3 ms·

Renewables solves this.

probablypower 1y ago
This is confidently incorrect. Gas power generation is a necessary evil to balance out the variability of intermittent energy generation (i.e. wind and solar). Hydropower isn't a feasible alternative because the easy resources have been developed. The only alternative source of flexibility available today is demand side response. Edit: I appreciate the down votes, as I've not explained in detail. It is a complex issue. My opinions are based on having a phd in the topic, 10+ years in control rooms, years of market operations and design, and years contributing to europe-wide risk assessment methodologies. I emplore anyone who is actually interested in how energy mix actually impacts grid stability/reliability to look into the Eirgrid DS3 programme (https://www.eirgrid.ie/ds3-programme-delivering-secure-sustainable-electricity-system https://www.eirgrid.ie/ds3-programme-delivering-secure-susta...).
- PunchTornado 1y ago
  Green energy like nuclear
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    Politically hamstrung because a bunch of short sighted people have their panties in a bunch?
    - SiempreViernes 1y ago
      Mostly because it's very expensive and slow to build, what with nuclear engineers not wanting their workplaces to be as dangerous as a construction site. Look up who invented the Maximum Credible Accident, it wasn't the environmentalists.
  - euLh7SM5HDFY 1y ago
    Nuclear is as dead as a great technology can be. A few more incremental improvements in solar and battery industry and nuclear won't be profitable even in theory, to say nothing of construction cost overruns. Reactors are only good at providing baseload but that isn't how grids operate anymore. Renewables are too cheap, if a power plant can't drop output fast enough it is punished.
    - trcarney 1y ago
      nuclear plants can cut power as quickly as any other power plant, you are just controlling steam. divert the steam from the turbine and you aren't generating power anymore.
      - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
        The problem is that a nuclear plant is extremely high CAPEX and acceptable OPEX. Halving the output essentially means doubling the price. For Vogtle halving the expected capacity factor means the generated electricity now costs a completely stupid 40 cents per kWh or $400 per MWh.
        trcarney 1y ago
        I agree with that, I have just seen on here before that people think you can't regulate the electrical output of a nuclear plant like with more traditional ones.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  Europe has 100 days worth of natural gas storage facilities. All it needs to do is to get renewables + batteries + nuclear above ~70% or so to be able to withstand being cut off for a year. Getting to ~95% is relatively cheap and easy. 100% is hard and expensive, but they don't need 100%. If they get to 95%, that's multiple years worth of storage.
  - dalyons 1y ago
    Germany is at 60% already! It’s close
    - bryanlarsen 1y ago
      No, it's not, because it uses so much natural gas for heating and in chemical plants. Also, it has to be the entire grid, not just one country.
  - probablypower 1y ago
    Batteries don't provide meaningful flexibility on a continental scale. They're useful in localised frequency control or microgrid flexibility. An exercise to the reader, calculate the space and materials required to replace the average norwegian hydro reservoir with batteries. Nuclear tech doesn't provide required ramp rates at a useful price. I do agree however that more nuclear helps. The problem is dispatchability/flexibility, not storage. At a more complex level the issue is grid inertia and frequency response.
    - bryanlarsen 1y ago
      That's why I said 100% renewable was hard and expensive. A grid that gets 5-10% of its energy from natural gas, but can get 100% of it's power from nuclear + gas during a dankelflaute provides optimally cheap + secure power. > The problem is dispatchability/flexibility, not storage. At a more complex level the issue is grid inertia and frequency response. That's something batteries are extremely good at.
    - abdullahkhalids 1y ago
- lukan 1y ago
  What about large quanzities of batteries everywhere around europe? If prices continue to drop, there will be a powerwall alike in every second house in some years.
  - nradov 1y ago
    You can't run a factory or data center off of batteries for long. Why do people think that residential power is the issue here?
    - lukan 1y ago
      If the batteries are big enough, also that is possible.
      - nradov 1y ago
        Many things are technically possible. Fewer things are economically practical. Does Europe have the capacity to manufacture batteries that are big enough? How much will that cost and how many years will it take? A few local small-scale demonstration projects don't tell us much about the difficulties of scaling up by orders of magnitude. Have you actually done the math on this or are you just repeating platitudes?
        lukan 1y ago
        Yes, I have done the math. Thing is, if you ignore the climate, coal and co is still cheaper. That's why it is still used so much. If you factor in climate costs, things are different.
        kieranmaine 1y ago
        > A few local small-scale demonstration projects don't tell us much about the difficulties of scaling up by orders of magnitude. The UK is forging ahead with large scale battery storage projects. I have not done the math, but I assume there is a sound economic case in order for these projects to receive this level of investment. Edit: Here's some more data on revenue for battery storage in the UK [3] [1] https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/battery-storage/statera-uk-biggest-battery-storage-project-300mw-essex https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/battery-storage/statera-u... [2] https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/battery-storage/fidra-energy-reaches-financial-close-on-uk-s-largest-bess https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/battery-storage/fidra-ene... [3] https://modoenergy.com/research/gb-research-roundup-january-2025-battery-energy-storage-great-britain-revenues-markets-wholesale-capacity-market-balancing-mechanism https://modoenergy.com/research/gb-research-roundup-january-...
- tharmas 1y ago
  The Chinese are going all in on electric to get away from oil and gas for geostrategic reasons. Meanwhile team tRump are all in on oil and gas because non carbon is for libtards.
  - probablypower 1y ago
    Please look at: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/CN/72h/hourly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/CN/72h/hourly China is heavily reliant on coal. The US Grid is presently less carbon intensive than the Chinese grid.
    - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      Presently.
    - tharmas 1y ago
      >China is heavily reliant on coal. Agreed they are. But they want to move away from it, especially for air quality reasons. They've had a huge problem with air pollution. They are big into EVs. This means less reliance on foreign oil and cleaner air.
- DennisP 1y ago
  Maybe you're the person to answer this question then. How can I find the price of battery storage, per kWh delivered to the customer, assuming a pure wind/solar/battery grid? I can easily find the price per kWh of battery capacity but that's not the same thing. I'm looking for the effective levelized cost of electricity, over the lifetime of the battery, so I can compare against generation sources.
- phil21 1y ago
  The easiest money I ever made was investing in natural gas infrastructure during the COVID insanity of everyone calling it dead due to renewables. I really don’t understand the disconnect otherwise very intelligent people have on this subject. Every single person I’ve talked to in the actual industry seems to be aware of this fact and how dire things are getting. However it seems that everyone else believes that grid scale batteries are somehow going to save the day in the next decade or two. Energy storage is energy storage. Natural gas is just a giant underground battery. And that’s before you get to industrial uses of natural gas as a feedstock, while ignoring how much is still used for heating infrastructure and how long it would take to retrofit everything to heat pumps. I often wonder what I’m missing, but I’m confident enough in this one to have put my money where my mouth is at least.
nradov 1y ago
Completely wrong. Renewables plus battery storage and long-distance transmission lines can potentially solve the power generation problem, although we're decades away from being able to scale that up in a way that addresses base load requirements for heavy industry in an economical way. But beyond power generation, natural gas is a crucial feedstock for the chemicals industry. Renewables won't solve that and the German chemical manufacturing industry is dying. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/german-chemical-sector-running-lowest-capacity-more-than-30-years-vci-says-2025-09-03/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
- roadside_picnic 1y ago
  Many people only look at "electricity" generation when they think about renewables, but fail to recognize that that is only part of energy consumption (and a surprisingly small one at that). Globally electricity production only accounts for ~21% of energy usage, so even if we had an entirely green grid across the entire planet we still would have a long way to go as far as having sustainable energy usage.
extraduder_ire 1y ago
A lot of natural gas is still needed for chemical feedstock in Europe, no matter how electricity is generated.
fulafel 1y ago
It's a prerequisite. But we actually need to make the policy decisions to stop using fossils, otherwise we'll just burn it all in addition to using renewables and look pretty bad in the history books for bringing about the climate apocalypse.
roadside_picnic 1y ago
The largest source of "renewable" energy (not just electricity) in the EU is biomass [0], which, in many cases is wood pellets shipped (using bunker fuel to power the ships of course) from North America to the EU. Page 8 of this report [1] gives a pretty good visual of how this trend has increased over time. Europe is basically reverting to using wood for it's primary heating fuel. 0. https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/bioenergy/biomass_en https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/bioenerg... 1. https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=Wood%20Pellets%20Annual_The%20Hague_European%20Union_E42025-0004 https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadRepo...
- 8note 1y ago
  wood is carbon neutral, after the first chop, at least. in canada and the US, a lot of that wood is going up in smoke without powering any industry already

This is confidently incorrect. Gas power generation is a necessary evil to balance out the variability of intermittent energy generation (i.e. wind and solar). Hydropower isn't a feasible alternative because the easy resources have been developed. The only alternative source of flexibility available today is demand side response. Edit: I appreciate the down votes, as I've not explained in detail. It is a complex issue. My opinions are based on having a phd in the topic, 10+ years in control rooms, years of market operations and design, and years contributing to europe-wide risk assessment methodologies. I emplore anyone who is actually interested in how energy mix actually impacts grid stability/reliability to look into the Eirgrid DS3 programme (https://www.eirgrid.ie/ds3-programme-delivering-secure-sustainable-electricity-system https://www.eirgrid.ie/ds3-programme-delivering-secure-susta...).

PunchTornado 1y ago
Green energy like nuclear
- potato3732842 1y ago
  Politically hamstrung because a bunch of short sighted people have their panties in a bunch?
  - SiempreViernes 1y ago
    Mostly because it's very expensive and slow to build, what with nuclear engineers not wanting their workplaces to be as dangerous as a construction site. Look up who invented the Maximum Credible Accident, it wasn't the environmentalists.
- euLh7SM5HDFY 1y ago
  Nuclear is as dead as a great technology can be. A few more incremental improvements in solar and battery industry and nuclear won't be profitable even in theory, to say nothing of construction cost overruns. Reactors are only good at providing baseload but that isn't how grids operate anymore. Renewables are too cheap, if a power plant can't drop output fast enough it is punished.
  - trcarney 1y ago
    nuclear plants can cut power as quickly as any other power plant, you are just controlling steam. divert the steam from the turbine and you aren't generating power anymore.
    - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
      The problem is that a nuclear plant is extremely high CAPEX and acceptable OPEX. Halving the output essentially means doubling the price. For Vogtle halving the expected capacity factor means the generated electricity now costs a completely stupid 40 cents per kWh or $400 per MWh.
      - trcarney 1y ago
        I agree with that, I have just seen on here before that people think you can't regulate the electrical output of a nuclear plant like with more traditional ones.
bryanlarsen 1y ago
Europe has 100 days worth of natural gas storage facilities. All it needs to do is to get renewables + batteries + nuclear above ~70% or so to be able to withstand being cut off for a year. Getting to ~95% is relatively cheap and easy. 100% is hard and expensive, but they don't need 100%. If they get to 95%, that's multiple years worth of storage.
- dalyons 1y ago
  Germany is at 60% already! It’s close
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    No, it's not, because it uses so much natural gas for heating and in chemical plants. Also, it has to be the entire grid, not just one country.
- probablypower 1y ago
  Batteries don't provide meaningful flexibility on a continental scale. They're useful in localised frequency control or microgrid flexibility. An exercise to the reader, calculate the space and materials required to replace the average norwegian hydro reservoir with batteries. Nuclear tech doesn't provide required ramp rates at a useful price. I do agree however that more nuclear helps. The problem is dispatchability/flexibility, not storage. At a more complex level the issue is grid inertia and frequency response.
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    That's why I said 100% renewable was hard and expensive. A grid that gets 5-10% of its energy from natural gas, but can get 100% of it's power from nuclear + gas during a dankelflaute provides optimally cheap + secure power. > The problem is dispatchability/flexibility, not storage. At a more complex level the issue is grid inertia and frequency response. That's something batteries are extremely good at.
  - abdullahkhalids 1y ago
lukan 1y ago
What about large quanzities of batteries everywhere around europe? If prices continue to drop, there will be a powerwall alike in every second house in some years.
- nradov 1y ago
  You can't run a factory or data center off of batteries for long. Why do people think that residential power is the issue here?
  - lukan 1y ago
    If the batteries are big enough, also that is possible.
    - nradov 1y ago
      Many things are technically possible. Fewer things are economically practical. Does Europe have the capacity to manufacture batteries that are big enough? How much will that cost and how many years will it take? A few local small-scale demonstration projects don't tell us much about the difficulties of scaling up by orders of magnitude. Have you actually done the math on this or are you just repeating platitudes?
      - lukan 1y ago
        Yes, I have done the math. Thing is, if you ignore the climate, coal and co is still cheaper. That's why it is still used so much. If you factor in climate costs, things are different.
      - kieranmaine 1y ago
        > A few local small-scale demonstration projects don't tell us much about the difficulties of scaling up by orders of magnitude. The UK is forging ahead with large scale battery storage projects. I have not done the math, but I assume there is a sound economic case in order for these projects to receive this level of investment. Edit: Here's some more data on revenue for battery storage in the UK [3] [1] https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/battery-storage/statera-uk-biggest-battery-storage-project-300mw-essex https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/battery-storage/statera-u... [2] https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/battery-storage/fidra-energy-reaches-financial-close-on-uk-s-largest-bess https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/battery-storage/fidra-ene... [3] https://modoenergy.com/research/gb-research-roundup-january-2025-battery-energy-storage-great-britain-revenues-markets-wholesale-capacity-market-balancing-mechanism https://modoenergy.com/research/gb-research-roundup-january-...
tharmas 1y ago
The Chinese are going all in on electric to get away from oil and gas for geostrategic reasons. Meanwhile team tRump are all in on oil and gas because non carbon is for libtards.
- probablypower 1y ago
  Please look at: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/CN/72h/hourly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/CN/72h/hourly China is heavily reliant on coal. The US Grid is presently less carbon intensive than the Chinese grid.
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    Presently.
  - tharmas 1y ago
    >China is heavily reliant on coal. Agreed they are. But they want to move away from it, especially for air quality reasons. They've had a huge problem with air pollution. They are big into EVs. This means less reliance on foreign oil and cleaner air.
DennisP 1y ago
Maybe you're the person to answer this question then. How can I find the price of battery storage, per kWh delivered to the customer, assuming a pure wind/solar/battery grid? I can easily find the price per kWh of battery capacity but that's not the same thing. I'm looking for the effective levelized cost of electricity, over the lifetime of the battery, so I can compare against generation sources.
phil21 1y ago
The easiest money I ever made was investing in natural gas infrastructure during the COVID insanity of everyone calling it dead due to renewables. I really don’t understand the disconnect otherwise very intelligent people have on this subject. Every single person I’ve talked to in the actual industry seems to be aware of this fact and how dire things are getting. However it seems that everyone else believes that grid scale batteries are somehow going to save the day in the next decade or two. Energy storage is energy storage. Natural gas is just a giant underground battery. And that’s before you get to industrial uses of natural gas as a feedstock, while ignoring how much is still used for heating infrastructure and how long it would take to retrofit everything to heat pumps. I often wonder what I’m missing, but I’m confident enough in this one to have put my money where my mouth is at least.

nradov 1y ago

Completely wrong. Renewables plus battery storage and long-distance transmission lines can potentially solve the power generation problem, although we're decades away from being able to scale that up in a way that addresses base load requirements for heavy industry in an economical way. But beyond power generation, natural gas is a crucial feedstock for the chemicals industry. Renewables won't solve that and the German chemical manufacturing industry is dying. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/german-chemical-sector-running-lowest-capacity-more-than-30-years-vci-says-2025-09-03/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...

roadside_picnic 1y ago
Many people only look at "electricity" generation when they think about renewables, but fail to recognize that that is only part of energy consumption (and a surprisingly small one at that). Globally electricity production only accounts for ~21% of energy usage, so even if we had an entirely green grid across the entire planet we still would have a long way to go as far as having sustainable energy usage.

extraduder_ire 1y ago

A lot of natural gas is still needed for chemical feedstock in Europe, no matter how electricity is generated.

fulafel 1y ago

It's a prerequisite. But we actually need to make the policy decisions to stop using fossils, otherwise we'll just burn it all in addition to using renewables and look pretty bad in the history books for bringing about the climate apocalypse.

roadside_picnic 1y ago

The largest source of "renewable" energy (not just electricity) in the EU is biomass [0], which, in many cases is wood pellets shipped (using bunker fuel to power the ships of course) from North America to the EU. Page 8 of this report [1] gives a pretty good visual of how this trend has increased over time. Europe is basically reverting to using wood for it's primary heating fuel. 0. https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/bioenergy/biomass_en https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/bioenerg... 1. https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=Wood%20Pellets%20Annual_The%20Hague_European%20Union_E42025-0004 https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadRepo...

8note 1y ago
wood is carbon neutral, after the first chop, at least. in canada and the US, a lot of that wood is going up in smoke without powering any industry already