole time forever, you've saved 100% of the current cost of supplying yourself with electricity. > My gut feeling is that 100% solar is stupid, it is like the 20-80 problem we see now a lot of growth since it is very profitable, when more grid investment is needed and profits will go down this growth will stop. 100% anything leads to correlated failures. But there's several other renewables.
  - account42 2y ago
    > I am wondering if it would happen that with so many solar roofs we will either have to pay for people to use my energy This is already the case - Germany ends up paying for both electricity exports and imports.
- mik1998 2y ago
  Batteries simply raise the price of power up by 10x if not more. Not a viable solution.
  - notTooFarGone 2y ago
    Are batteries cheaper in 5-10 years? How about large nuclear plants, what are the probabilities of cost overruns and who is insuring that?
    - intrasight 2y ago
      These nuclear cost arguments always gloss over the fact that nuclear has no insurance or cleanup costs. Developers will only build plants if the government assumes both of those costs. Add to that the uncertainty over fuel and the disposal of used fuel, and there's literally no valid cost argument for nuclear. I'm not anti-nuclear, but the fiscal realities seem insurmountable.
  - adrianN 2y ago
    No they don't. The energy you get from your battery costs 10x as much as directly from the panels, but you only get a fraction of your energy from storage.
datadeft 2y ago
Most people do not understand this and think that we can reall talk about nuclear vs solar when we really need to talk about an energy mix where you pick one point (for example you pick nuclear or solar) and the rest depends on this choice. Than you can calculate the price.
- scrlk 2y ago
  To add, it's worth reading the Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity paper: https://iaee2021online.org/download/contribution/fullpaper/1145/1145_fullpaper_20210326_222336.pdf https://iaee2021online.org/download/contribution/fullpaper/1... Energy mix is key: the cost of 100% dependency on intermittent renewables is extremely high. Going for 95% dependency on intermittent renewables with the remainder being filled in by low-cost dispatchable generation halves system costs (see table 6, pg. 21).
  - dalyons 2y ago
    95% renewables would be incredible, I’ll take it :)
  - datadeft 2y ago
    Thanks a lot, this is a must read indeed.
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    So you've managed to cherry pick the one study showing nuclear power in any kind of possible light. Typical. You do know that the study is only applicable to running your off-grid cabin from a sole source and battery storage based on 2020 costs. The study also assumes 100% uptime for nuclear power. It does not deal with demand shifts, it does not deal with transmission, it does not deal with backup power. It also managed to finds a nuclear LFSCOE of $106/MWh. Even though it doesn't adapt to peaks or breakdowns when Hinkley Point C sits at $170/MWh when running at full tilt for 35 years. Whenever we do quality research on the subject the results end up being that nuclear power is horrifically expensive. See for example: See the recent study on Denmark which found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load. > Focusing on the case of Denmark, this article investigates a future fully sector-coupled energy system in a carbon-neutral society and compares the operation and costs of renewables and nuclear-based energy systems. > The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources. > However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour. > For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261924010882 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192... Or the same for Australia if you went a more sunny locale finding that renewables ends up with a grid costing less than half of "best case nth of a kind nuclear power": https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2024-25ConsultDraft_20241205.pdf https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2024-25Co...

Price != cost/value. You can produce cheap electricity at noon, which would have little value.

by frafra 2y ago

Price != cost/value. You can produce cheap electricity at noon, which would have little value.

Isn’t this a pretty much solved problem though? Just add a battery to your house? Batteries are just going to get better - especially over a 10y time span

simion314 2y ago
>Isn’t this a pretty much solved problem though? Just add a battery to your house? In winter the days are short, the sky can be covered in clouds for an entire week, the solar panels can be covered in snow also. I have solar panels but I do not have a way to export my data to show you the summer vs winter GIANT difference. So people like me with solar need the other people in the area not to all go for solar, then we will need to find a way to burn the excess. Is the same with a country, we can't store the energy from summer for winter and also resist for say 2 weeks of snow and clouds. The EU market might be so in demand that the rich countries will bid for the energy and the poor will have to burn their things to survive. I am wondering if it would happen that with so many solar roofs we will either have to pay for people to use my energy or I will need to actually throw the excess in the ground safely somehow.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > In winter the days are short, the sky can be covered in clouds for an entire week, the solar panels can be covered in snow also. I have solar panels but I do not have a way to export my data to show you the summer vs winter GIANT difference. Short days, but still enough to make a lot of juice in Italy. Scotland and Scandinavia get issues, but Italy's basically OK for winter: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28sunrise%2C+Rome%2C+21+Dec+2024%29%2C+%28sunset%2C+Rome%2C+21+Dec+2024%29 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28sunrise%2C+Rome%2C+2... And: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S096014812100029X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601... > we can't store the energy from summer for winter and also resist for say 2 weeks of snow and clouds You, personally, can't store 2 weeks of energy (though it's closer than you may expect, 1 person-week of Italian average electrical consumption is ~= 1 EV battery*). But you personally don't have to, transmission to another part of the country (or continent) has a huge impact on how much storage you need. Basically, this problem is known, it's not all that difficult to work around — everything on the scale of "national power supply" is expensive and has pros and cons, PV isn't particularly remarkable in the scale or cost of those pros and cons even with current solutions and assuming no R&D effort can improve the trade-offs, they're just different than the pros and cons of the other options. * https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%28%28300+terawatt-hours+%2F+1+year%29+%2F+population+Italy%29+*+1+week+*+1+person%29+in+kWh https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%28%28300+terawatt-h...
  - simion314 2y ago
    The real life is not as simple as you wish The energy I produce can only go to my neighbors, it can't be sent to a different region in the same village it is a grid limitation. Also when the weather is bad it is bad in a big chunk of Europe, sure in the South they will probably have nicer weather. What about the issue when everyone has solar? then who buys my extra production? Or if there is someone that can buy it because of too much solar the prices would be close to zero then the solar panels investment will not be worth it since you could be cheap energy from the people with solar panels when the weather is good. My gut feeling is that 100% solar is stupid, it is like the 20-80 problem we see now a lot of growth since it is very profitable, when more grid investment is needed and profits will go down this growth will stop.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      > The real life is not as simple as you wish The energy I produce can only go to my neighbors, it can't be sent to a different region in the same village it is a grid limitation. I would need to write something the size of a PhD thesis, not a comment, to fully describe the various possibilities and their trade-offs for even just the Italian grid, let alone the whole of Europe's. But to keep it simple, I can say that limits of your grid can be re-engineered, and even for unrelated age and capacity reasons people are already planning to spend more on upgrading the European grid anyway, than it would cost for the material to build a global high-power DC backbone that would let the EU be lit in the middle of night, in the middle of winter, without any batteries at all, by panels in the Australian outback — and I have in fact done the maths on that. (Only China is actually making enough aluminium, there's geopolitics even before Trump happened, but the price tag to get a single ohm of resistance around the entire planet is actually fine). > Or if there is someone that can buy it because of too much solar the prices would be close to zero then the solar panels investment will not be worth it since you could be cheap energy from the people with solar panels when the weather is good. Such investment is still generally worth it, because you don't need to actually sell anything when the price is low (or even negative), and even if it was zero the whole time forever, you've saved 100% of the current cost of supplying yourself with electricity. > My gut feeling is that 100% solar is stupid, it is like the 20-80 problem we see now a lot of growth since it is very profitable, when more grid investment is needed and profits will go down this growth will stop. 100% anything leads to correlated failures. But there's several other renewables.
- account42 2y ago
  > I am wondering if it would happen that with so many solar roofs we will either have to pay for people to use my energy This is already the case - Germany ends up paying for both electricity exports and imports.
mik1998 2y ago
Batteries simply raise the price of power up by 10x if not more. Not a viable solution.
- notTooFarGone 2y ago
  Are batteries cheaper in 5-10 years? How about large nuclear plants, what are the probabilities of cost overruns and who is insuring that?
  - intrasight 2y ago
    These nuclear cost arguments always gloss over the fact that nuclear has no insurance or cleanup costs. Developers will only build plants if the government assumes both of those costs. Add to that the uncertainty over fuel and the disposal of used fuel, and there's literally no valid cost argument for nuclear. I'm not anti-nuclear, but the fiscal realities seem insurmountable.
- adrianN 2y ago
  No they don't. The energy you get from your battery costs 10x as much as directly from the panels, but you only get a fraction of your energy from storage.

datadeft 2y ago

Most people do not understand this and think that we can reall talk about nuclear vs solar when we really need to talk about an energy mix where you pick one point (for example you pick nuclear or solar) and the rest depends on this choice. Than you can calculate the price.

scrlk 2y ago
To add, it's worth reading the Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity paper: https://iaee2021online.org/download/contribution/fullpaper/1145/1145_fullpaper_20210326_222336.pdf https://iaee2021online.org/download/contribution/fullpaper/1... Energy mix is key: the cost of 100% dependency on intermittent renewables is extremely high. Going for 95% dependency on intermittent renewables with the remainder being filled in by low-cost dispatchable generation halves system costs (see table 6, pg. 21).
- dalyons 2y ago
  95% renewables would be incredible, I’ll take it :)
- datadeft 2y ago
  Thanks a lot, this is a must read indeed.
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  So you've managed to cherry pick the one study showing nuclear power in any kind of possible light. Typical. You do know that the study is only applicable to running your off-grid cabin from a sole source and battery storage based on 2020 costs. The study also assumes 100% uptime for nuclear power. It does not deal with demand shifts, it does not deal with transmission, it does not deal with backup power. It also managed to finds a nuclear LFSCOE of $106/MWh. Even though it doesn't adapt to peaks or breakdowns when Hinkley Point C sits at $170/MWh when running at full tilt for 35 years. Whenever we do quality research on the subject the results end up being that nuclear power is horrifically expensive. See for example: See the recent study on Denmark which found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load. > Focusing on the case of Denmark, this article investigates a future fully sector-coupled energy system in a carbon-neutral society and compares the operation and costs of renewables and nuclear-based energy systems. > The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources. > However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour. > For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261924010882 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192... Or the same for Australia if you went a more sunny locale finding that renewables ends up with a grid costing less than half of "best case nth of a kind nuclear power": https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2024-25ConsultDraft_20241205.pdf https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2024-25Co...