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Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

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Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#51

Post by epistasis »

exoverito wrote: post #18
bryanlarsen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gemini took 2 years and cost $1.3B. Vogtle cost $34B for 2 units and took 12 years for those 2 units. Edit: Gemini took 4 years from project submission and 2 years from construction start. Vogtle took 19 years from project submission and 12 years from construction start.

In large part because of constantly shifting requirements, obstructionism, and various forms of lawfare. The US has become terribly inefficient at large infrastructural projects, see the CA HSR project which is massively delayed and over budget. China does not have this problem, and has been rapidly expanding their nuclear capacity. A standardized reactor design and regulatory certainty would enable the economies of…

There was no obstructionism or changing requirements to blame with Vogtle. It was all self-inflicted delays and costs by the designers and the builders.

France is experiencing exactly the same long delays and cost overruns today at Flamanville, despite having a welcoming regulatory environment, etc.

China also has lots of delays, and presumably cost overruns, but costs are a hard thing to pin down in China. China is barely expanding their nuclear program, only something like 50 new reactors are planned, a few orders of magnitude smaller than their plans for solar and wind.

CA HSR has experienced the obstructionism that Vogtle did not, but is still making good progress. The media narrative doesn't cover it well, but there are new sections completed all the time.

We have problems with big construction projects in the US, but nuclear takes those problems to the next level. And we have great non-construction alternatives for nuclear.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#52

Post by cwal37 »

credit_guy wrote: post #27

It's not really correct to call batteries "electric-generating". They store electricity, but don't generate it. Still, if you take the batteries out, solar makes up 75% of the remaining new electric-generating capacity. If you add wind, you get 92%.

It’s even a bit funnier than you put it since on net they consume electricity due to round trip efficiency losses.

This also can provide something of an interesting discussion with local authorities when trying to site a battery somewhere that has banned new “generating” technologies (typically targeted at wind and solar), since batteries are consuming electricity and can be likened to transmission infrastructure (or physical trade assets which I think some people are enjoying playing with).

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#53

Post by Retric »

samatman wrote: post #40

This is nameplate capacity: the power a generator can deliver, full on, under ideal conditions. Solar and wind always look great when measured in nameplate capacity, which is why this is done. If you want to know how much electricity they will generate, you have to multiply by the capacity factor. Nuclear, for instance has a capacity factor of 0.9 in the US: it delivers 90% of its nameplate capacity in a given year.…

Your range is wildly off for PV systems, concentrating solar thermal can be that low but it’s been abandoned for good reason. Utility scale PV solar in the US averages 0.246 with several solar farms in the US having over 0.32 capacity factors.

Ex: 0.328 from 2017 - 2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Star While a nearby PV farm is only 0.275 (average 2015-2018) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Sunlight_Solar_Farm and another in the middle: 29.7%(average 2015–2017, MS1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Signal_Solar Curtailment depends on the specific power purchase agreements so there’s some variability independent of the underlying technology.

The discrepancy around PV solar is largely the degree of tracking and location. Fixed panels have the same maximum, but even 1 axis tracking significantly extends how long a panel is producing the maximum power. 2 axis tracking allows even better capacity factor assuming nothing breaks, but at higher cost per kWh.

PS: Of note low capacity factor Solar installs are generally far smaller. It’s viable to install a little solar in Maine, but not at the same scale. https://spectrumlocalnews.com/me/maine/news/2022/11/17/const...

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#55

Post by Retric »

chii wrote: post #34
nekoashide wrote: post #29

The cool thing about batteries is that they are great as an investment. You can charge them when power is cheap and sell back power when you have high demand and market prices for power. Typically Peaker Plants fill this role but at much higher cost for electricity and emissions. Batteries just make much more sense for this kind of power.

The question is whether such battery's charge/discharge cycle degrade faster than the return on investment. For home use, break-even is an acceptable outcome, but not for commercial use like above. Is the price of battery low enough atm to make a return for such an investment?

It’s currently possible for batteries to be a great investment, but diminishing returns hit hard. The most cost efficient setup is a solar farm where the panels produce DC which directly charges the batteries and the losses from DC>AC conversion only happens once before you send power to the grid. With the added benefit of only paying for a single set of DC>AC equipment.

However, the more such systems come online the less peaking power is worth and batteries aren’t competitive with current ultra low nighttime rates.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#56

Post by gnicholas »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #2

81% of new US electric-generating capacity. Not 81% of total US capacity.

I saw that qualifier also. Does anyone know what percent of total capacity will be new next year (or better, what percent of total capacity will be solar next year)?

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#57

Post by spangry »

pfdietz wrote: post #7
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

A neat trend. But still renewables are a small fraction of electrical generation capacity in the US. Dominated by gas, even the renewable slice ( A long, long way to go to complete renewable energy.

Say you don't understand exponential growth without saying you don't understand exponential growth.

Isn't exponential growth where the growth rate becomes more rapid as the stock of the thing gets larger (and, more precisely, the growth rate is a function of the stock)? How is growth in solar capacity exponential? Wouldn't it actually be logarithmic, all other things equal?

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#58

Post by Retric »

why_only_15 wrote: post #42
samatman wrote: post #40

This is nameplate capacity: the power a generator can deliver, full on, under ideal conditions. Solar and wind always look great when measured in nameplate capacity, which is why this is done. If you want to know how much electricity they will generate, you have to multiply by the capacity factor. Nuclear, for instance has a capacity factor of 0.9 in the US: it delivers 90% of its nameplate capacity in a given year.…

In the US, PV solar capacity factor is about 0.24 (partly because lots of people live near very sunny regions like California and Texas). The National Renewable Energy Laboratory claims that in some parts of the US utility-scale solar capacity factors are 0.33 [0]. Wind is about 0.36, Hydro also 0.36, Nuclear about 0.93 [1]. If you apply these capacity factors to the nameplate capacities (ignoring batteries), you get…

US nuclear averages below 0.9, individual plants can break 0.93 for a single year, but long term maintenance and refueling cycles lower the average. Ex: 95.73% (2017) 80.25% (lifetime) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Valley_Nuclear_Power_St...

94.43% (2017) 75.20% (lifetime) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunswick_Nuclear_Generating_S...

96.04% (2017) 78.07% (lifetime) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Plant

So you can cherry pick a few numbers from the best years, but the lifetime averages tell a different story.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#59

Post by Evidlo »

samatman wrote: post #40

This is nameplate capacity: the power a generator can deliver, full on, under ideal conditions. Solar and wind always look great when measured in nameplate capacity, which is why this is done. If you want to know how much electricity they will generate, you have to multiply by the capacity factor. Nuclear, for instance has a capacity factor of 0.9 in the US: it delivers 90% of its nameplate capacity in a given year.…

Why does nuclear not deliver closer to its ideal power output? Are nuclear plants really down 10% of the time?

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#60

Post by adrianN »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #20
pfdietz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you don't understand exponential growth without saying you don't understand exponential growth.

There's no way solar can grow geometrically for long. It consumes real estate like there's no tomorrow. Land is limited; sunlight is limited. It has a hard, hard limit. Unlike many other kinds of power generation, which are land-frugal and work 24 hours a day. So, let's rethink who doesn't understand growth.

Luckily we'll have more than enough energy long, long before we run out of land or sunlight. We could satisfy a large part of our energy demand just by replacing energy crops by solar panels, with the added benefit of not needing fertilizer and pesticides.
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