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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

#151

Post by tigershark »

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…

All the nuclear energy production plants in the world ever built have the same capacity as the amount of solar generation built just last year. So your comparison doesn’t make much sense, nuclear is dead in current energy market, it makes sense only for producing fissile material for nuclear bombs.

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

#152

Post by Sweepi »

Ringz wrote: post #131
Maakuth wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I earned the snark for not mentioning the batteries. Weirdly the news item doesn't tell what sort of energy storage capacity these battery installation have, only the peak power output of 14.3 GW for this year's addition. While that is certainly a gigantic addition no matter what the energy capacity of these battery installations is going to be, running the whole grid on batteries over the periods of low rene…

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.…

is [2] offline?

maybe you meant this one?: https://tu-dresden.de/tu-dresden/newsportal/news/meilenstein...

... did you use a tool to translate your text from German -> English and the tool did also translate the url...?

However, sb. tried to access this url in Nov 2021, but it did not exist back then aswell: https://web.archive.org/web/20240216101723/https://tu-dresde...

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

#153

Post by paganel »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #125
Zanfa wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I ran the numbers for this, price arbitrage alone using lithium batteries is not gonna be profitable. Current lithium batteries are just too expensive, store too little energy and degrade too quickly for true grid-scale storage. That’s why they typically offer services, other than price arbitrage, that actually makes building them make sense. There’s still no equivalent of a peaker plant using non-hydro sto…

Lots of energy companies across the globe seem to be disagreeing with you and are installing massive amounts of battery storage. Gas peaker plants are getting used a lot less on grids where this happens. Reason: your numbers and assumptions are probably wrong.

One could have said the same thing 2 or 3 years ago about companies active in the renewable energy space like Orsted. I mean, they were one of the biggest producers of wind-turbines, what was there not to like in this ESG-focused investment environment? Until the numbers suddenly stopped making sense for them a few weeks ago [1].

Which is to say that the investment numbers may look "right" for a good few years until they suddenly don't and the reality catches up with all those involved.

[1] https://archive.is/w8VCk

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

#154

Post by patall »

Maakuth wrote: post #85
why_only_15 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course those capacity factors hide one important bit, the dispatchability. While the capacity factor is the same in this list for wind and hydro, the wind and solar generation are naturally capped by nature. When demand exceeds the natural availability of these, you need to dispatch some extra generation. Hydro and natural gas are well suited for this, coal can do it even if dirtily. Nuclear generation could be ma…

Technically, solar and wind are dispatchable as well, and much better than even natural gas at that. Grids were both are regulated on the sub-second scale are much more even than is otherwise possible. The thing is just that we consider that as lost energy, even though it is simply the same as running any other power plant at full power. If wind were three times cheaper than natural gas and we hence build three times as much of it, the achievable capacity factor would not look that bad.

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

#155

Post by Reason077 »

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...)

> “Remember the average French person lives further north than the average Canadian...”

That doesn’t mean much. Regardless of latitude, the French climate is much milder than most of Canada.

In fact there’s plenty of places in North America that get much, much colder than equivalent latitudes in Europe.

Heck, Chicago is the same latitude as Barcelona(!!), but there can be 20°C or more difference in temperature during winter.

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

#156

Post by dmurray »

Maakuth wrote: post #104
hef19898 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a close look at the title again, second word after "solar", you have to pass by "and" to get there.

I guess I earned the snark for not mentioning the batteries. Weirdly the news item doesn't tell what sort of energy storage capacity these battery installation have, only the peak power output of 14.3 GW for this year's addition. While that is certainly a gigantic addition no matter what the energy capacity of these battery installations is going to be, running the whole grid on batteries over the periods of low rene…

> Weirdly the news item doesn't tell what sort of energy storage capacity these battery installation have, only the peak power output of 14.3 GW for this year's addition.

As a rule of thumb, the capacity will be a few hours worth. So if the power rating is 14 GW, maybe that will be 60 GWh of capacity.

That's almost enough to smooth over the most regular fluctuations in solar power: the day-night cycle (especially when you remember that demand drops at night). Not close to being economical for storing power from summer through to winter.

A source [0]: > The most common grid-scale battery solutions today are rated to provide either 2, 4, or 6 hours of electricity at their rated capacity

[0] https://www.energysage.com/business-solutions/utility-scale-...

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

#157

Post by hef19898 »

Reason077 wrote: post #155
MagnumOpus wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

> “Remember the average French person lives further north than the average Canadian...” That doesn’t mean much. Regardless of latitude, the French climate is much milder than most of Canada. In fact there’s plenty of places in North America that get much, much colder than equivalent latitudes in Europe. Heck, Chicago is the same latitude as Barcelona(!!), but there can be 20°C or more difference in temperature during…

What are you saying? That Earth's rotation axis is, what, tilted? Outragious! Herasy!

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

#158

Post by RugnirViking »

Ringz wrote: post #131
Maakuth wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I earned the snark for not mentioning the batteries. Weirdly the news item doesn't tell what sort of energy storage capacity these battery installation have, only the peak power output of 14.3 GW for this year's addition. While that is certainly a gigantic addition no matter what the energy capacity of these battery installations is going to be, running the whole grid on batteries over the periods of low rene…

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.…

in industry here in europe I usually see it written as ESS/BESS (energy storage system or battery energy storage system). For new plants we usually simulate each of five or six technologies, however in a lot of cases yes lithium ion has many advantages.

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

#159

Post by Maakuth »

zer00eyz wrote: post #140
Maakuth wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I earned the snark for not mentioning the batteries. Weirdly the news item doesn't tell what sort of energy storage capacity these battery installation have, only the peak power output of 14.3 GW for this year's addition. While that is certainly a gigantic addition no matter what the energy capacity of these battery installations is going to be, running the whole grid on batteries over the periods of low rene…

> no matter what the energy capacity of these battery installations is going to be, running the whole grid on batteries over the periods of low renewable generation is going to require still orders of magnitude more batteries. I live in CA (Bay Area) the solar people just wandered up to my front door to "sell me" the other day. I do want to go solar in light of my PGE bill. The sales guy was super sharp and addressed…

At least a rooftop PV installation breaks even* here in Finland with scarce sun and cheap power. Batteries are not there yet. If you don't need the battery as a UPS, I would wait still a few years before going for a home battery.

*: Easily half of the cost is the installation labor. If you can DIY at least parts of it, you can get decent ROI.

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

#160

Post by lucioperca »

hef19898 wrote: post #114
looofooo0 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What has this to do with building? Summer gets you cheap PV battery electric energy anyhow. Lack of cooling towers etc. gives you trouble....

French reactors suffered a lack of suffciently cool water, what little water they had was too hot. Cooling towers numbers actually are sufficient.

There is still plenty of water, the problem is that you have to limit heating the river. With a cooling tower can cool with or without evaporating water depending on the design but always without heating the river. But it is cheaper to directly dump the heat into the water.
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