4 ms·

Ensuring no one buys expensive thermal power when the grid is flooded with zero marginal costs renewables and near zero marginal cost storage.

lucb1e 1y ago
Rephrasing that to be more understandable because I didn't get this as it was: "Making sure no one buys expensive electricity from coal or gas plants when the grid is full of cheap renewable energy and almost-free stored energy." I'm frankly still not sure what you're trying to say even if I understand the sentence now, e.g.: what free storage?! Isn't germany's projected storage capacity by 2050 somewhere between negligible and tiny?
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  Storage isn’t free. But when you have it the marginal cost of an extra cycle is very low. Germany’s battery storage-related grid connection requests swell beyond 500 GW https://www.ess-news.com/2025/09/01/germanys-battery-storage-related-grid-connection-requests-swell-beyond-500-gw/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/09/01/germanys-battery-storage...
  - lucb1e 1y ago
    That's like saying the cost of taking an additional bite from your food is very low once you have already bought it, if I'm understanding the continued use of marginal correctly in context?
    - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
      Assuming you have an endless supply of food but can only take one bite per day and it means tomorrows bite will be a bit smaller. These storage systems are generally warrantied as 5000-10000 cycles with 85% capacity remaining in 20 years time. Guaranteed money today is better than saving a few cycles to maybe make money in 20 years time. Now also factor in discounting the risk etc. and the calculation is given. But the business case is of course calculated on having the entire construction cost be amortized with profit over a chosen period. With some days making more money than other. What batteries do are extending the time renewables flood the grid with cheap electricity and thus force nuclear reactors to throttle down, gas peakers to shut down etc. Or these thermal plants can bid negative ensuring they don’t have to turn off while hurrying on their own demise.
      - lucb1e 1y ago
        Okay, I can follow that. I've noticed on electricitymaps.com that, for Germany, the coal component never disappears, no matter if you have optimal wind+solar conditions near the summer solstice and prices are far into the negatives. Apparently it's cheaper to let it run the power plant at negative prices for days, than to make it stop burning coal for those days. That renewables with storage would make that finally go away stands to reason But that fully relies on storage. The person you were responding to was asking whether small-scale solar panels make sense. As it is, during those hours where your solar panel is most effective, you can sign up to receive money for drawing electricity from the grid (if prices are negative enough that it outbids even the transportation costs and taxes). Having a solar panel at that time... you might as well turn it off and get a price that's better than free. Storage would be what we need much more urgently than an extra 800Wp solar per household, then we could already turn off those coal plants for probably weeks at a time during summer
        ViewTrick1002 1y ago
        Yes. Phasing out coal is a multi step process. The next step is coal plants forced to become peakers thermally cycling daily because they are loosing too much. As seen in for example Australia: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant-in-extraordinary-survival-experiment/104461504 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant... The next step is being a reserve plant only activated seasonally. Finally rounding off with purely being a reserve plant and then decommissioning when it costs too much to even keep it runnable. And instead they make you a bunch of money a bog standard autumn day because the French and Swedish nuclear power decided to crap out.
        pfdietz 1y ago
        Another possibility is retrofitting the coal plant with a thermal battery. https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal-copy https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal-copy > 3) (medium term) The world-conquering dream is for our PV-based steam to replace fossil-generated steam at conventional power plants. That will let us feed electricity back into the grid using otherwise stranded generating assets (e.g. a coal plant). You might see this as a way to combine an existing, uncompetitive coal plant with thermal energy storage and captive renewables to give it economics more similar to a natural gas power plant. See also: "Thermal Energy Storage in Dirt for Repowering Decommissioned Coal Plants" (although I believe this assumes the storage is using power from the grid): https://findingspress.org/article/141340-thermal-energy-storage-in-dirt-for-repowering-decommissioned-coal-plants https://findingspress.org/article/141340-thermal-energy-stor...
    - kragen 1y ago
      When I buy food, the marginal cost of a bite from the food is very close to the average cost of a bite, because if I eat 5% more food this week, I have to buy 5% more food next week. Contrast this with the case of listening to music on my stereo: if I listen to 5% more music on the stereo, I don't have to buy 5% more music, and I don't have to replace the stereo 5% sooner. The marginal cost is near zero: just the small amount of electricity the stereo uses, plus a tiny amount of wear and tear. Maybe I only listen to music three hours a week and the stereo cost me $313 and lasts for 20 years, so the average cost per hour is $0.10. But the marginal cost of listening for an additional hour this week is much lower than that. Utility-scale batteries are more like the stereo than the food.

lucb1e 1y ago

Rephrasing that to be more understandable because I didn't get this as it was: "Making sure no one buys expensive electricity from coal or gas plants when the grid is full of cheap renewable energy and almost-free stored energy." I'm frankly still not sure what you're trying to say even if I understand the sentence now, e.g.: what free storage?! Isn't germany's projected storage capacity by 2050 somewhere between negligible and tiny?

ViewTrick1002 1y ago
Storage isn’t free. But when you have it the marginal cost of an extra cycle is very low. Germany’s battery storage-related grid connection requests swell beyond 500 GW https://www.ess-news.com/2025/09/01/germanys-battery-storage-related-grid-connection-requests-swell-beyond-500-gw/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/09/01/germanys-battery-storage...
- lucb1e 1y ago
  That's like saying the cost of taking an additional bite from your food is very low once you have already bought it, if I'm understanding the continued use of marginal correctly in context?
  - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
    Assuming you have an endless supply of food but can only take one bite per day and it means tomorrows bite will be a bit smaller. These storage systems are generally warrantied as 5000-10000 cycles with 85% capacity remaining in 20 years time. Guaranteed money today is better than saving a few cycles to maybe make money in 20 years time. Now also factor in discounting the risk etc. and the calculation is given. But the business case is of course calculated on having the entire construction cost be amortized with profit over a chosen period. With some days making more money than other. What batteries do are extending the time renewables flood the grid with cheap electricity and thus force nuclear reactors to throttle down, gas peakers to shut down etc. Or these thermal plants can bid negative ensuring they don’t have to turn off while hurrying on their own demise.
    - lucb1e 1y ago
      Okay, I can follow that. I've noticed on electricitymaps.com that, for Germany, the coal component never disappears, no matter if you have optimal wind+solar conditions near the summer solstice and prices are far into the negatives. Apparently it's cheaper to let it run the power plant at negative prices for days, than to make it stop burning coal for those days. That renewables with storage would make that finally go away stands to reason But that fully relies on storage. The person you were responding to was asking whether small-scale solar panels make sense. As it is, during those hours where your solar panel is most effective, you can sign up to receive money for drawing electricity from the grid (if prices are negative enough that it outbids even the transportation costs and taxes). Having a solar panel at that time... you might as well turn it off and get a price that's better than free. Storage would be what we need much more urgently than an extra 800Wp solar per household, then we could already turn off those coal plants for probably weeks at a time during summer
      - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
        Yes. Phasing out coal is a multi step process. The next step is coal plants forced to become peakers thermally cycling daily because they are loosing too much. As seen in for example Australia: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant-in-extraordinary-survival-experiment/104461504 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant... The next step is being a reserve plant only activated seasonally. Finally rounding off with purely being a reserve plant and then decommissioning when it costs too much to even keep it runnable. And instead they make you a bunch of money a bog standard autumn day because the French and Swedish nuclear power decided to crap out.
        pfdietz 1y ago
        Another possibility is retrofitting the coal plant with a thermal battery. https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal-copy https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal-copy > 3) (medium term) The world-conquering dream is for our PV-based steam to replace fossil-generated steam at conventional power plants. That will let us feed electricity back into the grid using otherwise stranded generating assets (e.g. a coal plant). You might see this as a way to combine an existing, uncompetitive coal plant with thermal energy storage and captive renewables to give it economics more similar to a natural gas power plant. See also: "Thermal Energy Storage in Dirt for Repowering Decommissioned Coal Plants" (although I believe this assumes the storage is using power from the grid): https://findingspress.org/article/141340-thermal-energy-storage-in-dirt-for-repowering-decommissioned-coal-plants https://findingspress.org/article/141340-thermal-energy-stor...
  - kragen 1y ago
    When I buy food, the marginal cost of a bite from the food is very close to the average cost of a bite, because if I eat 5% more food this week, I have to buy 5% more food next week. Contrast this with the case of listening to music on my stereo: if I listen to 5% more music on the stereo, I don't have to buy 5% more music, and I don't have to replace the stereo 5% sooner. The marginal cost is near zero: just the small amount of electricity the stereo uses, plus a tiny amount of wear and tear. Maybe I only listen to music three hours a week and the stereo cost me $313 and lasts for 20 years, so the average cost per hour is $0.10. But the marginal cost of listening for an additional hour this week is much lower than that. Utility-scale batteries are more like the stereo than the food.