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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

#161

Post by hef19898 »

lucioperca wrote: post #160
hef19898 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And you cannot empty the river neither, especially during a drought, can you?

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

#162

Post by Reason077 »

hef19898 wrote: post #157
Reason077 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “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!

Wait, Chicago is colder than Barcelona because of the Earth's tilt?!

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

#163

Post by hef19898 »

Reason077 wrote: post #162
hef19898 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Wait, Chicago is colder than Barcelona because of the Earth's tilt?!

I don't know!!!?!!!? You think I just had a streak of genius?

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

#164

Post by Nodraak »

TomK32 wrote: post #107
littlestymaar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how many nuclear reactors does one worker build in their lifetime? 2? 4? That's not a lot of opportunity for process improvement. France built 58 over 20 years, that's how you make it economical. India says they want to do one a year IIRC, which is probably good enough too.

Wikipedia writes: "As of early September 2022, 32 of France's 56 nuclear reactors were shut down due to maintenance or technical problems" and "In 2022, Europe's driest summer in 500 years had serious consequences for power plant cooling systems, as the drought reduced the amount of river water available for cooling."

> "As of early September 2022, 32 of France's 56 nuclear reactors were shut down"

This is cherry picking. Look at the 10 years, or even lifetime, average availability. It's 90 or 95%. The reason for this bad number is because of delayed maintenance due to COVID.

> "serious consequences for power plant cooling systems, as the drought reduced the amount of river water available for cooling."

The reduction of power output of French nuclear was something like 0.30%. You read that right. So I would call "serious consequences" a blatant lie.

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

#165

Post by beAbU »

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…

Presumably you can discharge the batteries while pv is also producing at full tilt.

But that'll rarely happen.

I absolutely hate the current state of energy reporting in general. The writers of these articles are not even trying to make sure they report accurately.

E.g. the battery stats: Is it MW or MWH? Both are very different and the distinction is important. A battery that can deliver 380MW but only for 10 mins is pretty useless.

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

#166

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...)

> "French nuclear power has a levelized cost of about $70/MWh"

That may be true for the existing nuclear fleet, but the cost of new-build nuclear is significantly higher. Flamanville 3, which is expected to finally come online in mid-2024 after 17 years of construction, was estimated at €125/MWh in 2022.

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

#167

Post by roenxi »

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.

Related and interesting thing - China appears to be building a trial reactor in the Gobi desert [0] because they think they have air cooling sorted out.

Or at least close enough. I haven't checked if it is technically in the desert.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR-LF1

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

#168

Post by pfdietz »

schiffern wrote: post #139
spangry wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The graph looks rather exponential (and decidedly _not_ logarithmic) to me.[0] The story is actually "the growth rate becomes more rapid as you accumulate experience manufacturing , which also grows as a function of the stock." AKA Wright's Law.[1] You may notice this is faster than your definition of exponential growth, because Wright's Law also counts the decommissioned panels too. The industry still got that manuf…

PV has been growing with a time constant short compared to the lifespan of PV modules, so most of the cumulative production is still in operation today.

This is also why PV recycling hasn't had a chance to really get going -- very limited potential input to the process yet.

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

#169

Post by pfdietz »

_ph_ wrote: post #144
spangry wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The key point here is that the potential market has been increasing exponentially with reduction in price.

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

#170

Post by Reason077 »

Nodraak wrote: post #164
TomK32 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia writes: "As of early September 2022, 32 of France's 56 nuclear reactors were shut down due to maintenance or technical problems" and "In 2022, Europe's driest summer in 500 years had serious consequences for power plant cooling systems, as the drought reduced the amount of river water available for cooling."

> "As of early September 2022, 32 of France's 56 nuclear reactors were shut down" This is cherry picking. Look at the 10 years, or even lifetime, average availability. It's 90 or 95%. The reason for this bad number is because of delayed maintenance due to COVID. > "serious consequences for power plant cooling systems, as the drought reduced the amount of river water available for cooling." The reduction of power outp…

> "Look at the 10 years, or even lifetime, average availability. It's 90 or 95%."

Average load factor for nuclear reactors globally hovers around 80% according to IAEA data [1]. In France the average is actually lower than this due to load following: by design, many French reactors don't always operate at full capacity because there isn't enough demand at off-peak times.

Few, if any, reactors reach 95%: planned outages for refuelling and maintenance takes up more than 5% of their time.

[1] https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/WorldTrendinAvera...

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