441–450 of 818 posts
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Yep! Once battery storage doesn't pan out(and it won't currently for trucks), I see synth hydrocarbons picking up the transport slack. But that will require alot of energy..
Trucks will operate on synthetic fuel, so no.
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The costs are falling on white papers, not in actual storage projects. Unfortunately, we can't hook a white paper up to the grid :(
You may pretend all you like, but I will always correct you.
By insisting that storage is a trivial problem to solve, yet neglecting to actually share what your supposed solution is?
By insisting that storage costs are falling yet neglecting to specify the cost and for what technology?
By all means "correct" me all you like.
I just finished Bill Gates' "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster". Very good book, and it makes two points (among many others): - To reduce carbon in the air, getting clean electricity is key. If we can do that, we can more easily reduce emissions from other areas. - There are no paths to clean energy by 2050 without nuclear power.
Bill Gates, while wealthy and renowned for his tech contributions, has had some missteps in the climate energy space slowing down actual progress with his diversions (i.e. putting money/political will into new moon shots and saying that we don't have the technology to deal with this yet -- instead of deploying readily available technology which is ready).
He is personally responsible for "have you tried turning it off and on again?". Before MS, that was plenty of reason to demand a refund.
Funny article in that it doesn't discuss lifecycle costs. A side-by-side comparison of the cost of grids powered by nuclear power plant relative to those powered by wind/solar/storage is what I'd expect to see from a 'paper of record' like the NYTimes. Except in some specific cases (Finland, other Arctic regions with long periods of low sunlight) I'm pretty sure this cost comparison comes down firmly on the side of w…
> Funny article in that it doesn't discuss lifecycle costs. A side-by-side comparison of the cost of grids powered by nuclear power plant relative to those powered by wind/solar/storage is what I'd expect to see from a 'paper of record' like the NYTimes. If you eliminate gas and coal powered plants then the costs of nuclear plant lifecycle is incidental compared to economic losses that a country would encounter if th…
no. you need gas for nuclear AND renewables. it really does not matter. it's bullshit to argue against it unless you show the world a way to have an on/off button for a nuclear plant. (if you do, you might be very very very rich)
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They exist in prototypes, I am not aware of any grid scale energy storage facilities using thermal batteries. Are there any >1GWh thermal battery facilities? Remember the US uses 8GWh of electricity per minute .
Certainly there are >1GWh thermal storage systems. I'm not sure if any are set up to generate electricity though.
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Undersea cables. There are plenty between Norway and Germany for example.
In case anyone is curious, I found this interesting background reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_power_cable That said, there is only one submarine power cable connecting Norway and Germany, and it's been operational for one year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NordLink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HVDC_Europe.svg
One thing I don't understand is the uninhabitable zone around Chernobyl is not that big, and the U.S. has plenty of space. And electricity can be transmitted decently far, right? So... is it unreasonable to have lots of fairly low-regulated nuclear power plants in, say, 50 mile uninhabited areas (maybe even make it a nature preserve or something for animals)? And if one or two meltdown, oh well?
The solution to Chernobyl style accidents is to not build Chernobyl style nuclear reactors. The design was bad to begin with and it really didn't have any sort of containment or bunker or anything like that to speak of. This is why they go on and about the "sarcophagus" required to keep it contained. They had to build a proper containment unit after the fact. You want that stuff built BEFORE you have a nuclear reacto…
Or, indeed, any at all. Thus, also no Fukushimas, and no TMIs, and no Santa Susanas.
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Storage doesn't replace baseload. Did the pumped hydro dams they built alongside nuclear power plants replace the baseload? No, they took the cheap energy that was produced at times when it wasn't needed and provided it back at peak times. They literally increased the base load by propping it up when it would otherwise droop at night (mostly).
Storage does, in fact, supply base load. That is its purpose.
It charges, when electricity prices are low, which generally means off peak overnight.
In a future renewable grid, with zero dispatchable power it might be used on occaision to help meet the baseload, but it's almost certainly going to be used more during demand peaks, because that's when most electricity is used. Maybe in equatorial regions with a lot of solar, not much wind and no other energy sources it'll share baseload duties with the solar that charges it during the day, but unless the term baseload has lost all meaning (which I fear it has) storage is not ever providing baseload, since that would imply supplying that amount constantly and storage needs to absorb more energy than it returns.
I can't see a definition of 'baseload' provider that storage meets that solar doesn't for example.
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In 2021, we added this many new gigawatts: 183 PV[0], 100 wind[1], 7.88 nuclear (but 8.6 nuclear was also shut down)[2] 28 times that, ignoring the shutdowns (I don't actually know how long wind lasts, IIRC nuclear is "about 50-70 years" and PV is "about 30 years"), gives a total of: 5124 GW PV, 2800 GW wind, 218 GW nuclear. But that's a lower bound for PV, as that's growing with what looks like an approximately expo…
The thing is, 183GW from PV is like 20-30GW of nuclear, because nuclear's capacity factor is near 100% and PV's is often near 10%. Storage seems hard and expensive. We're going to need a whole lot of approaches: - Wind taking a bigger share of renewables - Whatever storage we can reasonably build, including some exotic stuff like power-to-gas-to-power. - Nuclear filling in a little bit - PV comically overbuilt and ro…
Storage cost being excessive means it's early adoption timeframe. As the need for it becomes clear options will open up.