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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

#141

Post by audunw »

Animats wrote: post #13

"The Gemini solar facility in Nevada plans to begin operating in 2024. With a planned photovoltaic capacity of 690 megawatts (MW) and battery storage of 380 MW, it is expected to be the largest solar project in the United States when fully operational." That's about 60% of the capacity of one unit at Vogtle nuclear power station, and Vogtle has four units. Also, adding the solar capacity to the battery capacity to ge…

Looking at a single plant isn't very interesting. Solar and wind are fundamentally more distributed so you're comparing apples to oranges. That distributed nature is both a good thing and a bad thing. Having just a few nuclear reactor go down at the same time in a single region can be problematic, as France recently experienced. Of course there are costs/upgrades associated with making large share of renewables viable at all, but those come with a more distributed and resilient solution.

If you want to compare impact on actual energy generation, look at the growth in total net numbers:

The largest rate that nuclear ever grew was around ~200TWh for some years in the 80s.

Solar grew by ~300TWh from 2021 to 2022. Wind grew by ~200TWh. And the growth rate is still increasing exponentially.

For reference the world population grew from ~5 to ~8billion from the 80s until now, if you want to take that into account when comparing the growth rates.

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

#142

Post by RamblingCTO »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #67

> Nuclear. Start-up of the fourth reactor (1.1 GW) at Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power plant I checked the Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla... > Two additional units utilizing Westinghouse AP1000 reactors were under construction since 2009, with Unit 3 being completed in July 2023.[9][10][11] This last report blames the latest increase in costs on the contractor not completing wor…

Network stability, night and bad weather hedging is a problem though with full solar/wind, isn't it? We still need a mix until tech is better to solve these problems.

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

#143

Post by zarify »

pjc50 wrote: post #136
zarify wrote: post #134

Ultimately how useful is the high uptake in individual states? My understanding was that the US had a lot of weirdness going on about provision of utilities over state lines. (Mind you here in Oz I think we have our own state politics involved, but I guess at least we have fewer states )

The US has three separate grids: east, west, and Texas. Who are oddly separatist about their badly managed energy system.

Ah, it was probably me hearing about Texas and then extrapolating that to the rest of the US. Probably not a great idea on my part. Thanks for setting me straight :)

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

#144

Post by _ph_ »

spangry wrote: post #57
pfdietz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because the more solar gets deployed, the less the costs are. So each increase in growth triggers a reduction in costs which then enables larger growth and so on.

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

#145

Post by littlestymaar »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #130
adrianN wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French nuclear power is still not particularly economical and they didn’t build as many plants as originally planned because of it, nor do they plan to build a sufficient number of new plants to sustain current capacity over the next decades. France justifies the expense with their nuclear bomb program that benefits from a strong civilian nuclear industry.

French nuclear power has a levelized cost of about $70/MWh - which is about the same cost as the levelized cost of solar or wind in France, without most the headaches of intermittency. (Remember the average French person lives further north than the average Canadian...)

Exactly, and don't forget that nuclear costs in France are being driven high by wind (and solar, but less so), because it cannot run at its optimal power because it has to reduce produced power when there's wind.

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

#146

Post by mjevans »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #2

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

81% of *new* capacity planned for *this year*

Trends are often easier to understand from a rolling average or derivative.

Electricity might also seem fungible but even near optimal conditions a rule of thumb of 1% power lost per 100 miles (~160km) of distance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Lo... Thus the value of any installations should be rated by their distance to loads and load capacity under typical operating conditions. Solar is probably a good pair against AC units. Base load plants are still desirable.

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

#147

Post by einpoklum »

pstuart wrote: post #96
hinkley wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much solar/wind/battery capacity can 34B USD buy!? According to How Big Things Get Done, at least 30B worth. Nuclear plants have some of the worst cost and time overruns for large projects, wind and solar some of the lowest (beaten only by roads). And his theory as to why this happens, is that wind, solar, and roads are self-similar. Building the first 10% directly informs you on how to build the next 10%. Ever…

This is why if nuclear is to have a future it would be via Small Modular Reactors. But even that appears to be too expensive.

Indeed. I mean, I'm not sure the smallness is a key factor, but the modularity for sure and maybe the size limitation comes with that.

I'm not much of a fan of nuclear (pun not intended?) and would like to see solar + wind (+ other renewables) cover most of the load. But if enough resources were pooled to design an SMR, with extensive safety studies, lifetime planning, involvement of multiple parties (e.g. scientific and engineering teams from different world states) - I don't think I could really oppose, especially given the global warming situation.

Of course - there's "ideal nuclear" and there's real existing nuclear, which is quite different and often very problematic.

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

#148

Post by einpoklum »

sowbug wrote: post #88
gamepsys wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think space is a concern in North America.

If space isn't a concern, then transmission is.

You don't have to generate all of the power in one place, you know...

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

#149

Post by hef19898 »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #135
hef19898 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are building solar and wind aggressively. The problem with nuclear power is, nobody manages to build it aggressively or even at enough scale to make a meaningfull impact. What we should do, is keeping existing nuclear plants running as long as economically and safely possible. Emphasis on economically and safely, because those two points meant that the German reactors did run as long as possible, they even got an…

> nobody manages to build it aggressively or even at enough scale to make a meaningfull impact China does. They will be completing 60-70 GW worth of reactors in the next decade, planning to take nuclear power from 2% of their electricity production to over 10% eventually. (While also building crazy amounts of solar, wind etc.)

You do know that 6-7 GW per year are close to nothing compared to new wind and solar, not to mention other plants, China is installing? Nor is it in the general picture.

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

#150

Post by Ringz »

Maakuth wrote: post #133
Ringz wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A misconception I often read on YouTube, Reddit, HackerNews is that everyone equates batteries with lithium ion batteries. A battery is a chemical storage device for energy and there are already many different types. 1. There are also functioning batteries without lithium, for example with salt, which are now already being tested in Swiss and German households and bring some advantages compared to lithium batteries.…

Very good points. I do think the grid battery capacity being added this year is going to be mostly li-ion.

Thats (sadly) true! I think the transition to a diverse heat and electricity storage landscape will take time. Citing from "Handbook Energy Storage SCCER" https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000445597:

"The SCCER has proven in numerous demonstra- tions that storage technologies are essentially available and usable. Now it is necessary, above all, for political decisions to be taken in the inter- ests of a coherent energy policy in order to re- duce the regulatory obstacles that currently im- pede or make impossible the economical use of energy storage. This can guide business models and investment decisions necessary to advance the technologies developed in the SCCER and bring them from the laboratory into the ultimate energy system of the Energy Strategy 2050."

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