6 ms·

Storage is the issue. You still need to supply base load (well, all load) at night.

pstuart 5mo ago
True, but battery advancements are ongoing at a rapid pace. Sodium-ion is now viable and will be a mainstay in grid storage. Ignoring ideology, this path is plain cheaper than anything else.
idontwantthis 5mo ago
Grid batteries are being deployed everywhere every day and the cost including storage is now lower than fossil fuels.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
Retric 5mo ago
Not quite, current nighttime load is largely a function of cheaper nighttime rates. People don’t set their EV’s to charge from 11-5AM because that’s the only time their cars are plugged in. If rates crater at noon on Sunday, there’s many an EV happy to suck up power then. So yes batteries are going to continue to grow rapidly, but it’s a smaller role than it might seem.
- Paradigma11 5mo ago
  Great, so now not only is power production nondeterministic, your cars tank also is. It was too expensive and the algorithm decided to wait charging, so no spontaneous road trip for you, sorry.
  - notahacker 5mo ago
    I mean, assuming you don't zero your charge out when returning home, you could just take a few minutes to use a rapid charger part way through the journey...
  - jaggederest 5mo ago
    As an electric car owner, this is absolutely the biggest non-problem ever. If you're planning a long journey, you push one button at some point over the preceeding week and it charges to full regardless of price.
  - Retric 5mo ago
    There’s nothing non deterministic about cheaper daytime rates as you scale solar production. Net result, lower average electricity prices but a slow rise in nighttime rates across decades. Similarly people respond to price changes, that’s the foundation for how capitalism functions. You don’t need to care, but many people will choose to save money when possible.
hyperhello 5mo ago
The main load is during the day when the sun shines anyway, and then the seasonally changing periods before and after, basically ramping when people are getting up, then dropping off while people are going to bed. On the west side of a continent, the power for the ramp can come from the east because the sun shines earlier there; on the west the sun shines later and the east can get power. At night, there are still nuclear and other plants, and it is very foreseeable that installations of ground battery technology will have been in place well before twentieth century plants are retired.
- pdq 5mo ago
  High load in the day during sunlight is mostly true for summer heat, but in the winter you have cold evenings which requires base load or storage, combined with solar angle/efficiency being worse in the winter.
  - ssl-3 5mo ago
    Yeah, it's imperfect. Does that mean that it is untenable?
  - Broken_Hippo 5mo ago
    Actually, the US uses more power during the day in the summer - there is a dropoff in the night for both summer and winter. Night time use is somewhat similar. [1] Cooling takes more energy than warming, so the summer daytime use is higher. Summer = warm evenings. I'm from Indiana - it was almost always cooler at 10am than 7pm, even in the winter. It takes time to heat up or cool down. I'll also mention that nights and weekends use less power because business and industry tend to shut down during these times. Which would somewhat logically mean that despite the efficiency being worse during winter, it isn't as much of a strain because power demands are less. [1]https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915
    - fooblaster 5mo ago
      Cooling doesn't really take more energy than warming, because cooling is warming if you have a heat pump. Are you not just observing here the usage of fossil fuels for heating, which is extremely common?
cduzz 5mo ago
These days I think "at night" is mostly covered or at least could be mostly covered both by wind and batteries. The "base load" question may still be appropriate for deep winter, high (or low) latitudes, etc, but renewables are getting there pretty fast.
horsawlarway 5mo ago
LFPs are cheap and safe, with very good cycle counts. Sodium seems to be actually hitting real commercial production volumes (ex - GM just announced a sodium ramp up days ago, CATL has been producing them for a while). I expect we'll see sodium mature a good bit over the next decade (right now - it's just not quite as good as LFP, but it has a lot of promise in temperature extremes and cheap input materials) So sure - storage is an issue. But it's not THE issue anymore. It costs surprisingly little to get enough LFP storage to cover an entire house at modest usage for days at a time (ex - under 10k for 42.9KWh of storage, UL approved https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-wallmount-all-weather-lithium-battery-48v-280ah-14-3kwh-lifepo4-all-weather-energy-storage-ul1973-ul9540a-10-year-warranty/ https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-wallmount-all-weather-lithium...) So yes - storage remains something to consider. But I think pretending that storage is a constraint that should stop PV rollout is... cough... bullshit cough... Let industry that needs it pull from existing generation at night, convert residential to solar as fast as possible. Subsidize residential battery rollout the same way we do for insulation and other efficiency improving home improvements (which to be clear - we were doing prior to the current admin). China isn't fucking around on the solar front, and the continued excuses in US from entrenched interests tangled up in the oil industry are criminal.
- michaelbuckbee 5mo ago
  I think it's your last point that's actually the strongest. There's always gaps between theoretical and practical, but to see China investing so hard in the future while the US digs in it's heels is infuriating.
  - toomuchtodo 5mo ago
    China exported 68GW of solar PV in March 2026, double the prior month and 14GW more than total solar PV capacity installed in Spain. Chinese solar exports double in a month to hit record high amid energy crisis - https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/chinese-solar-exports-double-in-a-month-to-hit-record-high-amid-energy-crisis/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/chinese-solar-export... - April 23rd, 2026 https://ember-energy.org/data/chinas-solar-pv-export-explorer/ https://ember-energy.org/data/chinas-solar-pv-export-explore... https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-explorer/ https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...
jillesvangurp 5mo ago
The whole point about modern gas/coal plants is that it's relatively cheap to shut them down and start them up again. They are backup power, not for providing inflexible base load. Batteries + renewables are taking a lot of market share and flexible backup power is much more important than baseload (inflexible power like nuclear)
- pstuart 5mo ago
  Gas is faster to respond, coal, not so much. From the Goog: Starting up a coal-fired power station depends heavily on the plant's current temperature, taking anywhere from 2 to 48 hours to reach full operational capacity. Because of massive metal boilers and turbines, the heating process must be slow to prevent severe thermal fatigue and equipment damage. [1, 2] The startup time is broken down by the plant's previous state: • Hot Start (less than 8 hours offline): 2 to 4 hours. The boiler and equipment are still warm, allowing for a relatively quick resumption of steam production. • Warm Start (8 to 120 hours offline): 4 to 8 hours. • Cold Start (More than 120 hours offline): 12 to 48 hours. The plant must be heated from room temperature, which involves initially burning expensive natural gas or diesel just to safely warm the furnace and metal pipes before coal can be introduced. [1, 3, 5] To explore how these heavy thermal operations impact the broader electricity supply, you can review the U.S. Energy Information Administration's grid reliability data or dive deeper into the technical challenges via the Environmental Protection Agency's Coal Startup Report. [6] If you are interested in the broader power market, let me know: [1] https://www.quora.com/Why-its-not-that-easy-to-start-operating-power-plants-after-being-subjected-to-a-situation-where-Load-is-remarkably-higher-than-generation https://www.quora.com/Why-its-not-that-easy-to-start-operati... [2] https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-a-thermal-power-plant-to-hot-start-up https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-a-thermal-po... [3] https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-11/documents/matsstartstsd.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-11/documents/ma... [4] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-minimum-time-required-by-steam-turbines-running-on-coal-to-start-in-cases-of-cold-startup-and-hot-startup-And-is-hot-startup-inefficient https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-minimum-time-required-by-s... [5] https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/inflexible-fossil-fuels/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/inflexible-fossil-fuels/ [6] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956
onlyrealcuzzo 5mo ago
Contrary to popular belief, solar panels don't generate zero power on cloudy days. They typically generate 10-25% of their maximum output on the cloudiest of days. Most cloudy days are not maximally cloudy. We don't need solar panels everywhere to get even close to ~100% renewables (with nuclear, wind, new geothermal, and hydro). The areas where you put them are distributed enough that it would be exceptionally rare to ever encounter a meaningful need to ration. So, storage is an issue, but not as big of an issue as most people think, and we do not generate anywhere near enough solar energy for it to be a reasonable concern yet... There's also more solutions than just conventional batteries. There's pumped hydro, etc...
- flumes_whims_ 5mo ago
  But they do generate zero power at night.
  - oblio 5mo ago
    And people use less energy at night. Yes, they do need heating/cooling and a few other things at night, but the peak is during the day and in the evening. This argument is almost closed at this point, with PV + batteries being quite price competitive. We're no longer in 2018.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - fragmede 5mo ago
    Solution? Send large mirrors into space so it never stops shining. https://www.reflectorbital.com/ https://www.reflectorbital.com/
    - magicalhippo 5mo ago
      That surely won't interfere with the ecosystem at all! /s
- Marsymars 5mo ago
brendoelfrendo 5mo ago
It's not, grid-scale batteries are being deployed all over the world, and newer batteries keep getting better and cheaper. Storage hasn't been the issue for years.
- ben_w 5mo ago
  To be fair, it depends if you were looking at "price/unit" or "sum of factory output". The former, even a few years ago, I agree. The latter, people were arguing about a year or two ago. (Though your point remains as the trend was clear).
pydry 5mo ago
The fossil fuel lobbies want us to believe it is a way bigger problem than it is. The people who echo that sentiment without educating themselves are giving them a helping hand.
Schiendelman 5mo ago
It turns out battery prices have dropped so much that this isn't difficult anymore either.

True, but battery advancements are ongoing at a rapid pace. Sodium-ion is now viable and will be a mainstay in grid storage. Ignoring ideology, this path is plain cheaper than anything else.

idontwantthis 5mo ago

Grid batteries are being deployed everywhere every day and the cost including storage is now lower than fossil fuels.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

Retric 5mo ago

Not quite, current nighttime load is largely a function of cheaper nighttime rates. People don’t set their EV’s to charge from 11-5AM because that’s the only time their cars are plugged in. If rates crater at noon on Sunday, there’s many an EV happy to suck up power then. So yes batteries are going to continue to grow rapidly, but it’s a smaller role than it might seem.

Paradigma11 5mo ago
Great, so now not only is power production nondeterministic, your cars tank also is. It was too expensive and the algorithm decided to wait charging, so no spontaneous road trip for you, sorry.
- notahacker 5mo ago
  I mean, assuming you don't zero your charge out when returning home, you could just take a few minutes to use a rapid charger part way through the journey...
- jaggederest 5mo ago
  As an electric car owner, this is absolutely the biggest non-problem ever. If you're planning a long journey, you push one button at some point over the preceeding week and it charges to full regardless of price.
- Retric 5mo ago
  There’s nothing non deterministic about cheaper daytime rates as you scale solar production. Net result, lower average electricity prices but a slow rise in nighttime rates across decades. Similarly people respond to price changes, that’s the foundation for how capitalism functions. You don’t need to care, but many people will choose to save money when possible.

hyperhello 5mo ago

The main load is during the day when the sun shines anyway, and then the seasonally changing periods before and after, basically ramping when people are getting up, then dropping off while people are going to bed. On the west side of a continent, the power for the ramp can come from the east because the sun shines earlier there; on the west the sun shines later and the east can get power. At night, there are still nuclear and other plants, and it is very foreseeable that installations of ground battery technology will have been in place well before twentieth century plants are retired.

pdq 5mo ago
High load in the day during sunlight is mostly true for summer heat, but in the winter you have cold evenings which requires base load or storage, combined with solar angle/efficiency being worse in the winter.
- ssl-3 5mo ago
  Yeah, it's imperfect. Does that mean that it is untenable?
- Broken_Hippo 5mo ago
  Actually, the US uses more power during the day in the summer - there is a dropoff in the night for both summer and winter. Night time use is somewhat similar. [1] Cooling takes more energy than warming, so the summer daytime use is higher. Summer = warm evenings. I'm from Indiana - it was almost always cooler at 10am than 7pm, even in the winter. It takes time to heat up or cool down. I'll also mention that nights and weekends use less power because business and industry tend to shut down during these times. Which would somewhat logically mean that despite the efficiency being worse during winter, it isn't as much of a strain because power demands are less. [1]https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915
  - fooblaster 5mo ago
    Cooling doesn't really take more energy than warming, because cooling is warming if you have a heat pump. Are you not just observing here the usage of fossil fuels for heating, which is extremely common?

cduzz 5mo ago

These days I think "at night" is mostly covered or at least could be mostly covered both by wind and batteries. The "base load" question may still be appropriate for deep winter, high (or low) latitudes, etc, but renewables are getting there pretty fast.

horsawlarway 5mo ago

LFPs are cheap and safe, with very good cycle counts. Sodium seems to be actually hitting real commercial production volumes (ex - GM just announced a sodium ramp up days ago, CATL has been producing them for a while). I expect we'll see sodium mature a good bit over the next decade (right now - it's just not quite as good as LFP, but it has a lot of promise in temperature extremes and cheap input materials) So sure - storage is an issue. But it's not THE issue anymore. It costs surprisingly little to get enough LFP storage to cover an entire house at modest usage for days at a time (ex - under 10k for 42.9KWh of storage, UL approved https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-wallmount-all-weather-lithium-battery-48v-280ah-14-3kwh-lifepo4-all-weather-energy-storage-ul1973-ul9540a-10-year-warranty/ https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-wallmount-all-weather-lithium...) So yes - storage remains something to consider. But I think pretending that storage is a constraint that should stop PV rollout is... cough... bullshit cough... Let industry that needs it pull from existing generation at night, convert residential to solar as fast as possible. Subsidize residential battery rollout the same way we do for insulation and other efficiency improving home improvements (which to be clear - we were doing prior to the current admin). China isn't fucking around on the solar front, and the continued excuses in US from entrenched interests tangled up in the oil industry are criminal.

michaelbuckbee 5mo ago
I think it's your last point that's actually the strongest. There's always gaps between theoretical and practical, but to see China investing so hard in the future while the US digs in it's heels is infuriating.
- toomuchtodo 5mo ago
  China exported 68GW of solar PV in March 2026, double the prior month and 14GW more than total solar PV capacity installed in Spain. Chinese solar exports double in a month to hit record high amid energy crisis - https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/chinese-solar-exports-double-in-a-month-to-hit-record-high-amid-energy-crisis/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/chinese-solar-export... - April 23rd, 2026 https://ember-energy.org/data/chinas-solar-pv-export-explorer/ https://ember-energy.org/data/chinas-solar-pv-export-explore... https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-explorer/ https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...

jillesvangurp 5mo ago

The whole point about modern gas/coal plants is that it's relatively cheap to shut them down and start them up again. They are backup power, not for providing inflexible base load. Batteries + renewables are taking a lot of market share and flexible backup power is much more important than baseload (inflexible power like nuclear)

pstuart 5mo ago
Gas is faster to respond, coal, not so much. From the Goog: Starting up a coal-fired power station depends heavily on the plant's current temperature, taking anywhere from 2 to 48 hours to reach full operational capacity. Because of massive metal boilers and turbines, the heating process must be slow to prevent severe thermal fatigue and equipment damage. [1, 2] The startup time is broken down by the plant's previous state: • Hot Start (less than 8 hours offline): 2 to 4 hours. The boiler and equipment are still warm, allowing for a relatively quick resumption of steam production. • Warm Start (8 to 120 hours offline): 4 to 8 hours. • Cold Start (More than 120 hours offline): 12 to 48 hours. The plant must be heated from room temperature, which involves initially burning expensive natural gas or diesel just to safely warm the furnace and metal pipes before coal can be introduced. [1, 3, 5] To explore how these heavy thermal operations impact the broader electricity supply, you can review the U.S. Energy Information Administration's grid reliability data or dive deeper into the technical challenges via the Environmental Protection Agency's Coal Startup Report. [6] If you are interested in the broader power market, let me know: [1] https://www.quora.com/Why-its-not-that-easy-to-start-operating-power-plants-after-being-subjected-to-a-situation-where-Load-is-remarkably-higher-than-generation https://www.quora.com/Why-its-not-that-easy-to-start-operati... [2] https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-a-thermal-power-plant-to-hot-start-up https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-a-thermal-po... [3] https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-11/documents/matsstartstsd.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-11/documents/ma... [4] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-minimum-time-required-by-steam-turbines-running-on-coal-to-start-in-cases-of-cold-startup-and-hot-startup-And-is-hot-startup-inefficient https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-minimum-time-required-by-s... [5] https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/inflexible-fossil-fuels/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/inflexible-fossil-fuels/ [6] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956

onlyrealcuzzo 5mo ago

Contrary to popular belief, solar panels don't generate zero power on cloudy days. They typically generate 10-25% of their maximum output on the cloudiest of days. Most cloudy days are not maximally cloudy. We don't need solar panels everywhere to get even close to ~100% renewables (with nuclear, wind, new geothermal, and hydro). The areas where you put them are distributed enough that it would be exceptionally rare to ever encounter a meaningful need to ration. So, storage is an issue, but not as big of an issue as most people think, and we do not generate anywhere near enough solar energy for it to be a reasonable concern yet... There's also more solutions than just conventional batteries. There's pumped hydro, etc...

flumes_whims_ 5mo ago
But they do generate zero power at night.
- oblio 5mo ago
  And people use less energy at night. Yes, they do need heating/cooling and a few other things at night, but the peak is during the day and in the evening. This argument is almost closed at this point, with PV + batteries being quite price competitive. We're no longer in 2018.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- fragmede 5mo ago
  Solution? Send large mirrors into space so it never stops shining. https://www.reflectorbital.com/ https://www.reflectorbital.com/
  - magicalhippo 5mo ago
    That surely won't interfere with the ecosystem at all! /s
Marsymars 5mo ago

brendoelfrendo 5mo ago

It's not, grid-scale batteries are being deployed all over the world, and newer batteries keep getting better and cheaper. Storage hasn't been the issue for years.

ben_w 5mo ago
To be fair, it depends if you were looking at "price/unit" or "sum of factory output". The former, even a few years ago, I agree. The latter, people were arguing about a year or two ago. (Though your point remains as the trend was clear).

pydry 5mo ago

The fossil fuel lobbies want us to believe it is a way bigger problem than it is. The people who echo that sentiment without educating themselves are giving them a helping hand.

Schiendelman 5mo ago

It turns out battery prices have dropped so much that this isn't difficult anymore either.