Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035: Study

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 204 posts

Re: Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035: Study

#171

Post by WalterBright »

perl4ever wrote: post #163
WalterBright wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GP is talking about avoiding the need for batteries by pricing people out of the market instead. Nope, I talked about incentivizing consumers to shift their demand based on a volatile price. I pointed out that much of this can be accomplished without need of batteries. For example, have the hot water tank heat up water higher than normal when electricity is cheaper, and lower when electricity is more expensive. Hot…

The water in the tank is functioning as a battery in that case.

Yes, of course.

Re: Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035: Study

#172

Post by fulafel »

generatorguy wrote: post #46
fulafel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that we keep supply and demand pricing models mismatched. The current "fixed price 24/7" model is not set in stone. AC/heating, EV charging, many industrial processes can shift demand and make good forecasts about how flexible their demand is vs average intra-day variation in electricity prices.

I don't have a lot of hope for people changing their behaviour based on time of day pricing. Sure aluminum smelters etc might have to flag it for a day once every 5 years but they do that currently because there isn't enough power for everyone so please help us out and shutdown for a day instead cause we are going to dump you anyway because we have to decide between giving you power or this other major load such as a…

We'll have to change to beat climate change and it means dramatically refucing fossil fuel use by regulations, taxes, price controls etc. When supply is limited, the price is the mechanism that decides who gets the juice and who doesn't. In plain terms, the price will become as high as necessary to reduce demand to the level of supply. And this can make storage profitable too.

I think your examples are actually all flexible use cases. Car can be charged any time, if price is unpredictable you won't leave your battery empty on a work night. But also you don't necessarily need a car. Lighting is a silly example because it consumes negligible energy, but if you look at history it's actually very flexible. Dinner also takes negligible energy but it's also very flexible (see how people cook in places without cheap eletricity - biofuels).

Re: Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035: Study

#173

Post by godelski »

baking wrote: post #160
godelski wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty accurate, but nuclear can spin up and down, by controlling the fuel rods. This is one of the major advantage of the technology and why many suggest it be used in combination with solar, wind, and hydro (many as in the IPCC, which is why CNN pushed hard on everyone during the climate debates). It can be used to provide a base load (greatly reducing the need for batteries (or the need to invent good enough ones!…

Chernobyl happened during a scheduled shut-down test that was delayed by 10 hours because there was higher than expected electricity demand. They tried to speed-up the shut-down and the results did not go as expected. I think it may be a little naive to say that nuclear can spin up and down by controlling the fuel rods. I think Three Mile Island and Fukushima also had issues with getting rid of residual heat during a…

> I think it may be a little naive to say that nuclear can spin up and down by controlling the fuel rods.

I'm not sure. Because that's exactly what control rods do. The carbon is a neutron moderator. Neutrons are the "heat" in the reaction (that creates actual heat). Less neutrons the colder the reaction is. You'll find this in any elementary nuclear or atomic textbook (which I have read).

As for Chernobyl the show actually got a lot right. But there's a lot of important things that get glossed over because it's dramatized. Like the fact that it had a positive void coefficient and no other reactor operates that way because everyone knew it had a chance is blowing up.

Similarly there's a lot wrong with your analysis about three mile and Fukushima. Both of which killed zero people btw. I'd listen to the experts on this one.

Re: Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035: Study

#174

Post by godelski »

war1025 wrote: post #167
baking wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chernobyl happened during a scheduled shut-down test that was delayed by 10 hours because there was higher than expected electricity demand. They tried to speed-up the shut-down and the results did not go as expected. I think it may be a little naive to say that nuclear can spin up and down by controlling the fuel rods. I think Three Mile Island and Fukushima also had issues with getting rid of residual heat during a…

There was a video I saw a while ago, but I don't remember where, explaining that modern nuclear designs use passive safety mechanisms, whereas the original (currently in use) designs have active safety mechanisms that require ridiculous amounts of fallback and backup systems that make it much more difficult to guarantee safe operation in the event of an anomaly. I think it had something to do with there being a salt…

You're thinking of liquid reactors, probably gen IV. But I'll say that given the track record of nuclear, it is pretty safe. Only one that beats it out for safety per TW (least deaths per TW) is hydro (even wind and solar are more dangerous). The environmental damage isn't really high either, you should check out radiation maps of Japan. They're pretty much livable expect for inside the daiichi reactor. It definitely was bad, but at the same time it was sensationalized.

I can also say that there is a resistance to implementing new reactors and storage methods because they "aren't proven". I'll let you decide the irony to that statement.

Re: Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035: Study

#175

Post by ryacko »

imtringued wrote: post #150
beat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting factoid I ran across when researching this stuff a while back is that no one has ever built a new reactor in a deregulated electricity market. Period. The time frame of nuclear reactors is very long - like 50 years. So they're very sensitive to capital costs, and capital is sensitive to risk. Now, if you were doing the risk analysis on financing for a multibillion-dollar nuclear project, and you just s…

The complexity of reactors needs to go down and they need to be smaller. Big reactors can only be cooled if they are near the ocean, otherwise they have to be shutdown when the flow rate of the river is too low, this usually happens during heatwaves. It's easier to achieve economies of scale with 16 identical small scale reactors instead of designing a custom reactor for each plant and then building only 2. I don't s…

A nuclear plant in Arizona uses treated sewage for cooling. In theory, any nuclear plant near any sufficiently large city would have access to enough water for cooling, unless the city was unusually water efficient.

Re: Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035: Study

#176

Post by fulafel »

generatorguy wrote: post #106
Faark wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many people will refrain from charging because it is going to cost you $50 instead of $10? [..] Given that traffic never gets better I would say none! Are you honestly trying to argue it doesn't have any effect? "What day of the week is best to fill your tank" is like an age-old question. Obviously within reason. Not if your tank is empty and you have to be somewhere. Less so for people who think this to be ben…

Do people with electric cars only charge once per week? I concede There could be some demand response if people could know that they can charge for less every Sunday night. But as you say when you are empty you are a price taker. I live near Vancouver which features the most expensive gas in North America, and decent public transportation, and I believe traffic is the only thing that keeps people from driving more, n…

Tesla ranges (320+) are over 20 times the average commute (16 miles).

I think the more realistic scenario is that people charge less if the power is expensive, to full otherwise. Managed by a programmed policy.

Also, commute length will start trending down as we leave the cheap-gas phase of history behind - EVs are also too CO2 intensive to sustain the car based lifestyle.

Re: Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035: Study

#177

Post by baking »

godelski wrote: post #173
baking wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chernobyl happened during a scheduled shut-down test that was delayed by 10 hours because there was higher than expected electricity demand. They tried to speed-up the shut-down and the results did not go as expected. I think it may be a little naive to say that nuclear can spin up and down by controlling the fuel rods. I think Three Mile Island and Fukushima also had issues with getting rid of residual heat during a…

> I think it may be a little naive to say that nuclear can spin up and down by controlling the fuel rods. I'm not sure. Because that's exactly what control rods do. The carbon is a neutron moderator. Neutrons are the "heat" in the reaction (that creates actual heat). Less neutrons the colder the reaction is. You'll find this in any elementary nuclear or atomic textbook (which I have read). As for Chernobyl the show a…

I don't know what experts you are listening to, but the idea of shutting down a nuclear reactor by lowering the control rods when the sun shines or the wind blows is just plain silly, for economic and safety reasons. Maybe for some future Gen IV design without fuel rods, but what you are talking about would require doubling the staffing and would defeat any cost savings in fuel use.

Better to curtail the wind and solar or find ways to store the excess energy in batteries, hydro, or fuel.

EDIT: Perhaps you mean something else by "spin up and spin down" but the usual sense of the words implies a complete shut-down. Nuclear reactors do have a normal operating range which can safely be reduced to half-power on a diurnal cycle (typically at night, but could just as easily be during the day.)

Re: Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035: Study

#178

Post by snowwindwaves »

gridlockd wrote: post #132
beat wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negative prices? You'll pay me to take electricity off your hands that I can sell later? That's the best argument for the battery storage market I've seen yet... (And really, it makes sense. Generate surplus when the sun is shining or wind is especially strong, run from storage when demand exceeds supply, build both until there's enough. As long as the costs are less than current baseline systems, which seems possibl…

They won't pay you , unless you're literally running part of the power grid. > Generate surplus when the sun is shining or wind is especially strong, run from storage when demand exceeds supply, build both until there's enough. That's the idea, but the battery capacity required would be enormous: https://www.oulu.fi/blogs/how-much-storage-does-the-energiew... > As long as the costs are less than current baseline syst…

It is unfortunate that link didn't pursue non worst case scenarios, like being able to import some power, or have some non renewable generation used just enough that it was economic to exist at normal energy prices, with the biggest payoff being the avoided cost of energy storage for October and November.

that link is kind of unrealistically dismissive.

Re: Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035: Study

#179

Post by sunkenvicar »

atq2119 wrote: post #170
sunkenvicar wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s downvoted because he’s bringing on-the-ground facts to a political discussion about solar and wind.

It may have more to do with the "haha lol", which is an antipattern for rational discussion.

Humans are irrational. And it’s hard not to laugh at wind and solar.

But you are right. I would downvote if I was wrong and laughed at.

Re: Gas Plants Will Get Crushed by Wind, Solar by 2035: Study

#180

Post by sunkenvicar »

jandrese wrote: post #115
sunkenvicar wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the severe environmental impacts of hydro?

I didn't say severe, but there are environmental impacts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_reserv... The biggest is the destruction of migrating fish habitat, sometimes reversible with specialized structures (salmon ladders), sometimes not. There is also some evidence for increased CO2 emissions from artificial reservoirs.

Hydro is clean and cheap baseload power. Better than nuclear.

The impact of creating water reservoirs must be immense. Because we are dreaming about replacing hydro with vastly inferior power sources.

Post reply on HN