161–170 of 246 posts
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Which is why a lot of generating capacity is wind, not just solar. Which is why utilities are focusing on energy storage and grid improvements like upgrading transmission lines to HVDC to make it more practical to 'ship' excess wind/solar to regions that need it.
Batteries require some pretty rare and gnarly materials and still hold only a tiny, tiny bit. It still gets dark for about a third of the day.
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In addition to not being the same as getting through the night, it's far from the same as getting through several cloudy days in a row. Energy sources that work when they want to will never replace energy sources that work when you tell them to. Lobbying against nuclear is just lobbying for coal and gas.
As someone who lives in an area that gets weeks of heavy cloud cover and little wind, it is sad to see this get voted down. Porting electricity over HVDC from half a continent away (with several metro areas in-between soaking up supply) just seems impractical when we could have small reactors distributed around in smaller, more resilient grids.
But you are not limited to porting in power from far off, you can draw down local, banked storage. If that runs low, you can bring in liquified ammonia synthesized in the tropics. All of this will be chosen according to what costs least. All of it costs less than the nukes would have set you back.
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Money is fungible. Each dollar spent on clean generation displaces some rate of CO2 exhaust. A dollar spent on renewables displaces much more than the same dollar spent on nukes. You cannot spend the same dollar on both. Thus, a dollar spent on nukes instead of renewables brings climate catastrophe nearer.
I think I take issue with both of your assertions: A dollar spent on renewables displaces much more than the same dollar spent on nukes -- this project is going to provide CO2-free power at 3 cents / kWh. It's in the same ballpark, but also, nuclear's main competition is coal and gas, as they all provide baseline power. Solar with storage can do that, but adding storage drives the cost up. And you cannot spend the sa…
I understand the interest in baseload generation but don't see why there's so much interest in nuclear when low-tech concentrated solar in the desert can get the job done and scaling it up (and ensuring it's 100% safe) isn't a matter of R&D but just basic manufacturing. It strikes me a lot of the nuclear focus is (understandable, if not justifiable) interest in cool new technology. Ironically, with concentrated solar…
One of the reasons why I favor nuclear is quite simple. And its not new technology. In fact, nuclear is the only green energy that ever has actually reliably powered an industrial nation. France did it in 70/80 with technology not more advanced then what is available in the 60s. They have not only proven that nuclear can do it, but also that nuclear scales amazingly well. There really is no technical question what so…
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Batteries are the most expensive storage alternative. They have advantages for load-leveling, but beyond a few minutes or, in smaller grids, hours, other media will turn out better. Bigger utilities will prefer pumped hydro for short-term storage, anywhere it is practical. Synthetic chemical fuels -- hydrogen and ammonia -- are compelling for longer-term storage, despite their currently low round-trip efficiency. The…
> Bigger utilities will prefer pumped hydro for short-term storage, anywhere it is practical. Is there any pumped hydro in flat land anywhere deployed on large scale? > Synthetic chemical fuels -- hydrogen and ammonia -- are compelling for longer-term storage, despite their currently low round-trip efficiency. Not really. > Then, there is no downside to massive overbuilding of generating capacity: all capacity genera…
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> Storage cost is plummeting even faster than solar or wind cost ever did. About batteries, that's no longer true - lithium, nickel and cobalt prices have exploded in recent months. Furthermore they're impractical ( you need massive space, and then you have a giant fire hazard) and most importantly, needed elsewhere. EV adoption is already stifled by lack of sufficient supply of batteries, and heavy duty vehicles are…
and ffs don't close existing ones that can continue to operate to replace them with gas "temporarily" like the dimwits in Belgium are doing Actually, Belgium has decided to keep open the two plants that are easy to continue to operate (easy is relative, they will still require a billion euro in maintenance work). They’re still closing the five that would require extensive multi-year downtime and costly renovation (li…
Of course there were alternatives. One would have had to anticipate this crisis a few years ago and could have built up renewables or new nuclear plants. Instead somebody made the decision to go with fossil fuels from Russia and here we are.
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For most projects, there's at most four hours of storage, just enough to shift peak daytime supply to peak evening demand. That's not the same as getting through the night, or having enough overcapacity to meet demand in cloudy winter weeks. Lazard puts the wholesale cost of solar PV plus four hours storage at $165 to $296/MWh: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
Until we have more renewable generating capacity online, four hours is plenty. As the share of power generation increases, building more storage is favored. Lazard's figures are (as is proper) for existing storage, not for the much cheaper storage that will be built. It is generally a mistake to assume people controlling billion-dollar budgets have no idea what they are doing.
I understand the interest in baseload generation but don't see why there's so much interest in nuclear when low-tech concentrated solar in the desert can get the job done and scaling it up (and ensuring it's 100% safe) isn't a matter of R&D but just basic manufacturing. It strikes me a lot of the nuclear focus is (understandable, if not justifiable) interest in cool new technology. Ironically, with concentrated solar…
- Building hectares upon hectares of solar panels in one of the most hostile regions in the world - Maintaining them because the sand is horribly damaging, and replacing them regularly - ignore the fact that, in the Sahara, there's multiple wars going on over there and that it would be a prime location for a terrorist attack - Somehow, also build the infrastructure to transfer that energy through the desert without losing it all as heat. Remember, you've got multiple GW coming out of here. A single 800kV line will not be enough - have backup power lines in case your inaccessible and hard to repair line breaks.
Man, life as a solar zealot sounds easy, all you have to do is ignore physics and reality.
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> Storage cost is plummeting even faster than solar or wind cost ever did. About batteries, that's no longer true - lithium, nickel and cobalt prices have exploded in recent months. Furthermore they're impractical ( you need massive space, and then you have a giant fire hazard) and most importantly, needed elsewhere. EV adoption is already stifled by lack of sufficient supply of batteries, and heavy duty vehicles are…
>they're impractical ( you need massive space This isn't even close to true. A lithium-ion battery can store roughly 1 megajoule per liter, which I'm going to use because it makes the math easier. (Other batteries are slightly less dense, but the correction factor is small). Total global energy consumption is around 1 exajoule per day. That's a trillion liters to store a day's worth of energy, or one billion cubic me…
Congratulations on suggesting the most impractical, stupidly dangerous (mmmmh battery fires), impossible to make, single point of failure. At least it won't be attacked because it only lasts a single day anyways.
Stick to philosophy and let actual engineers build a grid, thank you.
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Batteries require some pretty rare and gnarly materials and still hold only a tiny, tiny bit. It still gets dark for about a third of the day.
You can always store energy by pushing rocks uphill.