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Imho it’s a good thing to not block other countries approach to clean power from a german perspective. However, there is just no way new nuclear power makes an

Imho it’s a good thing to not block other countries approach to clean power from a german perspective. However, there is just no way new nuclear power makes any sense for German grid. Just last week we had negative prices for _every_ day during peak demand (yes, peak demand is usually around noon, it’s just not visible because there is so much solar self-consumption) https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&week=20&legendItems=2wgw3w1 https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c... What‘s really needed is more batteries. At lot more batteries soon.

dapf 1y ago
Do you have the pixie dust needed to make enough of them at a reasonable price?
- Schiendelman 1y ago
  It's less pixie dust than nuclear capacity - the cheapest additional nuclear capacity costs more than the most expensive grid scale batteries.
  - chickenbig 1y ago
    > the cheapest additional nuclear capacity costs more than the most expensive grid scale batteries. Nuclear capacity and grid batteries do different things, so the word capacity is rather too imprecise. Otherwise one could argue that a lightning rod has higher capacity and is cheaper than a battery.
    - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
      Let’s look at Vogtle. With Vogtles $36.9B we are able to build the equivalent supply in renewables (in TWh) and 10 days of storage at Vogtles 2.2 GWe output. Spending nuclear money on storage leads to the same thing. And it puts in context just have horrifically expensive new built western nuclear power is.
      - chickenbig 1y ago
        > With Vogtles $36.9B we are able to build the equivalent supply in renewables (in TWh) and 10 days of storage at Vogtles 2.2 GWe output. I can't see what you are proposing to do with the $36.9B. How does this break down into GW of wind and solar and GW (and GWh) of storage?
        ViewTrick1002 1y ago
        Lets compare the $36.9B [1] spent on Vogtle with the same money spent on renewables and storage: Batteries: - $63/kWh [2] installed and serviced for 20 years = $0.063B per GWh Large-scale solar: - A range of $850-$1400/kW [3] = $0.85B - $1.4B per GW - Capacity factor of 15-30% Say $1B per GW and 20% for easy round numbers. Large-scale onshore wind: - $1300 - $1900/kW [3] = $1.3B - $1.9B per GW - Capacity factor 30-55% So say $1.5B/GW and a capacity factor of 40%. Nuclear power has a capacity factor of ~85% so to match Vogtle's new reactors we need to get to 2.234 GW * 0.85 = 1.9 GW Solar power: - 1.9/0.2 = 9.5 GW solar power = $9.5B Wind power: - 1.9/0.4 = 4.75 GW wind power = $9B Compared to Vogtle's $37B we have $28B left to spend on batteries. - $28B/$0.063B = 444 GWh 444 GWh is the equivalent to running Vogtle for.... 444 GWh/1.9 GW = 233 hours or 9.8 days. This even ignores nuclear powers O&M costs which are quite substantial. By not having to pay the O&M costs and instead saving them each year after about 20 years we have enough to rebuild the renewable plant. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla... [2]: https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/15/chinas-cgn-new-energy-announces-winning-bidders-in-10-gwh-bess-tender/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/15/chinas-cgn-new-energy-an... [3]: https://www.lazard.com/media/gjyffoqd/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2024.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/gjyffoqd/lazards-lcoeplus-june-...
        chickenbig 1y ago
        Thank you for providing numbers that guide your thinking. > - $63/kWh [2] installed and serviced for 20 years = $0.063B per GWh The Lazard source does provide costs for storage on page 44, ranging from about 3x to 6x the cost of that Chinese tender process. Using these numbers gives a rather different picture with storage of between 3.25 days and 1.6 days, insufficient to make solar really work. Alternatively the fair comparison would be within China. Another data-point would be the UAE's attempt to firm solar; $6B for 1GW effective baseload output with 18GWh of storage [1]. So the cost of Vogtle could buy 6 of these, providing perhaps 3 or 4 days worth of storage. [1] https://www.renewableinstitute.org/uae-unveils-6-billion-groundbreaking-24-7-renewable-energy-facility/ https://www.renewableinstitute.org/uae-unveils-6-billion-gro...
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  The Pixie dust is called China. BNEF is tracking 7.9 TWh of annual battery manufacturing capacity for the end of 2025 [1]. Chinese manufacturers' all-in costs for BESS are now down to $66/kWh and still dropping [2]. We (or at least China) have crossed the "knee" of the exponential for battery production, and loads of people don't seem to realize this. [1] https://about.bnef.com/blog/china-already-makes-as-many-batteries-as-the-entire-world-wants/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/china-already-makes-as-many-batt... [2] https://cleantechnica.com/2024/12/24/what-are-the-implications-of-66-kwh-battery-packs-in-china/ https://cleantechnica.com/2024/12/24/what-are-the-implicatio...
- barbazoo 1y ago
  The term is technology agnostic, just fyi. There are many ways to store energy.
izacus 1y ago
I wonder if the Spanish also looked at numbers during the day of a very sunny spring week when they designed their power network to fail.
AustinDev 1y ago
>What‘s really needed is more batteries. At lot more batteries soon. Germany would have one of the biggest batteries on the continent if they controlled Lake Geneva @ ~341bn liters of water. Pumped hydro storage is infinitely superior to Li-ion battery storage where it is available. Batteries are good for instantaneous response but lack the stability of water turning a large mass. Solar creates a difficult environment for base load generators such as hydro, nuclear and nat gas. When it's sunny they nuke the price down to zero or negative but produce nothing when it is not sunny. As evidenced by Spain's recent blackouts you need a healthy mix of generation because renewables are seasonal in nature and not very stable compared to a large mass spinning at the correct frequency.
- codingbot3000 1y ago
  fyi, the root cause of the Spain blackout (not blackout) is not yet known. I won't deny that solar and wind make things harder, but linking the recent blackout to renewables without the facts is only done by fossil/nuclear propaganda orgs and their useful idiots. The Spanish network had much wilder days before and did not break down. First insights point to possible design flaws in the network. "healthy mix of generation" is quite funny to read, thinking about nuclear and coal which are not too healthy for the people living close to the plants :-D
  - AustinDev 1y ago
    You're likely not an electrical engineer by training so I will assume you don't know much about power generation and distribution. (It's worth noting my training in this field is nearly 2 decades old so I'm a bit rusty but I still follow several publications in the field) Engineers have been warning about inertia and voltage control being neglected as renewable penetration has soared. These aren't normally of much concern when you are spinning a large mass to generate AC power. > fyi, the root cause of the Spain blackout (not blackout) is not yet known. While the final official reports may not be out initial data has been released and indicates frequency and/or voltage oscillations got out of hand causing generation disconnection and cascading blackouts. Renewable penetration in that area of the grid likely contributed to the brittleness especially in voltage control and inertia management. "Inertia management is increasingly critical for grids with high renewable penetration. Many such systems now implement inertia floors to limit the maximum rate of change of frequency during disturbances. While inertia is often considered primarily for frequency stability, it also plays a crucial role in preventing loss of synchronism between different parts of the grid. As conventional synchronous generation decreases, careful monitoring and management of system inertia becomes essential to maintain stability during disturbances." [1] >"healthy mix of generation" is quite funny to read, thinking about nuclear and coal which are not too healthy for the people living close to the plants :-D I'll give you coal as unhealthy but natural gas is much cleaner and nuclear is entirely clean, save waste management which is a solved problem. How does nuclear effect residents living nearby? I'm not aware of any reporting of systemic illness near any of Europe's nuclear plants but, I may just be ignorant of the latest research. Care to provide a link? [1] https://www.powermag.com/understanding-the-april-2025-iberian-peninsula-blackout-early-analysis-and-lessons-learned/ https://www.powermag.com/understanding-the-april-2025-iberia...
realitycheck99 1y ago
how is uranium not already a "battery"
- barbazoo 1y ago
  Isn’t Uranium more like a fuel?
- AustinDev 1y ago
  You can't put the alpha particles back into the chunk of Uranium. Well, not easily or efficiently.
exabrial 1y ago
> Just last week we had negative prices for _every_ day during peak demand Burning coal for negative prices is not a good thing.
- ZeroGravitas 1y ago
  Inflexible generation getting fined for inflexibility leads to innovations like running two shifts of coal generation. The UK pioneered it in their now totally shut down coal plants and Australia is now implementing it.
  - exabrial 1y ago
    uh... yeah, so, back to burning 1/2kg per kw/h?
ashoeafoot 1y ago
Germany is old, and paying its pensions from however the taxed economy is currently running. And its addicted economically to russian gas. The piggybank is spent, the "make belief can come true by the power of surplus money" philosophy ran out of steam as idealistic projects have to be payed for by holding back on the pensioner feeding trough. The generation that bend it all to their will finally ran out.
rasz 1y ago
> negative prices for _every_ day during peak What was the price at midnight? Afaik there were days last year when Germany peaked at 1000 EUR/MWh at night.

dapf 1y ago

Do you have the pixie dust needed to make enough of them at a reasonable price?

Schiendelman 1y ago
It's less pixie dust than nuclear capacity - the cheapest additional nuclear capacity costs more than the most expensive grid scale batteries.
- chickenbig 1y ago
  > the cheapest additional nuclear capacity costs more than the most expensive grid scale batteries. Nuclear capacity and grid batteries do different things, so the word capacity is rather too imprecise. Otherwise one could argue that a lightning rod has higher capacity and is cheaper than a battery.
  - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
    Let’s look at Vogtle. With Vogtles $36.9B we are able to build the equivalent supply in renewables (in TWh) and 10 days of storage at Vogtles 2.2 GWe output. Spending nuclear money on storage leads to the same thing. And it puts in context just have horrifically expensive new built western nuclear power is.
    - chickenbig 1y ago
      > With Vogtles $36.9B we are able to build the equivalent supply in renewables (in TWh) and 10 days of storage at Vogtles 2.2 GWe output. I can't see what you are proposing to do with the $36.9B. How does this break down into GW of wind and solar and GW (and GWh) of storage?
      - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
        Lets compare the $36.9B [1] spent on Vogtle with the same money spent on renewables and storage: Batteries: - $63/kWh [2] installed and serviced for 20 years = $0.063B per GWh Large-scale solar: - A range of $850-$1400/kW [3] = $0.85B - $1.4B per GW - Capacity factor of 15-30% Say $1B per GW and 20% for easy round numbers. Large-scale onshore wind: - $1300 - $1900/kW [3] = $1.3B - $1.9B per GW - Capacity factor 30-55% So say $1.5B/GW and a capacity factor of 40%. Nuclear power has a capacity factor of ~85% so to match Vogtle's new reactors we need to get to 2.234 GW * 0.85 = 1.9 GW Solar power: - 1.9/0.2 = 9.5 GW solar power = $9.5B Wind power: - 1.9/0.4 = 4.75 GW wind power = $9B Compared to Vogtle's $37B we have $28B left to spend on batteries. - $28B/$0.063B = 444 GWh 444 GWh is the equivalent to running Vogtle for.... 444 GWh/1.9 GW = 233 hours or 9.8 days. This even ignores nuclear powers O&M costs which are quite substantial. By not having to pay the O&M costs and instead saving them each year after about 20 years we have enough to rebuild the renewable plant. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla... [2]: https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/15/chinas-cgn-new-energy-announces-winning-bidders-in-10-gwh-bess-tender/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/15/chinas-cgn-new-energy-an... [3]: https://www.lazard.com/media/gjyffoqd/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2024.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/gjyffoqd/lazards-lcoeplus-june-...
        chickenbig 1y ago
        Thank you for providing numbers that guide your thinking. > - $63/kWh [2] installed and serviced for 20 years = $0.063B per GWh The Lazard source does provide costs for storage on page 44, ranging from about 3x to 6x the cost of that Chinese tender process. Using these numbers gives a rather different picture with storage of between 3.25 days and 1.6 days, insufficient to make solar really work. Alternatively the fair comparison would be within China. Another data-point would be the UAE's attempt to firm solar; $6B for 1GW effective baseload output with 18GWh of storage [1]. So the cost of Vogtle could buy 6 of these, providing perhaps 3 or 4 days worth of storage. [1] https://www.renewableinstitute.org/uae-unveils-6-billion-groundbreaking-24-7-renewable-energy-facility/ https://www.renewableinstitute.org/uae-unveils-6-billion-gro...
matthewdgreen 1y ago
The Pixie dust is called China. BNEF is tracking 7.9 TWh of annual battery manufacturing capacity for the end of 2025 [1]. Chinese manufacturers' all-in costs for BESS are now down to $66/kWh and still dropping [2]. We (or at least China) have crossed the "knee" of the exponential for battery production, and loads of people don't seem to realize this. [1] https://about.bnef.com/blog/china-already-makes-as-many-batteries-as-the-entire-world-wants/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/china-already-makes-as-many-batt... [2] https://cleantechnica.com/2024/12/24/what-are-the-implications-of-66-kwh-battery-packs-in-china/ https://cleantechnica.com/2024/12/24/what-are-the-implicatio...
barbazoo 1y ago
The term is technology agnostic, just fyi. There are many ways to store energy.

izacus 1y ago

I wonder if the Spanish also looked at numbers during the day of a very sunny spring week when they designed their power network to fail.

AustinDev 1y ago

>What‘s really needed is more batteries. At lot more batteries soon. Germany would have one of the biggest batteries on the continent if they controlled Lake Geneva @ ~341bn liters of water. Pumped hydro storage is infinitely superior to Li-ion battery storage where it is available. Batteries are good for instantaneous response but lack the stability of water turning a large mass. Solar creates a difficult environment for base load generators such as hydro, nuclear and nat gas. When it's sunny they nuke the price down to zero or negative but produce nothing when it is not sunny. As evidenced by Spain's recent blackouts you need a healthy mix of generation because renewables are seasonal in nature and not very stable compared to a large mass spinning at the correct frequency.

codingbot3000 1y ago
fyi, the root cause of the Spain blackout (not blackout) is not yet known. I won't deny that solar and wind make things harder, but linking the recent blackout to renewables without the facts is only done by fossil/nuclear propaganda orgs and their useful idiots. The Spanish network had much wilder days before and did not break down. First insights point to possible design flaws in the network. "healthy mix of generation" is quite funny to read, thinking about nuclear and coal which are not too healthy for the people living close to the plants :-D
- AustinDev 1y ago
  You're likely not an electrical engineer by training so I will assume you don't know much about power generation and distribution. (It's worth noting my training in this field is nearly 2 decades old so I'm a bit rusty but I still follow several publications in the field) Engineers have been warning about inertia and voltage control being neglected as renewable penetration has soared. These aren't normally of much concern when you are spinning a large mass to generate AC power. > fyi, the root cause of the Spain blackout (not blackout) is not yet known. While the final official reports may not be out initial data has been released and indicates frequency and/or voltage oscillations got out of hand causing generation disconnection and cascading blackouts. Renewable penetration in that area of the grid likely contributed to the brittleness especially in voltage control and inertia management. "Inertia management is increasingly critical for grids with high renewable penetration. Many such systems now implement inertia floors to limit the maximum rate of change of frequency during disturbances. While inertia is often considered primarily for frequency stability, it also plays a crucial role in preventing loss of synchronism between different parts of the grid. As conventional synchronous generation decreases, careful monitoring and management of system inertia becomes essential to maintain stability during disturbances." [1] >"healthy mix of generation" is quite funny to read, thinking about nuclear and coal which are not too healthy for the people living close to the plants :-D I'll give you coal as unhealthy but natural gas is much cleaner and nuclear is entirely clean, save waste management which is a solved problem. How does nuclear effect residents living nearby? I'm not aware of any reporting of systemic illness near any of Europe's nuclear plants but, I may just be ignorant of the latest research. Care to provide a link? [1] https://www.powermag.com/understanding-the-april-2025-iberian-peninsula-blackout-early-analysis-and-lessons-learned/ https://www.powermag.com/understanding-the-april-2025-iberia...

realitycheck99 1y ago

how is uranium not already a "battery"

barbazoo 1y ago
Isn’t Uranium more like a fuel?
AustinDev 1y ago
You can't put the alpha particles back into the chunk of Uranium. Well, not easily or efficiently.

exabrial 1y ago

> Just last week we had negative prices for _every_ day during peak demand Burning coal for negative prices is not a good thing.

ZeroGravitas 1y ago
Inflexible generation getting fined for inflexibility leads to innovations like running two shifts of coal generation. The UK pioneered it in their now totally shut down coal plants and Australia is now implementing it.
- exabrial 1y ago
  uh... yeah, so, back to burning 1/2kg per kw/h?

ashoeafoot 1y ago

Germany is old, and paying its pensions from however the taxed economy is currently running. And its addicted economically to russian gas. The piggybank is spent, the "make belief can come true by the power of surplus money" philosophy ran out of steam as idealistic projects have to be payed for by holding back on the pensioner feeding trough. The generation that bend it all to their will finally ran out.

rasz 1y ago

> negative prices for _every_ day during peak What was the price at midnight? Afaik there were days last year when Germany peaked at 1000 EUR/MWh at night.