chris222

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61.
Hinkley Point C: Electricity from new British nuclear power plant costs >15c/kWh(renewablepress.com)
3 points by chris222 3y ago|7 comments
62.
by chris222 3y ago
Renewable wind power comes in at a fraction of the cost.
63.
by chris222 3y ago
Perhaps with todays prices on large lithium storage which I documented elsewhere in this thread at ~$500/kWh installed for a real project in the United States. Most analysts expect that price halves to $250/kWh or lower in the nex
64.
by chris222 3y ago
There is a lot of FUD about wind (less so for hydro which has some real issues) but the scale of the problems that can occur are orders of magnitude less than Nuclear.
65.
by chris222 3y ago
Thats a good summary of what it would take but I really think the ship has sailed on Nuclear. I don’t think it will have a significant revival in the United States any time soon. We did have a chance to be like France in the early 1970’s an
66.
by chris222 3y ago
I don’t see it happening in the United States. I’ll give a small example from my area of the country which is New England. We had 5 Nuclear power plants (one each in ME, MA, NH, CT and VT) of which the last to be commissioned was in New Ham
67.
by chris222 3y ago
And the estimated cleanup costs are ~500 billion, ~50 billion and ~1 billion. Expensive mistakes.
68.
by chris222 3y ago
The Fukushima cleanup costs are estimated at damn near a half a trillion dollars! Chernobyl was estimated at 50 billion+ adjusted. Accidents are rare but they are costly.
69.
by chris222 3y ago
The thing you are missing is regulatory costs. All of those examples are great but they are not dealing with the United States regulatory frameworks. It’s extremely difficult to get Nuclear projects developed here.
70.
by chris222 3y ago
We have just barely started investing into the extremely large solar projects that could easily change that 1.6% figure you quoted. I also don’t know if that number included behind-the-meter residential solar which is mostly what we have in
71.
by chris222 3y ago
Overbuilding wind and using HVDC transmission to move it around is sometimes cheaper than battery storage since it compliments solar peak times well. A similar project is being constructed in the Southwest United States: https://
72.
by chris222 3y ago
Presumably all they would need to do here is change the ratios of solar and battery to achieve 24x7 dispatch. I presume the current arrangement is just more cost effective currently based on their needs but it does demonstrate there already
73.
by chris222 3y ago
It would require a radically new design that takes a lot of the cost out. You also have the spent fuel storage problem and the risk factors of a meltdown (however small) to tackle which are always working against you. Technology development
74.
by chris222 3y ago
The price for storage is closer to $500/kWh for the large utility scale projects using Teslas Megapacks and falling fast [1]. I wouldn’t be surprised to see $200-300 fairly soon (within the next 5 years). Tesla is only starting to ser
75.
by chris222 3y ago
Curious what you think of this recently completed project: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/28/scatecs-540mw-pv-1140mw... With enough storage and onsite renewables you can mimic the stable baseload that Nucl
76.
by chris222 3y ago
That is amoung the largest lithium batteries in the world. It’s great to see the gigawatt scale batteries get deployed. Great for turning renewables into baseload power and also their response time is hard to beat.
77.
Pattern Energy Closes $11B Financing of Largest Clean Energy Project in U.S.(patternenergy.com)
3 points by chris222 3y ago|1 comments
78.
by chris222 3y ago
A 550 mile 525kV HVDC transmission line and a 3,515 MW wind facility has secured financing and started construction. The goal is to deliver renewable power from New Mexico to Arizonia and California customers.
79.
by chris222 3y ago
You can take a Model 3 pack and make it a home battery. Technically the battery in a car will be exposed to way more danger. Yet they could sit right next to each other in a garage and insurance would freak out at the DIY home battery.
80.
by chris222 3y ago
Yes it is definitely the case that overprovisioning can help here but it would probably be the case that you would conserve in a long power outage.
81.
by chris222 3y ago
As the grid goes renewable the “controllable loads” will be more important. Dryers, EV charging, electric hot water heating and heat pumps can all be connected to optimize renewables minimizing the use of expensive batteries.
82.
by chris222 3y ago
For that price you can build almost any combination of wind/solar plus storage. It will probably use less land when you factor in exclusion zones and require fewer operators and resources. It will also have no major calamity risk and a
83.
by chris222 3y ago
Worker threads have been around for a bit: https://nodejs.org/api/worker_threads.html
84.
by chris222 3y ago
This one looks more promising. https://www.halcium.com/
85.
by chris222 3y ago
The new system on a chip is an insane innovation but it’s “under the hood”.
86.
by chris222 3y ago
Here we have motors that don’t require rare earth metals. The largest battery maker CATL is making breakthrough leaps in LFP batteries (which have no cobalt). [1] Recycling large EV batteries is becoming cheaper and easier. [2] Are the EV F
87.
by chris222 3y ago
The biggest advantage is the shape which drastically reduces air resistance and 3 wheels which reduces rolling resistance. Everything else in an EV is almost as efficient as it can possibly be. Aptera is about 100Wh/mi while a tesla mo
88.
by chris222 3y ago
The biggest problem is you need to match the pack voltage when DC charging.
89.
by chris222 3y ago
Everything except cooling/heating and propulsion uses an insignficant amount of power.
90.
by chris222 3y ago
You can cover a parking spot with 3-4kW of solar though.

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