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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

#201

Post by thinkcontext »

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.

If you are concerned about solar's use of land then you must be positively apoplectic about using corn for ethanol. That uses more than 40% of US corn production, an amount of acreage so vast it's difficult to comprehend.

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

#202

Post by Maakuth »

zer00eyz wrote: post #190
Maakuth wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here (bay area), the power prices are so obscene that I almost makes sense to install batteries first. Those with homes with solar are going to end up saturating the grid (duck curve) to the point where renters can buy batteries and "coast", through the peaks of power cost.

Are spot electricity contracts available, so that you can do it like that? Makes sense then. And of course the installation cost of battery is way smaller than for a PV plant as no roof work is required.

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

#203

Post by m463 »

adrianN wrote: post #103
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.

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.

I wonder how economical it is if you factor externalities.

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-trillions-hidden-energy-extern...

What's interesting is that they mentioned the externalities for geothermal are very very low.

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

#204

Post by weberer »

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.…

Here in Finland, the national power grid operator provides a live graph of how much that each source is outputting. Its kind of funny how solar produces almost no energy during the winter this far north. I'm very happy that we have that new 1,600 MW nuclear plant, so we no longer have to get that energy from coal.

https://www.fingrid.fi/en/electricity-market/power-system/

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

#205

Post by m463 »

luizfwolf wrote: post #178
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…

Nuclear is the most clean energy that can be generated on-demand, solar and wind can only generate energy depending on the external conditions. Batteries until today are not a viable solution. When talking about the electrical grid you have to be able to generate energy in any amount whenever you want.

> When talking about the electrical grid you have to be able to generate energy in any amount whenever you want.

I think there is an error thinking this way.

It is like saying "everyone must own a pickup truck, because they must be able to move any household appliance or furniture item at any time."

"nobody can drive an electric vehicle because they must be able to drive to the next state at any time."

Honestly, you can have a very reliable electrical grid that is runs on solar/wind/batteries for most of the time.

Batteries enhance the grid, and if there was a period of no wind or no sun, it is quite easy to spin up gas turbines for a day or a month.

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

#206

Post by epistasis »

hinkley wrote: post #71
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…

> 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…

According to this article, the staff for the regulator in Georgia (the only entity in the decision making process looking out for the customers, ratepayers) were banned from even considering the cost of renewables:

> Plant Vogtle proceeded with no cost-cap, no consumer protections, and Public Service Commission (PSC) staff were prohibited from conducting analysis comparing the costs of nuclear to clean energy alternatives.

https://www.powermag.com/blog/plant-vogtle-not-a-star-but-a-...

At the other pair of reactors started at the same time and with the same design in Soith Carolina, executives are in jail for lying about the project. The SC reactors were also abandoned.

Nuclear in the US is so expensive that even starting a new reactor requires considerable corruption.

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

#207

Post by megaman821 »

weberer wrote: post #204
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.…

Here in Finland, the national power grid operator provides a live graph of how much that each source is outputting. Its kind of funny how solar produces almost no energy during the winter this far north. I'm very happy that we have that new 1,600 MW nuclear plant, so we no longer have to get that energy from coal. https://www.fingrid.fi/en/electricity-market/power-system/

People want a one-size-fits-all solution, nuclear makes the most sense for the high northern latitudes. Depending on the geography; wind, geothermal and hydro are viable too. Now if you are talking about Egypt, building nuclear over solar/batteries makes absolutely no sense.

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

#208

Post by bluGill »

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?!

The way ocean currents work help Barcelona more than Chicago. Chicago is warmer than its western suburbs because the suburbs are farther from the lake. (there are many other confounding factors so we cannot measure this)

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

#209

Post by dfc »

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…

I do not understand your math. How did you go from .36 for wind, apply it to nameplate capacity and get 15.1%? And percent of what? I thought applying the capacity factor to nameplate would result in some measure of energy produced, not a percentage.

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

#210

Post by vitiral »

m463 wrote: post #205
luizfwolf wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is the most clean energy that can be generated on-demand, solar and wind can only generate energy depending on the external conditions. Batteries until today are not a viable solution. When talking about the electrical grid you have to be able to generate energy in any amount whenever you want.

> When talking about the electrical grid you have to be able to generate energy in any amount whenever you want. I think there is an error thinking this way. It is like saying "everyone must own a pickup truck, because they must be able to move any household appliance or furniture item at any time." "nobody can drive an electric vehicle because they must be able to drive to the next state at any time." Honestly, you…

It's not quite the same when failing to meet peak demand means pipes freeze or people die of heat exhaustion. There are areas in the country that are over a hundred degrees at night. It's going to take a lot of solar to cool all those homes.

Could we all live a different way, communally instead of in our own big boxes? It's physically possible but socially impossible. The truth is we'd rather burn the planet to the ground and we will. That's our nature, little use fighting it.

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