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1.4 GW: battery storage at former Grohnde nuclear power plant
- HelloUsername 5mo agonot great, not terrible
- skywhopper 5mo agoRecently had a battery storage facility nixed near where I live because the loudest local residents were panicked about possibilities of leaks of heavy chemicals into the groundwater (which is somewhat fair) and a bunch of less reasonable nonsense. Still, assuming the legit risks can be handled, facilities like these are crucial to future growth in electricity demand.
- infecto 5mo agoWe are in the age of anti-intellectualism. https://www.propublica.org/article/michigan-solar-farms-health-concerns-st-clair-county https://www.propublica.org/article/michigan-solar-farms-heal... We have been pumping oil out of the ground for lifetimes and still have little concern for all the leaky dead wells across the country but these solar panels, that’s the real problem.
- joe_mamba 5mo agoWe have also been breathing fine coal, diesel, brake-pad and tire dust for almost 100 years with no riots from gen-pop, but clean nuclear and batteries will kill us.
- infecto 5mo agoIt’s a weird time. You would think folks would be excited about technology but we have this weird even in America where everything is scary. Facebook brainrot is no issue but F those EVs.
- maxerickson 5mo agoAbout 15 years ago there was some interest in putting in some wind towers in the township I lived in. People were talking about stray electricity killing their livestock. Never mind the several dozen towers already installed 3 miles away.
- joe_mamba 5mo ago>People were talking about stray electricity killing their livestock. That's why I think voting shouldn't be a universal right to everyone, but a privilege you gain after clearing certain bars, one of them being basic education and an IQ test. Giving every dumbass the same voting power as an academic, to grind national development to a halt and make life shit for everyone else just because they don't understand 5th grade physics, is a recipe for disaster and we're living proof of it. If you ever worked in public rations and interacted with the gen-pop off the street on a regular basis, you'd see my point eye-to-eye. The masses are too stupid to be entrusted with national decisions, and the only reason they are allowed to, is because they are easily manipulated into voting the way the elites want them to, because they're stupid. It's exactly why Plato opposed democracy arguing the same faults. >Plato argued that democracy gives power to the masses (the demos), who are often ignorant, emotional, and easily manipulated by skilled speakers (rhetoricians and demagogues). Indisputable fact. >Plato believed that ruling is a skill that requires deep knowledge, wisdom, and training in philosophy — not something that should be decided by majority vote or popularity. Indisputable fact. >He famously compared democracy to a ship where the sailors (citizens) vote on navigation, instead of letting the trained captain (philosopher) steer. The result, according to him, is chaos. Indisputable fact.
- tardedmeme 5mo agoit's a nice idea but you know they used to have this, and the test was basically just a list of things white people were more likely to know
- joe_mamba 5mo agoIDK, I'm not from a country that did stuff like that, so don't try to pin some original sin from the US history on me. I'm from a pretty homogenous country with no racial issues. Now are you saying only whites will be able to understand 5th grade physics and nobody else? Or that whites can't be stupid too? Personally I don't care about your skin color, or other factors, if you're THAT stupid, I don't want you deciding the future of our country, period, since you're putting everyone in danger. If you can't pass 5th grade physics, you're not fit to be voting on the country's nuclear energy policy, simple.
- maxerickson 5mo agoDid they even have a material listing to base their fear on?
- pathartl 5mo agoThe argument is only fair if they provide some valid information to back up their claims. There's a project to put in a BESS near my rural hometown and every anti argument is based on non-LiFEpo cells and self-inflicted confused overlap with the data center water use arguments. This is while completely supporting "beautiful farmlands" that leech pesticides and phosphates into the water table
- pjc50 5mo agoI do think there should be localized referendums where we offer people the choice of taking energy infrastructure out of local approval altogether in exchange for 10% off their bills. It would save so much time and effort. I suspect the silent majority would happily take it leaving a few people yelling at pylons.
- Symbiote 5mo agoThe UK implements something similar, though without the choice. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/households-near-new-pylons-to-save-hundreds-on-energy-bills https://www.gov.uk/government/news/households-near-new-pylon...
- wongarsu 5mo agoBatteries are deployed quickly, but high-capacity grid connections can take a decade in the planning phase alone. Everyone wants one, and NIMBYs are quick to oppose them. Locating at a decommissioned nuclear plant is a great solution avoiding this issue
- panick21_ 5mo agoTurning the nuclear plant back on would have been even better. And then putting a battery next to it would have been even better then that. With batteries one could argue building them in a more distributed way might make more sense for overall resiliancy. A fleet of like 70 nuclear plants at maybe 50 location could likely power all of Germany. For batteries you would likely go to 100 to 1000s of locations. But that said, using the existing connections in some places does make sense.
- egr 5mo agoWhy would it have been better to turn back on the nuclear plant? What would be the specific advantages of nuclear plant back in operation versus battery project realisation? Or would battery + reactivated plant be the best overall solution?
- panick21_ 5mo ago> Or would battery + reactivated plant be the best overall solution? Given how much renewable is already deployed, battery makes sense. So I think both would be best.
- ndr42 5mo agoWhy do you think it would be better or even possible to turn on an old nuclear power plant that is 4 years out of service and decommissioned (10 years left until the decommission is finished)? Even if it is possible I have no confidence that Germany is able to come up with a solution to nuclear waste. The federal states that are proponents of nuclear energy like Bavaria refuse to even examine whether a nuclear waste repository could be located in their territory. Not that far away from the former nuclear plant in the article the "Schacht Asse" [1] is located where the problem of nuclear waste im Germany becomes painfully obvious. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine Edit: Grammar
- nickcw 5mo ago1.4 GW power, 6 GWh capacity 6 GWh is approximately 5 kilotons of TNT equivalent. Would make a big bang should it go off.
- pjc50 5mo agoWould you like to run the same calculations for the (now decomissioned) nuclear power plant on the same site? Or for that matter the average petrol or natural gas storage facility? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncefield_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncefield_fire ("Europe's largest peacetime explosion")
- cbmuser 5mo agoA nuclear power plant cannot free all of its energy at once as the fuel enrichment is too low for an exponential excursion of power, i.e. an explosion.
- wongarsu 5mo agoBatteries tend to burn instead of explode. Same energy, but released over much more time. And while an uncontained battery fire is a huge issue in a private home or in a car park because of how difficult they are to control, in a dedicated battery storage plant you can just let it burn down It's not without risk, but as far as power plants go it's pretty low risk
- cbmuser 5mo agoThe nearby nuclear power plant produced these 6 GWh every four and a half hours, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and more than 8000 days of the year.
- KaiserPro 5mo agoits about 21600 gigajoules or about 1500 tonnes of wheat.
- boringg 5mo agoWow this is a massive arbitrage play. Big proponent of BESS but 5 GW of batteries to buy cheap wind and sell at a higher price is a wild bet. Must have a lot of grants and government money for this one to pencil out.
- ahartmetz 5mo agoWhy wild bet? It seems to be a safe bet that intermittent solar and wind availability will continue to create huge price swings, which storage can exploit and reduce to almost everyone's everyone's benefit. The investment just takes a while to break even, that's all. And with LFP or other long life battery technology, it will pay off for quite a while after break-even.
- boringg 5mo agoBESS asset life isn't great so a longer paypack period runs up against product life. Without running the actual model (volume, frequence and price differential) its tough to tell how quick it happens though I am sure I could build that relatively quickly if I wanted to (assuming granularity of public data). My main point is that its a very large asset so you can't external forces come and mess up the financials (such as policy, regulatory changes, or large infra jump in that area) to make good on that bet. Certainly some public dollars being put to work to de-risk the bet.
- konschubert 5mo agoThese standalone batteries are typically privately financed.
- boringg 5mo agoPrivate finance normally lined with some low cost public money, especially at this size. If it is straight up privately financed even more of a big bet.
- eigenspace 5mo ago
- trklausss 5mo agoNice to see it’s being put to good use. I used to fly the rodeo thermals with a glider… Missing the cloud machine :’)
- elzbardico 5mo agoSo it can store 6 hours of output of the previous existing nuclear power station.